Travel Hacks to Stop Kids from Asking “Are We There Yet?”

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We have made some big trips as a family. My husband and I used to be able to do Indiana to Utah in one shot, no stops. We added kids to that mixture, and it is no longer doable. But we still have traveled quite a bit! Any road trip that can be done in under 12 hours total in the car seems totally doable to me. But it wouldn’t feel that way if I hadn’t used some sanity-saving hacks along the way. I hope you can find something here that will work for you, because these have been game changers for us!

• One of my good friends put together a going away gift for our family when we moved from North Carolina. She is one of the sweetest, most thoughtful people I know. (If you know someone who is moving with kids, keep this idea in your head to do for them!) She googled how long it would take us to drive to our new home in Indiana. It was about 10 hours of driving. She put together paper bags with a small activity inside of each one. And she had one bag for every hour per kid. So each hour, my husband would hand each kid a bag. Some had rolls of scotch tape, some had stickers or notepads and fun pens, or fidget toys, or snacks that we don’t normally get. She went to the dollar store and bought things that could easily be played with in the car. (Temu, the dollar section at Target, or the party favor aisle at walmart are also great options for this). My kids did so well with this. It also gave them a visual of how much longer we had left because they could see how many bags were left to be handed out. We still do this now. I try to save money by using toys that we already have. A couple weeks before a trip I will go through our toys and find things that we haven’t played with in a while or even things that we do and I will hide them away for a couple weeks so that when we get them out on the trip it feels newer and they aren’t tired of it. I still throw in some new things to add to the novelty and excitement though. Some of the things I put into the rotation are our Tonies, LCD writing tablets, a deck of cards, lite bright, puzzle books, and printable travel games. (See this post if you don’t know which ones I am talking about!)
• Another idea is to have a visual timer for the drive. This is best not to be a physical timer because there can always be traffic, delays, and set backs and it is too hard to predict. And there will be an uproar if you only had an hour left and suddenly there are 2! We have used these tickets from momsminivan. Each ticket is worth 30 minutes. So every 30 minutes you can have them turn in a ticket to you and they will visually see how much is left based on how many tickets they have left. I did enjoy this version but we ended up tinkering with it a little bit because my kids kept dropping their tickets on the ground and crying. So I ended up pinching the tickets between my sun visor and the roof of the car so they could see each individual ticket (I folded them a bit so they bent down). Then I would remove one each time 30 minutes passed. You could even do this with any random strips of paper if you didn’t want to print tickets out. Or if you are currently in the car trying to find any ideas to save you from losing your mind and you weren’t prepared before hand with the tickets printed. Just use some old tissues, we know you have them stuffed in the car door. Or is that just me?

• Snackle Box. I cannot stress this enough. My kids love having their own snack box. We have $5 ones from Target, but you could even use craft organizers from Dollar tree. Having multiple snacks in one container is so fun for them. You could even make a craft of it. You could give them a string and fill the box with foods that they can put on the string and make a necklace with. And if you are a fun, rich mom, you could even get one of these spinner boxes….I’ve always wanted one. But never felt like I should make the splurge. I hope you do though. Live my dream. There is also the memory match one. So cool.

• My last piece of advice is to accept that you won’t get there when you want to. Things are going to happen. I can fully expect that on every road trip, at least one of my kids will throw up. It happens every time. I have learned to be prepared for it. I keep wipes and a change of clothes for each kid in the car that are accessible and not in a suitcase. I keep garbage bags to put the throw up clothes in so we don’t have to smell it for the whole trip. I have learned that we have to stop every 3 hours. Whether it is to pee, or get something to eat, get gas, or play at a park, I expect to stop for a little less than an hour. My point here is, don’t have such high expectations. Because when they aren’t met, because you are traveling with little people who didn’t have to pee when you stopped five minutes ago, you will want to lose your mind. And you will no longer be the fun road trip mom you thought you would be when you were packing the bags and planning the car activities. Find the joy in the journey. Sometimes you will have to look really really hard. And if all else fails, look back at them when they finally fall asleep when you are 5 minutes from your destination and think about how lucky you are to get to go on a road trip and parent your children in a different location.