I remember those long drives with my family from our home town San Jacinto, California, to my Aunt Bessie and Uncle Wally’s place in Monterey, California. My mother coming into my room so early in the morning, it was still dark outside. I’d sleepily put on some clothes and slowly pad my way downstairs and out to the car where I would fall right back to sleep in the back seat. By the time I woke up it was light out and we would be about 80 miles from home. My older sister would give me a pleasant ‘good morning’ and give me a tickle, invoking from me loud screeching laughter and thoroughly waking me up for the day. We’d soon stop for breakfast and make the first restroom break before reloading into the car for the first long leg of our full day drive. Before reaching Aunt Bessie’s house we would make a lunch stop, usually at a restaurant of my request, with one or two restroom breaks in between, finally arriving at Aunt Bessie and Uncle Wally’s house, after a couple more restroom breaks.

All in all, the trip was about nine hours filled with travel games, singing songs, bouts with carsickness, and my ever present requests for progress reports by asking my dad “are we there yet?” As I now look back on those annual trips to visit Aunt Bessie and Uncle Wally, I think about the activities my family would engage in to keep me occupied and the many memories I have of those trips, which were some of the fondest memories of time spent together.

I don’t recall us experiencing the troubles other families seem to have on long trips. Perhaps it is selective memory but, I do remember the games we played and when I had to take a long trip with a young boy I brought some of those games out of my memory and we had a good time.

Here are some tips for traveling with children. A few I collected over time and some are from my memories of those long family drives in own childhood.

It might be wise to reconsider taking a scenic route. What an adult might find to be an enjoyable drive on a scenic route may be boring to children. If confined by seat belt or car seats, can the children see out the window or are they too short to actually see the sights? Also, keep in mind that most scenic routes tend to curve and wind quite a bit which can cause motion sickness. Many times the scenic route is longer, adding more time in the car and adding many more of those “are we there yet” questions.

Games and activities can help occupy the time of a long drive. Bring along coloring books or picture books or even some Mad-Libs where everybody can participate. My clever sister would create her own travel bingo games for us. She would draw the grid and write in the boxes things for us to look for. I recall some items she wrote in were U-Haul truck, a dog in a car, a boy wearing a hat, and things like that. Other popular games included the alphabet games where we look for the letters on passing road signs from A to Z. ‘I spy’ was always popular for keeping my attention focused on the scenery. Adding up the numbers on license plates the fastest was fun and helped me to improve my mathematical skills.

One thing I found useful on the trip I took as an adult with a young friend was taking a map of our trip and placing a colored star sticker by the major cities and towns we would travel through. I would let him know which colored star we were at along the way and, if he was well behaved, I had a small gift or toy for him when we reached each star. Come to think of it, he didn’t have to ask me ‘are we there yet’ because he saw for himself exactly where we were.

Nowadays the book stores often carry audio books. Listening to a story over the car stereo system can entertain the whole family. This method was my first introduction to some classic children stories. I recall my sister reading Charlotte’s Web in particular.

It is a good idea to wake up sleepers just before arriving at one of your planned stops to allow them to compose themselves and be refreshed and ready to exit the car.

With these tips long family drives can be a little more enjoyable and possibly bring the family closer together.