Hey Teresa!
My family lives about 4hrs away, and we often take trips there for the weekends to visit. It can be a challenge to stick to a good EASY plan when you are out of town, but is possible with some tweaking!
Depending on where you stay, continuing sleep training can be difficult. We always stay at my parent's house when we go to visit, and it is not the best sound-proofed house. So, that meant that sleep "training" such as pu/pd or shh/pat was pretty much out of the question, because to do so would wake the entire household. So on such trips, I reverted to holding dd to sleep, or at least held her a bit more than I typically would have at home. I think (and many others familiar to BW do as well) that babies are pretty smart, and know when they are out of their ordinary environment, and can tolerate a bit of fudging when it comes to routine, and independent sleep when away from home.
Yes, your routine will be a bit off, and yes it may cause more sleep disturbances when you return home if you've had to APOP (accidentally parent - on purpose) while away from home in order to keep peace with the household, but once you're back home, you can pick up where you left off with sleep training, with hopefully, only minor setbacks. It's kind of the same when baby is sick - they know the rules are different, and comforting baby while sick, with whatever means necessary is always ok, and once they are feeling well again, go back to the sleep training and working on independent sleep.
As far as naps go, we did our best to schedule naps when we'd be at the house, as my family have a crib available for dd's use there, and she's always slept better in a crib. If we couldn't be at home for the nap time, then the next best thing was to be in the car driving. When you aren't in a place where you can "extend" a nap, try not to stress too much about it. Being out of his element, his sleep is going to be disrupted, but it's ok, you can work on catching up, if needed, when you get back home. And oddly enough, when dd has had some sleep problems, such as NW's or EW's, sometimes a big routine shake up like going to visit the grandparents, and the sleep loss that most often accompanies it, is just what she needs to get back into a better sleep routine when we do get back home.
So if naps are short, you can always offer an extra catnap, or early bedtime in order to combat OT. My other piece of advice would be to not let him nap too long in one sitting, just because you're in the car, or doing something else fun - it is a recipe for a rough night. Of course if he is taking a longer nap because another nap was short, that may be just fine - just use your mommy sense and good judgment!
Hope that helps a bit!
