Road Trips: Make the Journey as Fun as the Destination
Road Trip Tips
At least a few times a year we embark on long road trips. As neither my husband nor I particularly like to drive, we had to come up with a way to make them bearable.
Getting in the car and driving all night was not something we could do – the few times we tried it, we wound up exhausted the next day and essentially missed the first day of our trip.
Talk about stress!
👉 How about some fun Road Trip Games? Before your next road trip, download this pack of road trip game printables. It includes 21 different games/activities to help keep your family engaged and enjoying the journey!
5 Tips to make your road trips FUN!
Luckily, I’ve got some ideas for road trips to make them FUN. So much so that my kids would prefer to drive than fly! How did we do it?
1. Attitude
This is the most important part – by simply reminding ourselves that the journey can be as fun as the destination, we hit the road with the right mindset.
We’ve come to look at a road trip as a chance to relax (versus work), see something new, and have some great conversations.
2. Try new restaurants on your road trips
It’s a rare trip that we don’t break out Yelp when we start to get hungry and search up local restaurants. Once everyone starts getting hungry, I open the app, switch it to map view, and start searching for places twenty minutes ahead or so of our current route.
We’ve discovered awesome dive bars, amazing breweries, old-school drive-ins, and everything in between. The rule is it can’t be more than ten minutes off the road we are traveling, and it can’t be a chain. Other than that, anything goes.
Yes, it adds time to our trip, but we’ve created a fun memory, enjoyed much better food, and had some fun while getting to our destination.
3. Have fun with road trip games
Through the years, we’ve learned the words to many road trip songs, played hours of the Alphabet Game, and indulged in a few interesting podcasts. I do allow some time for sleeping, playing on devices, or watching a movie, but once everyone starts getting restless, out come the arsenal of group activities!
👉 Pick up my affordable Road Trip Games printable before your next road trip. It includes 21 different games/activities – enough to find a few fun ways to keep your crew entertained on your next road trip!
4. Plan an interesting stop or two!
If the trip is really long, I’ll check ahead of time for things to do along the drive. We rarely drive more than 8 or 9 hours in a day, so adding an hour for a quick attraction is totally doable, and if you combine that with a restaurant stop it feels more like a vacation day versus a driving day.
Some of our favorite adventures were taking a dairy factory tour in Tennesee (In Athens, TN if you are interested) complete with scrumptious ice cream cones at the end, visiting the location of the six million paper clip project (which was so powerful we still talk about it) and stopping at the Russell Stover’s Outlet on our way to Orlando.
5. Be flexible on your road trips
Aside from attitude, this is probably the most important part of enjoying the journey – especially if it’s a family road trip.
If the weather is awful or you feel too tired to drive, change your plans and stop earlier – you’ll eventually get where you are going. See an interesting sign alongside the road? Why not stop and check it out?
We have been known to stop to do everything from picking strawberries, visiting a local winery, or even checking out the World’s Largest Golf Tee. These types of spontaneous moments are what memories are made of.
🌟 If you need help finding ideas for road trip stops along the way, check out my tried and true methods for researching fun things to do!
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