Road Trip!
Posted by TulipGirl | Under Family Journal, GFI / Ezzo / Babywise Wednesday Jul 23, 2008In a few weeks days, our family will be heading out for a family roadtrip!
The boys were great travelers as little ones — we made countless long trips in the minivan. But in Ukraine we were free of a vehicle, and the trips we took were overnight by train. Lots of fun, but a totally different experience.
Last fall we went up the east coast to Pennsylvania (and took a midnight tour of D.C.) and had a wonderful time. However, we’ll be taking the mother-of-all-roadtrips this fall — driving east to west, not quite to the west coast. We’re all really looking forward to it, but I’m realistic enough to know we’ll likely have a few bumps in the road and in our relating to one another as we drive across long, hot, flat expanse of west Texas.
Plus, the boys are older now. . . Older and bigger and sometimes feel cramped in the back of the minivan. We’re stocked up on snacks, books, dictionary and hymnal (you’d be amazed at how often a dictionary comes in handy on the road!), sketchbooks and audio books.
Any ideas or advice or great road trip stories to share?
OK - I’m FROM Texas - so, I can call you and give you LOTS of ideas - San Antonio has a TON of history as well as fun things to do = you have the different missions there as well as the Alamo - there is also the Riverwalk and SeaWorld of San Antonio.
Oh, I was thinking of stuff to do in the car. Mad Libs. Writing stories - one person does a line, the next person writes the next line, etc. That makes for a really crazy story and often takes a funny turn of events if someone’s really being silly. Have fun on your trip! We just drove to FL and back — five kids of various ages — we do use GameBoys, but mostly it was books, notebooks, and flash cards.
Have you heard Steve Green’s Bible Memory CDs? Great, catchy tunes as they learn Scripture. Also, Judy Rogers has a CD with the first 20 Children’s Catechism Q&A put to music.
I think we’ll be going through N. Texas. . . but it WOULD be fun to take them to San Antonio! That’s where I lived when Hubby and I first met, and we have a lot of happy, romantic memories there. *grin*
Melinda, mad libs! What a great idea! We even have a book of them Hubby got for using with the boys in school. (Great for reinforcing parts of speech, doncha know?) We have “Go to the Ant” by Judy Rogers. Hmmm. . . should look into the other one and Steve Green’s cd.
Oh, our actual destination is SW Colorado — a family reunion for my Dad’s side of the family. I’m really excited about it. If we can manage the time, we’ll even swing out to see the Grand Canyon.
What about the car tag game - looking for car tags from all 50 states. (Can be done individually or collectively.)
Safe travels.
A friend of mine does this great thing with her 4 kids on long road trips. Every morning she puts a small toy/trinket of some kind in each of their seats/car seats. It’s generally something small, and less than $5. It gets them excited to get back in the car to see what they got and usually occupies them for at least a few hours.
best books for the car- Harry Potter series- hands down. Only problem is it gets hard to get out of the car. Cracker Barrell does a great audio book rental program. Other thing is that I forget the ages of all the boys and so Harry Potter may not be entirely age appropriate for all listeners. That’s a mom decision.
Hmm… SW Colorado. Lots of cool stuff there…
License plate games: if there are three letters, make a sentence using those for the first letter of each word. E.g. ours used to be DHF so we’d say our sentence would be “Dogs have fleas.” This can become quite humorous. I seem to remember DDV becoming “Dirk’s dog vomited.” Your family, being word people, would be good at this.
Another way is to take those letters and expand into a word. I can’t think of one for DHF though. You MUST keep the letters in that order but may insert any letters, e.g. ECG could expand to “electrocariogram.” In that game you can keep score: each one takes a turn to expand-a-word, and the one who comes up with the longest word wins that round.
Have fun; travel safely!
Oops, I meant e-l-e-c-t-r-o-c-a-r-d-i-o-g-r-a-m.
(If I can’t spell correctly maybe I should not be suggesting word games!)
I pack each of our kids a “survival kit”. Usually it is a old backpack filled with age appropriate games, books, snacks etc. They can’t open it until we are on the road. I don’t neccessarily buy everything new either.I put card games we have, gum- for the mountains etc. They are each reponsible for their own bag.
They look forward to these as much as the trip sometimes.
BTW Steve Green;s Hide em in their hearts is great car music, max lucado has some from”Hermie” too. We get book on CD from the library to take too. Have a great trip- make lots of memories.
If you’re going through Amarillo, you’ve got to stop and eat at The Big Texan restaurant. They serve everything from buffalo to rattlesnake to rabbit. They’re also the home of a 72 oz steak that you get for free if you can eat it in a certain amount of time.
Just finished Toddler traveling here, although it was no expansive road trip, we had a great time.
Don’t have many tips, but it seems like siblings tend to entertain each other. At least that is what I remember about traveling with my sisters when we’d do road trips.
I always liked puzzles, books, songs, etc. If not, you could always try talking about global warming like my dad did to me when I was 7. I’ll never forget that conversation.
We just did a huge trip and I found the website http://www.momsminivan.com to be super helpful. We’re also going to SW CO for a few days in August. Is sooo beautiful down there.
Get books on tape from your local library! My daughter who is 2 loves them! They have them for all ages! And most libraries will let you renew online!
i suppose your boys are a bit old to be escited about every piece of heavy equipment they see along the way…tractors, bullodozers, dump trucks…my life is easy.oh well. happy traveling.
You can play ‘recognize the song’, take turns humming a melody to a himn, whoever recognizes it first starts sining. Or, if you play a small instrument, you can play the melody (like flute, I use it to get my family excited about sining and it’s good practice for me
Small towns and parks. That’s what saved us on numerous occasions. We would find a little town somewhere, find a park, and get some take-out food to eat in the park. Then we’d run off our steam.
Also, we found the our kids get unruly around 4:00 p.m., so we’d stop for ice cream.
Wow! These are great, great ideas!
My roadtrip memories from when I was a kid are so positive. Really, it was something that defines part of my childhood. I don’t want to have the expectations that it will be the same. . . but I am really excited!
Kim, I recently discovered the eating-in-the-park with my 19 month old. It’s the best ever!
We’ve driven a ton over the years. Actually I’m just about to get on the road with the 5 kiddos to head home from WI to NE….it’s a shorter drive (and this is me saying that in comparision to driving from Menomonie, WI to Gladwin, MI)..only 7-8 hours. Still, on the ride up–we sang–a lot.
Now, we really didn’t sing hymns….but we sang a lot of 80s–the kids are enthralled with Tom Petty–he’s easy to sing to.
Amazingly, singing can keep the kids busy for a long time.
Praying you guys have a great vacation!! We didn’t take a family one this year due to the whole transition thing–but I want to explore some areas out west…
I just wanted to say THANK YOU for not taking the usual trappings of the modern american car vacation (the DVD player and a stack of movies)
I grew up on road trips with just the hymnal, the radio and endless sketch pads.
Here’s hoping your kids enjoy it as much as I did.
We just got home from a major road trip. I will probably post tomorrow about some of our activities on the way. We have a plastic tray for each of our kids and the favorite activity is sculpting with Crayola Model Magic. It does not stick to clothes, carpet, or seats and dries quickly. It is easy to pick up when done. We have done this on many trips.
Hey, we’re nerds and just got into the Battlestar Galactia series (right when they’re filming the last season.) There are three seasons on DVD.
You may need them all to get through Texas!
Road tripping is my favorite form of travel. We once took a 3 week trip and drove from Waukegan north to ND, across to Seattle, down to Sacramento and back over across WY and KS and back up through IL. When we hit Seattle my mom wanted to take a detour to Alaska! She said we would never be that close again and she was right
It was our last long roadtrip as a family… I was 18 or 19… I still think about it with incredible fondness. With gas prices the way they are now, I wonder if I’ll be doing that again.
Part of roadtripping is the intense boredom that comes when you’ve read everything you can get your hands on, don’t really want to eat, the air conditioning is only sort-of working and you are sure your siblings are taking more than their fair share of the seat! It all makes memories
We were always a big road-tripping family. We drove numerous times from SC to the great west, including montana, canada, and colorado. Those were such great trips. I’d recommend getting some books on tape (check the library) and having plenty to read. Cracker Barrel restaurants also are a great place to find books on tape. You pay 20$ up front, then get all but $4 back when you return it. Jeff and i still play the license plate game - we’ve taken two fairly long road trips since we’ve been married. Hope you have fun!
Hi Tulip Girl! Thanks for visiting my blog and leaving a comment! I really appreciate it as I do not get many. Your site is very nice, what a sweet gift for your husband to give you. For road trips I pack age appropriate bags for each and take along the Focus on the Family Radio Theater version of Chronicles of Narnia-
there is nothing better! Have a great trip.