Surviving Long Car Journeys With The Family
It won’t be long before many of us are packing up the car and setting off on a long journey in order to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with our loved ones. While there’s much to love about the turkey and good times we’ll share as a big group, the journey there can be a little, well, less fun. So if you’re going to make the trip, then it’s in your interest to take steps to ensure that it goes as smooth as possible. Below, we take a look at a few tried and tested methods for making yours a success.
Ways to survive Long Car Journeys with the family!
Get Prepared
If you’ve got a long journey of you, then you’ll want to ensure that you’re starting from as good a position as possible. If you fail to prepare, then you should prepare to fail! So what does this look like, exactly? It begins with a few nights of rest beforehand. You’ll find that it’s much easier to make the trip when you’re starting from a point of energy. Loading up the car beforehand will also help — it’s best to avoid trying to pack everything into your car at the exact moment that you were due to set off.
Bring the Excitement
You know that the car journey is just something that you need to do in order to see your family. But your kids? They might not have quite the same logic. All they see is that they’re stuck in a vehicle for hours. You can help to keep this view at bay by bringing the excitement before the trip. If they’re excited about all the fun they’ll have when they arrive, and indeed even on the journey alone, then they’ll be starting from a good place.
The Ideal Route
It’s recommended that you do your research before you set off, in order to determine which is the best route. This won’t matter so much if you’re only driving for a few hours, but if you have a long day behind the wheel ahead of you, then it’s a crucial task. You might just find that there’s an alternate route that will have many fewer cars than the first route that you planned. Double check the traffic info on the morning that you set off, too, just to make sure there are no accidents that’ll have you in gridlock mode for hours on end.
Add the Fun
We think of car journeys as just a long and boring way to spend a few hours, but this is not the case! You can have fun when you’re all in the car. You can ask Disney movie trivia questions, for instance, or play one of those classic car ride games. You may also want to load up your child’s tablet or smartphone with a couple of games or videos.
Take Care of Everyone’s Needs
Finally, be sure to take care of everyone’s needs. People will get hungry, thirsty, tired. If those essentials have all been handled, you’ll find that everything goes a lot smoother.
