Long Car Ride Tips: 5 Ways To Survive a Family Road Trip

Alessandra | Posted on February 7, 2023 |

It’s that time of year when we tend to spend more time traveling in the car. In this blog I’m sharing 5 long car ride tips to help you survive your family road trip this summer!

Long car ride tips are a must when you have young children! Let’s face it, a long family car ride can be overstimulating yet boring and just overall tough! Anything over 30 minutes feels like forever for little kids, but realistically, anything over 2 hours is long for everyone. Hearing the words “are we there yet” over and over again can also make you want to pull your hair out! In this blog I’m giving my best long car ride tips so you can survive a your next family road trip.

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Long Car Ride Tips

As a family who enjoys camping, we often take longer car rides to our campground destination. A two to three hour car ride is not unheard of for us and we tend to have a couple trips each summer. So, I’ve figured out how to make a long car ride with kids a little more enjoyable for everyone. I even make many of our road trips screen-free! Yep, you read that right…screen-free, just like the good ol’ days!

Real quick before we dive into my long car ride tips, make sure to join my community of mamas just like you! Add your email in the form below, get free activities for the summer PLUS get tips, motivation, and real mom life stories right to your inbox! Be the first to know about discounts, blogs, and more:

5 Long Car Ride Tips

These items and tips below are going to help you breeze through you next long car ride with your family! Let’s dive in.

1. Magnadoodles

Magnadoodles are a mess-free toy that all kids love. There are no markers or papers so nothing can get lost. Perfect for kids and moms who don’t want to continue turning and looking for things in the back seat. Magnadoodles tend to keep my kids occupied for quite a while and they are a lot of fun. Which is perfect for the car! And unlike paper and crayons, they can’t drop anything into seat crevices where they will never be seen again.

2. I Spy With My Little Eye

I’m taking you right back to the ’90s with this game, amiright? I Spy is a great game for your kids to build awareness, look around at the scenery, and learn colors. It’s a fun game your kids are bound to enjoy playing and you will all connect as a family. Plus no one will be screaming “are we there yet?” while you play.

3. Snacks on snacks on snacks

Bring lots of snacks and water! Snacks will help keep those little ones quiet as a mouse, because somehow car rides make kids even more hungry than usual. I love these Munchkin SnackCatch & Sip 2-in-1 Containers for traveling. You can put a snack and drink in them and it’s spill proof! Perfect for little hands in the car!

4. Plan your drive around nap time

For a really long car ride, like over 4 or 5 hours I would suggest leaving first thing in the morning. But for a shorter ride that’s 2-3 hours, I suggest leaving shortly before nap time, if possible. That way your kids sleep most of the trip, or at least for half of it. Or if you’re really lucky, they sleep through the entire thing and wake up refreshed when you get to your destination. If you leave right before nap, that leaves them super sleepy towards the beginning of your drive, but not overtired and wound up, so you’ll get some quiet time on your drive.

5. Stickers

Stickers are a great activity to do in the car. They are fairly easy for most kids to peel and stick onto paper and there’s nothing that can get dropped or lost in the car. Just give your kids some paper and a brand new sticker sheet so they are excited about it! The smaller the stickers, the harder it is for them to do, which could also mean this activity lasts for a longer time.

Final thoughts

There you have it. Five long car ride tips for when you’re going on a road trip with your young family. Of course, you may also need to stop and stretch, especially if the car ride is longer than 2 hours. Getting out of the car for a quick walk will help your kids stay more peaceful in the car. Ultimately, enjoy your family car ride, mama! These are memories you are all making that will last a lifetime for sure. I hope you found these tips helpful! Let me know in the comments if you are going to give any of these tips a try.

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