There’s nothing worse than being in the car for five, six, seven hours with literally nothing to do - so prepare ahead of time. Here are a few things that can keep you from pulling your own, or your passenger’s, hair out:
1: Play the ABC game. It’s the classic car game where you have to find all the letters of the alphabet in license plates in order to win. This simple game can keep you occupied for around an entire hour.
2: Fortunately/Unfortunately Game. This is a two-person game where one person says a sentence that starts with “Fortunately…” and the next person says a relevant sentence starting with “Unfortunately…” For Example; “Fortunately, the homeless man was given shoes.” “Unfortunately, the shoes were filled with bees.”
3: I Spy. You can put a spin on this game by competing with the other riders in the car to find certain objects (such as a certain color of car.) Call out the object that you’ve spotted, first one to call it gets the point, and you compete to a certain amount of points.
4: 20 Q. Playing 20 Questions is as easy as one person picking an animal, object, or mineral in their mind and having other people guess that thing.
5: 20 Q - Hide and Seek. Since you can’t physically leave the car, imagine that you are in another country. Have the other people in the car ask questions about where you are, how you feel there, and what you might do there, until they guess the correct place.
6: Make Up a Story! Everyone in the car can take turns adding one word or phrase to the story at a time and just see how absurdly-ridiculous it can become. This can be entertaining for hours.
7: Play Charades. This one is better with people in the backseat who don’t have to pay too much attention to the road, but it can still be fun for everyone.
8: The Word Game. Look at the passing cars's license plates and try to make up words from the letters. You can even take each single letter and try to make up a phrase from that similar to the story game.
9: Talk about People! Look at all of the strange people in the cars who are driving by and make up stories about their lives. Do they look like they could’ve been a pro-wrestler? Or maybe an ex-convict who is trying to look legitimate with a business suit? And what do you think that intimidating biker’s day job could be?
10: The Fact Game. Take turns coming up with facts that you think are unique, or that you don’t think the other people will know. You can also make this into a trivia game by asking the facts in a question format.
11: Two Truths and a Lie! One of my personal favorite games: each person takes turn coming up with three statements, two true and one false, and the other people in the car have to determine which is true and which is false.
12: Waste Time With Rhyme. Take turns saying words that rhyme with each other. Whenever one person breaks the pace they are eliminated and the game starts with one less person.
13: Card Games. Bring a deck or two of cards and see how many different games you can play while moving. If nobody wants to play, you can always try making a house of cards in the car.
14: Staring Game. See who can last the longest making uncomfortably long eye contact with the people in the cars that are passing. If the people get mad at you, just pretend you were looking at something past their car.
15: Paper Games. Bring a notebook and play games like tic-tac-toe, dots and boxes, or the classic hangman.
Digital Distractions: If your fellow passengers are just absolutely boring, you can always prepare for the trip ahead of time.
16: Podcasts. You can download hundreds of podcasts for free from apps like Overcast 2, Podwrangler, and Podcast Addict on both Android and iPhone smartphones.
17: TV. Bring a laptop and load it up with a bunch of “legally” downloaded television shows or movies. You can place the computer on the center console and be entertained all the way from Maine to Mexico.
18: Magazines! National Geographic and Time Magazine both have excellent articles that read like short stories covering a great deal of topics. Just grab some magazines from your local coffee shop and bring them along for the ride!
19: Audio Books. There are many websites out there that have listings of hundreds of free audio books that you can download from various different sources.
20: Sing Some Classics. Make a playlist on your iPod or phone with a ton of classic road trip songs that everyone will know the lyrics to.
Finally: When you’ve seemingly run out of ideas to keep yourself entertained in the car, you can always just go to sleep.
P.S. Make sure you bring along some washable markers for the really long road trips so that you can have an art contest on the faces of other sleeping passengers.
