Two Suggestions For An Excellent Road Trip

When you go on a road trip with your family, you get a chance to experience the world around you from a much different perspective. It makes the destination seem much more appealing, and gives you a great time to spend plenty of quality time with your family. Not only that, but it's much cheaper than traveling via other methods of transportation, especially if you have a particularly large family.

Of course, if you've never taken a road trip before, and you aren't sure how to plan it properly, then you may not be sure exactly what to do. In that case, this article is for you. I'll give you a couple of good tips that can help you to ensure that your time on the road with your family is a fun excursion, a memorable experience, and something you can look forward to doing again.

One of the most important things to decide on is the destination. Since your primarily planning a road trip, you'll want to choose a destination that is sufficiently far away. However, you shouldn't choose something too far if this is your first trip. One or two nights between your home and your main destination is a good start. In order to choose a good target, figure on about six hours of driving a day, with about fifteen minutes worth of breaks for each hour. Then figure the appropriate distance, and choose a good location from looking on a map. One way to make it more interesting is to create a loop trip, instead of going somewhere, turning around, and coming back.

Since you'll be bringing the kids, you're going to need to do something to keep them entertained in the back seat. Luckily, portable DVD players have come down quite a bit in price recently. You can pick up one of these for about a hundred bucks, or even less if you shop online. Many of these come with split screens, and headphone jacks that make movie watching for your kids much more enjoyable. This means a much quieter experience in the front seat for you. Another essential idea is to have an ice chest full of drinks and their favorite snacks. This will also keep them happy.

An idea that some people do is to show the kids the planned route on a map. That way they can follow your progress, and are less likely to get bored, or keep asking if you're there yet. If you have a GPS navigation system, this works even better.

While these are fairly obvious ideas, they are essential for a successful road trip. Once you pull a couple of overnights off without a hitch, you can start planning longer and longer trips. The world is big place, you should get out and see as much of it as possible.