How To Make Road Trips More Comfortable

In this day and age of the blended family, road trips are becoming a much more appealing and affordable option for the family vacation. If you have ever had friends, family, or colleagues take a road trip with the family, then you know they will always be described only one of two ways - horrifying never to be experienced again; or the best vacation they ever had, can't wait to do it next year. If you are considering taking a road trip, here are a few steps that you should take to ensure you fall into the latter of the two categories. Utilize the most of your road trip planning, and come home this year describing your road trip as the best vacation your family ever had.

You should definitely know your destination ahead of time, particularly if you have kids in tow. Involve your children in the decision making process as to where your final destination will be, even if you have not got the foggiest clue on how to get there. There are plenty of resources available to you as far as reaching a destination, but knowing where you are going is a critical first step.

Once you have decided where you are going, you want to locate accurate, concise, and easy-to-follow directions. Use online travel guides and us travel guides that will help you locate the easiest to follow route. Ensure your travel guides give you the length of driving information so you can plan your days wisely. You want to know exactly how long it will take you to get there so that you can plan for overnight rest periods, meal times, and periods of stretch if and when you need to.

If your road trip is going to be longer than a day, you may want to use the online trip-planners to find things to do along the way. Perhaps you could stop at a park along the way, or make a brief visit to a historic monument. Or maybe there is a fun restaurant along the way that you've heard of, but never tried. This is another step you can take that you can involve your kids with, let them choose the en route activities as they will then be the most meaningful to them. If they are in charge of the activity choices, you know too then that their chances of being bored are slim.

If you have small children, you should plan to stop for about fifteen minutes every couple of hours so everyone can get out and have a stretch. This will keep whining to a minimum if they have this stretch break to look forward to. It wouldn't hurt to keep a Frisbee in the car if the kids want to toss something around on their stretch breaks. Don't use the stretch breaks for bathroom stops only, though this is a good time to do it. Use them for something that will get the kids active, get their hearts pumping, even if only for a few minutes before they settle into another long sitting period.

If you properly conduct your road trip planning, your road trip will not only be more comfortable for everyone, but ensure that getting there really is half the fun.

Source: http://www.postarticles.com/Article/How-To-Make-Road-Trips-More-Comfortable/74185