Cherry Hill family has written the book on road tripping
The Ovadias have been to 49 of America’s 50 states, visiting 48 by automobile. They’ll visit Hawaii, the elusive No. 50, later this summer
For the Ovadia family of Cherry Hill, their hobby and love of travel has turned into a sort of mini franchise.
The Ovadias -- father Ben, mother Rosa, and siblings Danny and Ella -- have traveled the country by car, covering more than 40,000 miles and 72 travel days over a span of three years. Along the way, they have visited every state in the continental U.S. by car, and have even hit spots in Canada while also visiting Alaska by air. Since then, they have written a book to teach others about the ins and outs of putting together successful and memorable family road trips.
And the family has a new member to join in on the fun. Baby brother Gabriel, born in October 2017, has already been to as many states in his first eight months of life than his father had visited before his 30th birthday, Ben joked. Together, the family of five plans to eventually hit that elusive 50th state by flying to Hawaii after an August cross-country drive to San Francisco. But in the meantime, Gabriel will have to catch up to the rest of his family and hit the other 49 states, too.
Their book, “Family Road Tripping Without Falling, How to Survive and Thrive With Your Kids on the Road”was released last summer and can be found on amazon.comand
barnesandnoble.com. In the 192-page paperback, they cover topics such as planning the journey, budgeting, packing, eating on the journey and much more.
Since the release of the book in July 2017, the family has done presentations at the Cherry Hill and Haddonfield public libraries, Barnes & Noble book store in Cherry Hill, appeared on numerous radio shows and podcasts and even donated a copy of their book to the Library of Congress -- and did so, fittingly, as part of a family road trip to Washington D.C.
“Over the three years of intense travel to get to 49 states, we'd often get the question: how do you do it?”said Ben Ovadia, 38, a fundraiser for the Salvation Army who is originally from Ardmore, Pa. “We'd give the five-minute answer sometimes and the 60-second answer other times. But, we really came to feel it was an art for us, that we should explain our way of doing things and then have people adjust to their tastes. So, we knew we wanted to write a book. But it probably would never have happened. Except that my published cousin said we needed to do it, and ‘sold’our story to a publisher friend of his. And then we got the concept together and outline. We wrote it over three months.”
“In the beginning, we wanted to write about ‘extreme’road tripping only, with that being something unique to us,”added Ben. “But we came to feel that we wanted this to be accessible to all. Maybe not the way we did it, but others can find their own way to bring this to their family in their own style.”
Travel, especially with kids, is a challenge. But for the Ovadias, AAA South Jersey members since 2000, things like finding the best route or simply organizing your trip though aren’t necessarily challenges, more like part of the fun. They’ve also used AAA TripTiks, member discounts and have the peace of mind knowing they can get roadside assistance.
“In a certain sense, there’s a lot of best practices we’ve learned and this is what we wrote the book about,”Ben said. “The thing about planning the trip is the opposite of what people might think. That’s not the challenge, that’s the fun. then we can enjoy the trip for a couple of months or a couple of weeks before we leave. We spend time planning stops, we’ll veto, suggest new stuff, redirect…One of our favorite things, once we plan the trip, is to say OK, now what if we do it backwards. What if our last stop is our first stop and we’ve done that out on the road, too.”
And it wasn’t just the parents who got in on the book-writing act. The children helped in the writing process as well. For example, in chapter 13, each member of the family revealed their favorite places to visit.
For 11-year-old Danny -- he can tell you one site the family has seen in each state they’ve visited -- his favorite place was the World of Coca-Cola museum in Atlanta, Ga.
“I (had first) learned about it in school,”said Danny, who recently finished fifth grade at Sharp School in Cherry Hill. “They had the best flavors. We were drinking Sprite.”
Ella, 9, is the middle child in the family. She heard about an ice hotel and wanted to try and make a trip to see it. Time was limited though as it’s a seasonal hotel, open only for three months from January to March.
“It was my idea to go there. I learned about it in school and that it was in Canada,”said Ella, who just finished fourth grade at Sharp. “but I didn’t (originally) realize it was allmade out of ice. I thought part of it was clear glass to make it look like ice.”
And when the kids have any travel ideas, their parents are receptive and consider planning their visit.
“She mentioned this ice hotel and I looked it up on Google -- Hotel de Glace in Quebec City -- and they were just about to melt it at the end of March,”said Rosa, a business analyst for Albert’s Organics. “We had just updated the children’s passports so we said if the passports get here in time before the ice hotel is melted, we’re going. We got the passports, got in the car, took the long weekend and went to Canada.”
And voila, 11 hours later, there they were.
In traveling to all the lower 48 states by car, they didn’t just breeze through certain states along the way, zooming through to a final destination. They had to partake in some sort of activity in each state to truly make it an official visit.
“We had to actually do something in every state to make it count,”said Rosa, 40, who was born and raised in Voorhees.
“We would find a legitimate tourist attraction, like a national park for example,”said Ben. “There’s really something everywhere.”
“And we’ll look it up and see what the best thing is or what’s around the area we’re planning on traveling through. Maybe there’s a show or a museum,”Rosa added.
But how did this whole thing get started?
“We used to enjoy separately, both getting in our cars and driving places so when we got together we would just get in the car and drive,”said Rosa, who along with Ben, celebrated their 12th anniversary this past March. “A date would just be, let’s go and see where the car takes us. And that’s where it started.
“We enjoyed each other’s company and then (after getting married and having a family) we started noticing that we don’t see each other much,”added Rosa. “I work and I’ll stay until 5 or 6 o’clock and it’s an hour away and he works weekends and the kids have their things. And we weren’t spending time together so we thought, maybe we can get in the car and be together. It kind of started even before kids. It’s what we do to connect. Sometimes, we’d get a baby sitter and we’d sit in the car and catch up and talk. And now we do it as a family.”
For Ben and Rosa, the family travels have to fit into their work schedules as well as the school schedules of their children.
“We don’t work remotely, we work in our company’s offices,”said Ben. “We’re taking the vacation days, making the most of it, hitting the weekends and matching it up with holidays. Typically, we ‘re doing it when the kids are off from school. Just our last trip, we had to take a day off from school and not intentionally but we went to see the Pentagon and you have to do that on a school day. That’s one of the only times the kids missed a school day.”
The family documents their travels in many ways and will continue doing so, especially as baby Gabriel continues to join in the fun.
“We take a lot of pictures and we try to chronicle the travels that way,”Ben said. “And we have Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts. It’s been really good. Actually, Frommer’s (a company that develops and publishes travel guides) started following us in February which was bizarre and surreal.”
Besides their book, you can also find the Ovadias on various forms of social media and follow along in their adventures. Look for them on Facebook by searching for Family Road Tripping; and on Twitter and Instagram, their handle is @roadwarriorfam.
