Road trip with toddler tips?

lmvierra

I'll be driving down to the LA area with T soon  for a short get away... Any tips or ideas to keep him happy for the drive down, or any good places to stop and let him run around to break up the drive? Thanks in advance for any help :-)

kittylove

We did a road trip to Oregon in Ocotber when DS was 22 months. We stoped a lot on the way there and on the way home stoped only once. The ride home was about 100x better! My advice is to go as far as you can without stoping and thn drive 30 more minutes. Make that the place you stop for a good hour and then back in the car for the rest of the time. On the way up we stoped to much.

As for things to keep him happy: New machbox cars were a hit, DVDs, coloring and new book, snacks, sing songs. I was able to sit in the back to keep DS more entertained through the really borring parts of the ride but that won't be an option for you it sounds like. I highly suggest a DVD player with a few movies. I hated using it but loved the 2 hours of entertainment it provided!

pkw

A new toy.  We got EJ the leaptop right before we went to SLO and he was hooked and it saved our sanity.

Also EJ loves Katy Perry, K$sha, and Lady Gaga....so we played a lot of that (he likes female dance-style music, odd, but if it keeps him happy I will listen to it).

When we do Disneyland in Dec we are going to load some movies on my iPad2 and get the headrest adapter thing and have something for him to watch when he needs (if he needs).

Ditto infrequent stops, we found that just doing one stop each way was the winner. Getting out and back in multiple times was like a tease for him. 

ZoeMay06

We just drove to Oregon and back last month. I picked up a big Elmo sticker activity book and was so glad I did - that thing kept her entertained for nearly the whole drive! The backseat was a sea of discarded stickers afterward but it was a small price to pay. She also slept a lot in the car, which was great. We packed a small cooler with lots and lots of snacks (for us too), extra sippies of water and milk, etc. too.