We have been considering going to Cape Cod, MA this year, but it has been up-in-the-air only because we are trying to sell our home again. The concern is that if we do sell, things may financially change in our lives once we get into a larger home and mortgage payment, so we have been careful not to plan to far in advance. However, now that we have Finger Lakes, NY already planned, as discussed here, we felt comfortable making a cancellable decision to book Cape Cod.

We have never been to the Cape Cod area before. We are going with my wife’s parents for now; I have invited my family but we will see if they can go. When we started looking for possible dates, we realized the summer is already getting pretty booked. Luckily we were able to find one week towards the beginning of summer that worked for us and my wife’s parents. So we started looking for hotels in the area.

My father-in-law had done some preliminary research, and recommended the Hyannis Harbor Inn. So over this past weekend I stayed up late researching the surrounding area hotels and prices. After looking at various options for the area, we decided the Hyannis Harbor hotel actually worked perfect for what we were looking for in the Cape Cod area. We were able to book for 3 nights the 2-story, 2-bedroom suite with living room, which we will share with my wife’s parents. The room ironically was only available for the nights we needed. In addition, because of the week we could go, it must not be peak season yet because we were able to save on parking fees that are normally $12/car/night (savings us $24/night assuming 2 vehicles).

So how did we establish our schedule? Well as I was up late thinking about it, I remembered that traveling with kids takes some additional planning. So my first step was to really decide how much time we needed in Cape Cod. Realistically, it only appears we will need a day to take a trip to Martha’s Vineyard, a day for Nantucket, and maybe two days for the Cape Code surrounding area. Therefore, we choose to book the Hyannis Harbor Hotel from a Monday to Thursday. If we leave on a Saturday, we can easily take our time travelling to the coast over several days. This is important with kids. It probably will not be much of an issue with our newborn, but more so for our two year old.

Traveling more than six hours in a vehicle might be a little rough for our oldest son. We have learned from experience that if possible, it is better to break up longer driving trips into shorter runs. The longest drive we have done to date was approximately 8 hours up to Mackinac Island last summer for our anniversary. That ended up being a long drive for a toddler. One word of advice though for long driving trips, courtesy of my wife…buy some travel gifts and wrap them up for the drive. My wife packed enough gifts for our son to unwrap one each hour. It was a great idea because by the time he got tired of a gift, it was time for another. I of course benefitted with some of the additional gummy bears or other delicious snacks.

So now we need to decide where we want to go for our casual days before and after the Cape Cod portion of the trip. I carry around with me a helpful guide my in-laws purchased me called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. I am currently going through it evaluating our various options.

Beyond Cape Cod, one additional place we plan to visit is the Margaritaville Mohegan Sun. We will see where the rest of the trip takes us.