Road Tripping with Kids Tips!

Road tripping with young kids has been such a rewarding experience for our family, but let’s be honest…sometimes it can be a challenge! Since our family vacations have mostly consisted of long road trips, our kids don’t really know its NOT normal to be in the car for sometimes 40+ hours total on a trip! Over the years we’ve found some tricks that have helped us along the way to make life a little easier and the trips more enjoyable.

Border Bags:

This is an idea I definitely can’t take credit for, but it has been a LIFESAVER for us on trips! I stumbled across this blog on Pinterest years ago, and thought it was such a great idea! Even though the girls are older now, they still get excited about these! We don’t like for them to be on electronics the whole time we drive, so border bags break up the trip and give them something new to play with/do along the way. These bags just contain simple items (most of the items we purchase at the dollar store) they get to open each time you cross over a new state border. You could easily change this to be given at time increments of your choice if you aren’t road tripping across a lot of states. Be warned though, that instead of asking “are we there yet?” they may begin to ask “when is the next border bag?!” Some of their favorites have been dry erase markers, pom poms glued to magnets and a cookie sheet, travel games, sticker books, movies, new coloring books/crayons, pipe cleaners and beads, slinkies and glowsticks if you’re driving at night. Word to the wise: don’t buy slime…it turns out to be a disaster! Trust me on this one!

I usually try to include one or two educational bags, but you can tell in these pictures how well that went over! Oh well, you can’t win them all!

Travel Games:

Travel Notebooks:

Another idea I found on Pinterest, are these awesome travel notebooks that you can fill with activities to keep the kids occupied. Simply get a three ring binder and a pencil pouch you can attach in the binder and fill it with color pencils and crayons. In addition to the games and activities, I included daily writing prompts for the girls to write about their favorite parts of each day. (What can I say?…its the teacher in me!)You can find these free printable pages here, here and here.

Packing:

We’ve had to tweak things as we’ve begun flying to our starting points and then beginning our road trip, but through trial and error we’ve figured out some tried and true packing methods that may help you:

• Pack outfits in individual baggies (including underwear) and label with each day of the trip. Admittedly, this was way easier when the girls were younger because now they are teens/tweens who can’t decide what they want to wear (*sigh*), but we still try to do this to make life easier. Ziploc even makes 2 gallon baggies which works better for adult size clothes/jeans, etc. Since we stay at a different hotel almost every night, its a hassle to lug in all of our suitcases every night, so each family member brings a backpack that has their toiletries and PJ’s in it, and then we just grab the baggie with the next days’ clothes and throw it in the backpack to keep us from having to unload the whole van.

Meals and Snacking on the Road

• To keep the girls from eating all the snacks in one day or incessantly asking for snacks, I would fill up these little tackle boxes at the beginning of the day and when the snacks were gone, they were gone. (I usually only do this if its going to be a long driving day).
• Rubbermaid containers are awesome for nonperishable food items. I typically have a small container for breakfast items (granola bars, pop-tarts, etc). Most hotels we stay in have complimentary breakfast buffets, but we always have breakfast items on hand for days our hotels don’t include breakfast. I pack a medium sized container for lunch items (bread, chips, peanut butter, paper plates, utensils, paper towels, etc) and then everything else in the cooler. Some of my fondest memories are from fun picnic spots we have found along the way! Not only do you get to enjoy some beautiful outdoor spots, you save money as well! We try to only eat one meal a day out when we road trip.

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There have been times when haven’t been able to find a good picnic stop, or the weather wasn’t conducive to eating outside. In those cases, I’ve made lunches to eat in the car and put the kids’ lunches in these handy little baskets from the Dollar Tree.

Sadly, as our girls have gotten older there are some of these travel hacks we don’t use anymore. As a result of these tips, however, I can look back on our road trips with fond memories and not too many moments when I wanted to pull my hair out! I hope some of these tricks can help those of you with young kids as you head out on the open road and make some great memories!