With the holidays approaching, our family has several long car trips ahead of us. Having made these trips before throughout my children’s childhood, I offer these suggestions to help manage car trips this holiday season.

When calculating the time it will take to get there, factor in an additional 25%. For example, from Palo Alto to Santa Barbara, according to Google Maps, is supposed to take about 5 hours – when we travel with our kids, it always takes 6.5 hours. Our trip to San Diego is supposed to take 7.5 hours, I am planning on 10. Why the extra time? Kids, especially toddlers who cannot self-entertain, will need to stop fairly often to run around. And even those who can read or do crafts by themselves, still need to get out of car seats and have a stretch.

Entertainment is probably where I spend the majority of my trip planning. Fortunately, my son is quite happy doing game books, and my daughter is good with projects. However, there was a time when both were too small to participate in either. During that time, we would often try to structure our trips around their nap schedules. For example, on a trip to Santa Barbara, we would leave at 9am, drive for 3 hours and stop in Paso Robles for lunch. There is a great park there, and after our picnic lunch, we would let the kids play on the playground for 30 minutes or so. By then, it was close to nap time, and if we were lucky, they would drift off, exhausted by their playground romp.

Neither of my kids nap anymore, so we need to be more strategic about our entertainment plans. I usually buy a couple new books for my son, and hit the $1 bin at Michaels for little craft projects to keep my daughter happy. We also will visit the library together and pick out some Books on Tape. Both can tolerate longer books now, and on our last car trip, we “read” the first Harry Potter. When they were younger, I would stick with the 30 minute books (ideally with a real book to read-along with) and take 3 or 4 of those along. I also pack my iPod in case one kid wants to listen to music instead.

When I was young, my mom had a box that would come out only for car trips, and I have those boxes for my children as well. They have crayons, paper, little toys, goofy things really, but they are comforting and remembered from trip to trip. I also bring storage clipboards, with space to hold more crayons and paper, which serve as a hard surface to write on. For my daughter, I will bring along tape, glue and scissors for any creations she wants to make. For my son, I will make sure to have a map of where we are going, pencils and a pencil sharpener. We also have a couple silly car games we like to play including the License Plate Game and I Spy. Other suggestions are offered here, here and here.

While packing suitcases, I put together our snack bag, with special snacks for car rides, including pretzels, nuts, fruit and chips (and chocolate for the driver!). I also pack our traveling water bottles, filled with water. These are convenient to fill at rest stops. Another bag will have car trip supplies, including baby wipes (you are never to old for these!), a towel, plastic bags, first aid kit and a bucket. That’s right, my daughter usually gets car sick, so we travel prepared!

Once in the car, we try to drive for at least two hours before stopping. Based on when we will be leaving, we try to anticipate areas of heavy traffic and try to avoid that with a cleverly scheduled stop. And always when we travel by car, we must visit an In-N-Out burger, a tradition we started 3 years ago and something the kids look forward too each trip. Fortunately, In-N-Out has a great map that we keep in the car with all the locations!

How do you manage long car trips with your kids? What has worked well for you? Share them here, I have to return trip to consider!

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