Road Trip Tips – Easy Games to Pass Time in the Car

Karlie having fun and being goofy on the road trip.

On the road again….! After a full day of work, horse camp, packing the van, and more fun we set off on another road trip adventure with the whole family.  The kids are excited and we have several days worth of fun on the road planned.  We get to go to a few places we’ve never been before so that is always fun for the family!

Road Trip Game ideas (here are a few that we played on this particular trip):

• Road Trip Bingo – you can buy a road trip bingo board or create your own if you know some of the items you will be seeing such including road signs, building, national monuments, animals, etc….
• I Spy – you don’t need anything to bring for this game.  You just have someone say “I Spy With My Little Eye” and the rest of the family has to guess what object they see whether in the car or outside of the vehicle.
• License Plate Game – how many of the 50 states can you see while on the road trip, if I remember correctly we got 37 US states and even some Canada ones too!  It was the closest we have ever come to getting 50 states!
• 20 Questions – this does not require any prep or packing either.  Have one person think of a plant, animal, or thing and the rest of the family gets a total of 20 questions to determine what object they were thinking about.  The person answering the question can only answer “yes” or “no” and nothing else.
• Animal Game – the first person to spy an animal or pen of animals (a herd counts as 1 point) gets one point.  If there are different types of animals in the same pen or location (such as horses, cows, donkey, etc…) they can get additional points for each type of animal if they call them out first.  Wild animals or unique farm animals (other than birds) such as deer, coyotes, emus, llamas, etc…. get a bonus 5 points for each type they see.  Our rule is at least one other person in the car must see the animal as well.
• Car Game – everyone picks a different color of car and gets a point for every car they see with their color.  This game works best in a quieter traffic or two lane highway since in a big city the score keeper will have a harder time keeping up and it becomes a series of yelling “I see a red, white, blue, green…..one!”
• Historical Marker Game – the first person to see something of historical significance gets a point.
• ABC Game – this one is great for areas with a lot of road signs or billboards.  You start with the letter “A” and find a written word that starts with that letter than move onto “B” and so forth.
• Car Color Bingo – we picked the car color “yellow” and the first person to spy a yellow vehicle would call out “Bingo yellow Penske truck or Bingo yellow convertible, etc…” and they would get one point per vehicle they spotted.  Another person had to see the vehicle to count and the majority of the vehicle had to be yellow in order to count.

These were a handful of the ones we played on our road trip.  Hope you enjoy some of them if you are going on a road trip too!  It is a great way to pass the time and have fun.  We all want road trips with the whole family to be fun and pleasant for everyone!

We stopped for dinner at a Chic-Fil-A along the way and let the kids run around in the play area for a few minutes while we waiting for the food.  It was a great way to let them stretch their legs and have fun.  It helps break up the time just sitting idle in the vehicle too.

Our family enjoys road trips!  It is a fun way to spend extra time since we are all packed into the van together.  While in the car we have plenty to talk about, games to play, snacks, videos to watch, audiobooks to listen, and even summer workbooks to complete, stories to tell, memories to laugh about, books to read, and more so the time goes by quickly!  Yes, we are one of “those” families that make their kids do summer workbooks to keep them up to speed during summer vacation, although we don’t necessarily make them do it everyday (road trips are a great time to get a few pages of some workbooks done).  Even though we have a DVD player in our van the kids are not allowed to watch it very often.  It is our rule that unless the trip is 5 or more hours the DVD never gets opened.  Since we had a 40 plus hours of driving ahead of us the kids were excited to watch a few DVDs on this trip!  What do you do to make road trips fun for your family and break up those long hours in the vehicle with the kids?