travel tips

Antique Mommy is doing a carnival today about travel tips. She's got some great ideas of her own, but has invited others to join in. It took me a while to decide if I had anything to share. But before long, my mind went into travel mode and I thought of several things we just naturally do.

There's the easy stuff like DVDs and CDs. One thing we did with our daughter was give her a brand new spiral notebook when we went on a road trip. I included a zip pouch of pencils, map colors (they don't melt and don't make a mess like those awful markers) and those crank up crayon things. Love. Those. She could write, draw.. whatever she wanted to do. I would include books she's currently reading and maybe a couple of kids magazines too. I used to put all of this in a tote bag and that bag never left the van the entire trip. Those things were ONLY for the van. And so when we got in to go, she was ready to play with them again.

Now that she's older, Nintendo DS and movies work well. But mostly just DS. She will play for hours. Since she's older and school work and study take up so much of her time, she's delighted to spend several hours hooked up to the DS and we don't mind, since she's quiet and not asking how much longer 'til we get there.

But to answer that dreaded question... how much longer 'til we get there... enter the GPS. I totally 'heart' our GPS. Even though we've had ours a while and it's not the newest or the fanciest, it does show the ETA (estimated time of arrival) in one corner. So our daughter can glance up at that and know what time we should arrive. Of course, stopping for meals etc bumps the ETA a bit. But even that is a good lesson... don't piddle. It's almost like a game for us sometimes.. how fast can we eat so we don't ruin our ETA. My husband has commented that it's cut down on MY complaining and wondering about how much longer we'll be in the car too. A-hem.. I guess I'm not that great a traveler either.