Road Tripping

What's the connection between candy experiments and road trips? Both are great ways to help your family learn, enjoy time together, and create great memories. There's even a candy experiment that's perfect for road trips: Lifesaver Lights, which is perfect for entertaining kids on nighttime drives.

My book Road Tripping: A Parent's Guide to Planning and Surviving the Annual Car Trip helps parents plan, pack, and enjoy road trips together. Inside, you'll find:

• how to plan a trip the whole family can enjoy
• how to save money on hotels, meals, and tourist activities
• how to use a car top carrier--and what not to pack inside
• healthy snack ideas
• dozens of ways to entertain your children on the road

To most parents, long road trips sound like torture. To the authors of this book, long road trips become exciting adventures. Rick’s family has traveled all over the United States, including a fifteen-thousand-mile road trip from Utah all along the East viiCoast. Loralee’s family has logged over fifty thousand miles of road trips to Washington, Utah, Colorado, California, South Dakota, Arizona, and Canada. We’ve packed babies along miles of sandy beaches, cajoled toddlers up forest trails, and urged reluctant chil- dren through museums. We’ve seen incredible natural marvels like Niagara Falls, California’s redwoods, Colorado’s sand dunes, and Utah’s rock arches. We’ve explored manmade wonders like Mesa Verde, Mount Rushmore, and Hoover Dam. The wonder we felt at each stop was multiplied by our children’s reactions as we saw new sights through their eyes.

We’ve learned how to plan trips, what to pack, and how to save money as we travel. Even more important, we’ve learned how to keep the journey fun, even when days get long and exhausting. We’ve also weathered countless road-trip catastrophes. We’ve endured screaming children, vomit, dirty diapers, dead car batter- ies, flat tires on Oregon mountains, Utah blizzards, and forest-fire detours in Colorado. We know how hard it is to pack a car and hit the road. But every time one of our families prepares for a trip, we endure the headaches, the late nights, and the exploding list of labors because we know what’s coming: family time we can really enjoy together.

People shake their heads in disbelief and ask, “How do you do it?” The truth is, any family can take a long road trip. All it takes is preparation, time behind the wheel, and determination to keep your family’s spirits up, no matter the situation. In this book, we’ll share all our tips and tricks, as well as ideas from other experi- enced travelers, for how you can take a successful road trip—and enjoy it.