Road trip survival

Today’s Ledger-Enquirer includes my family road trip survival guide -- inspired by our 3-day car trek out to Colorado a couple weeks ago. You can read my travel tips there. Below I’m including some bonus tips from husband Rob and nearly-4-year-old son Will. Poor Owen, who was stuck in his rear-facing car seat, still can’t talk so he won’t be weighing in:

First Rob says:

1) Read a good Louis L’Amore western and talk about how the west used to be while pretending to be on the run from Cotton Allard’s band of thieves and scallywags. The more time you take at rest stops, the more ground they gain on you.

2) When it’s your shift in the passenger seat, pretend to be asleep so you don’t have to address the needs of the little people in the backseat and/or the food requests of your wife, the continual grazer.

3) Be aware of dry counties and states with no alcohol sales on Sunday (I thought these laws were specific mostly to the South but apparently not). There’s nothing as quenching as a cold beer after a long day’s drive, and nothing as disappointing as an empty beer run.

4) Definitely buy the travel guitar for marathon renditions of Old MacDonald. It’s like the blues: three chords and the truth.

And Will adds (when asked what parents should do to make road trips fun for kids):

5) “Just like have treats, but when you don’t want to you can’t, but if your mother and dad don’t want you to but you do, you might have a problem. But some don’t” (have a problem…)

6) “Just get some toys but not too much but whatever they want they can have the toys, but they can’t have too much toys in the car because it would be too much of a bundle.”

7) “It’s fun to see the blue mountains that are getting darker.” (After miles and miles of grassland, Will apparently appreciated those Colorado mountains appearing on the horizon.)

8) “And go sledding – but there wasn’t any snow, so we couldn’t go sledding.”