There are many positive and many negative things that surround a family vacation that happens by car. The positive things includes seeing many sights that would be passed over by air travel, the freedom to stop or take side trips whenever the traveler wants, and the freedom to extend or cut short a stay without the repercussion of paying penalties on airline tickets. One of the biggest negative attributes to an over the road vacation is the boredom -this is particularly a problem when children are in the car as well. One way to solve it is by playing travel games.
How Many
How Many is an old traveling game where people set a time or mileage limit and then guess how many cars of a certain color, restaurants, exits, or other physical features will be seen from the car in that time or distance. For example: “How many red cars will we see in the next ten minutes?”
Alphabet Game
Possibly one of the oldest travel games is the Alphabet Game. Everyone playing tries to spot either a license plate or road sign that includes the letters of the alphabet, starting with “a” with the winner being the first player to call out all the letters from a to z. This can also be played where instead of finding the actual letters, the players call out the names of things they see that start with the letter they’re looking for (“a for Audi… b for Bus…”, etc.).
Car DJ
This game is played with the radio on and the players try to be the first one to correctly call out the artist’s names or name the songs (or both) as they are played over the radio.
Rambling On
In this game, one person starts a story with a sentence or two and then each player or occupant in the car adds a sentence to the story one person at a time. This game can create lots of laughs in a hurry.
Summary
Using these and the many other car travel games out there, and the time spent in the car in between stops can fly by. Eliminating any boredom from a trip makes the vacation seem that much more enjoyable as there are less slow periods or down moments. These community type games also bring people, related or not, closer together because of the excessive communication it takes to participate in them. Car travel games are simply another way to add pleasure and alleviate boredom that can happen on a long road trip.
