Five Games to Entertain You on a Road Trip

Five Games to Entertain You on a Road Trip

The holiday season is coming up, meaning that soon the roads will be clogged with families traveling to visit relatives and college students finally going home for Christmas break. For many, this means a long road trip in a cramped car. If you have more than a thousand miles to go, you are probably dreading the boring repetitiveness of a road stretching for miles before your eyes. You may even start to doze at the wheel, which could potentially be very dangerous. To help you stay awake, safe, and even enjoy the journey, here are a few car games to play:

The alphabet game. Find letters of the alphabet, starting with A, using billboards, road signs, license plates, and business names. If it's outside of the car it counts! The first person to find all 26 letters wins (and trust me, it's not very easy to find j or q!).

Slug bug. Keep your eyes out for a VW beetle on the road, and take devious pleasure in being the first to spot it. Say “slug bug” and punch your companions in the arm. This game also works for PT Cruisers (Cruiser Bruiser) and anything Acura (Acura Smackura). Feel free to invent new car/punch name combinations.

Old song, new words. While regular singing can be a great way to stay awake on the road, there is another game that can be even more distracting. In the old song, new words game you take an old classic song like “Take Me out to the Ballgame” and instead of singing the word “take," you start by singing the word me on the first note. The end result will be that you are singing the same tune in your head with the same words, but those words will be step off from the way you learned it. This can be a very mentally challenging game, so be prepared!

20 questions, road trip edition. Pick something inside the car and play the regular 20 questions rules. If you want to switch it up and make it harder, pick something outside the car, like a landmark, restaurant, or other memorable thing.

Scattergories, road trip edition. The travel game of scattergories can be just as, if not more, fun than the traditional card game. How it works is that one person in the car is assigned to think of a letter. Another person thinks of a category like animals, movies, colors, countries, etc. On the count of three, the two people say their letter and category at the same time. Then the whole car can have fun trying to think of something that starts with that letter and fits into the designated category.

About the Author
Natalie Clive is a writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com. The My Colleges and Careers website is designed to help people determine if attending one of the top online colleges will fit their educational needs and help them earn a college degree.