s 6 Tips for Surviving a Road Trip With a Large Family

With a family of eight, our family often travels in ways that are somewhat different from other families. A lot of that difference comes from the fact that even a small cost multiplied by eight starts turns into a large cost quickly. Consider even the relatively small $5.60 tax on your “free” award ticket — for our family on a round-trip itinerary, that’s nearly $100.

Because of that, our family often skews more toward “drive” in the classic family “drive versus fly” debate. The economics of being able to transport eight people in one vehicle make family road trips a staple of our travel plans. (Here’s a list of the best credit cards for road trips, best credit cards for gas purchases and advice for maximizing points and miles on road trips.) While we’ve flown to farther distances, such as Washington State, California or Arizona, we’ve also driven to Orlando, St. Louis and, most recently, Nauvoo, Illinois. Over the years, we’ve come up with several family road trip tips and I’d like to share a few with you.

1. Agree on Screen Time

When I asked my 12-year-old daughter what her best road trip tips were, she thought for a second and then came up with “screens, snacks and space.”

Our family is fairly strict on limiting kids’ screen time, but on a road trip is one time where those rules go (mostly) out the window. We do try to mix things up with other forms of entertainment (see below), but it’s true that most of a long road trip consists of kids on various screens.

Our road trip screen time game has evolved over time. When our kids were younger, our go-to move was a portable DVD player attached on a platform hooked into the headrest posts of the driver and passenger seats. The only problem with that came as the kids got a little older. We found that there isn’t a movie in this world that a 14-year-old boy and a 4-year-old girl can both agree on. As the kids got older (and technology advanced), we moved more toward individual screens. Older kids usually play on their phones, and we have tablets and other devices for the littler kids. On our most recent road trip, each of the kids had their own Nintendo 2DS systems (pictured below), which worked great.

2. Don’t Skimp on Snacks

Making sure you have enough snacks for the trip is another of our road trip tips. We bring cups to pass out “messier” snacks (like Goldfish crackers, pretzels, Cheez-Its or oyster crackers). This way, you have the “snackmaster” in the front passing out snacks all the way to the back. (Check out TPG‘s list of healthy snacks to pack on trips.)

My favorite road trip snack story comes from when my oldest daughter was about 5 or 6. She was in the back row of the minivan, and our other kids were too little to be any help passing out snacks. So at snack time, our only option was to literally throw snacks back at her (and hope they hit in range that she could reach them without getting out of her car seat).

When we finally got to our destination, we looked in the back of the van and found 20+ sandwich cookies (and parts of cookies) littered throughout the back seat.

3. Consider Space

Space is the third consideration. Unfortunately, it’s one that you probably don’t have a ton of control over. In most cases, the vehicle you have is the only vehicle you have.

And when your van starts out for a road trip looking like this, you know that space is coming at a premium.

If you’re renting a car instead of using your own, one possible option would be renting two cars instead of one larger car. We covered that in our article on how to save money when renting a car, but in addition to being cheaper than renting a minivan (or worse, full-size van or large SUV), having two cars lets you split up kids that can’t seem to get along into entirely different cars. One downside our family has discovered when renting two cars is that both my wife and I have to drive all the time, instead of being able to switch off.

4. Maximize Your Break Time

Depending on how long you’re traveling, or the ages of your kids, you’re likely going to need to stop one to several times along the way. If this is a route you’ve taken many times (like the way to grandma’s house), you probably have your “favorite” rest stops already picked out along the way. We like to turn those stops for food, gas and bathrooms into mini-exercise breaks. Rather than just all stumbling to the bathroom, we will stop at a rest area, find a grassy spot and do anything from calisthenics to a quick game of hide-and-seek. The older kids participate grumpily (then again, teenagers seem to do everything grumpily), but the younger kids enjoy getting a chance to run around.

If you have a little extra time in the schedule, take advantage of some free and unique things to do on the way — here’s some tips for finding those stops.

5. Find Entertainment Where You Can Get It

Like I mentioned earlier, the main source of entertainment on our family road trips nowadays tends to be individual screens (phones, tablets and game systems). We do have a few other things that we use to pass the time on our family road trips — here are a few of our favorites:

--Books on CD; the “Harry Potter” series read by Jim Dale are family favorites.
--Of course, there’s always the classic “Alphabet Game.”
--A family game we have titled, “I am something in the world; what am I?” which is basically a souped-up 20 questions where one person thinks of anything in the world and everyone else uses yes or no questions to figure it out. I am constantly amazed at how even the most obscure things can be guessed with enough questions.
--When our kids were younger, we printed out sheets with license plates from every state on them and had the kids mark ones that they saw. Bonus points if you live in a state (like Ohio) that also have county level stickers on its license plates.

6. Set a Realistic Driving Schedule

My last piece of road trip advice is to be realistic with your timing. You’ll know your family the best of anyone, but be wise about when you start your trip. Look at your route and when you’ll be traveling through major cities. I have not-so-fond memories of being stuck in rush hour Chicago traffic with a screaming infant, stuck with nowhere to go.

I know some families will drive through the night as a way to maximize vacation time. The one time our family tried that, my toddler daughter screamed her head off for over an hour straight to the point that my wife made me turn around the car and go back home. (Naturally, she finally fell asleep on our way back home so we turned around the car again and made it to our destination about three hours late.