Thanksgiving Car Travel Tips for Families

Thanksgiving is popular time of year for holiday trips and if you're traveling via car with your family, you might be dreading it. We've all heard the song, "Over the river and through the woods, to Grandmother's house we go", depicting a happy, wholesome family car ride to celebrate the holidays. It sounds charming, but in reality, a long family road trip can be challenging and difficult. Here are some road trip tips to help your Thanksgiving family car trip more enjoyable.

Thanksgiving Car Travel Tip #1: Pack entertainment options for the kids. Kids are going to get restless on any long car trip, so if you don't to hear "are we there yet?" every five minutes, take any or all of these items along:

Portable DVD player: Movies will keep kids entertained for about 1.5-2 hours. Rent movies from RedBox - at only $1 per night, Red Box stations have thousands of convienent locations in fast food and gas station (where you'll be stopping anyway!). Rentals can be returned at any Red Box station in the country.

Gameboy, Nintendo DS , Leapster: Make sure to pack headphones or you'll hear game music.

Books or books on tape: Traditional books will keep a child entertained, as long as she isn't prone to motion sickness. Books on tape work well for motion-sick prone children.

Travel games: Travel games and ideas are available at your local library or any bookstore. You can also find free, printable travel games at About.com and Momsminivan.com.

Thanksgiving Car Travel Tip #2 Food:
Bring along bottled drinks and pre-bagged snacks. This will cut down on frequent stops for drinks and food and save money. Avoid messy food to keep your car clean. Before your trip, freeze several bottles of water. Frozen bottled water can act as an ice pack to keep your other food cool, and you can drink it when it thaws. If you're bringing along a Thanksgiving dish, make sure to properly store it so it won't melt, get warm (if applicable), or topple over.

If you stop at a fast food place, pick a restaurant with a play area. Kids can burn off that pent-up energy, and perhaps wear themselves out for a nap later on.

Stopping at a restaurant with a Kids Eat Free special helps save money as well, but often times these restaurants do not have play areas. You might want to find a local park or rest stop for children to run around and play for a few minutes.

Thanksgiving Car Travel Tip #3 Map out your route ahead of time:
Not only will this save time and money for gas (you won't get lost!), you can also plan out your route to avoid any rush hours of major cities through which you'll be passing. Give children a map of their own to chart your road trip progress - kids can lookout for landmarks and it keeps them entertained.

Thanksgiving Car Travel Tip #4 Clean your car before you go:
The cold French fries under your seat and the mud stains on the floormats might not bother you now, but just wait until you're a few days into your Thanksgiving road trip! Those 12 fries turn into 150 fries, you now have Burger King wrappers littering the floor, and your beautiful vehicle now looks like a garbage truck.

Start with a clean slate and keep a trash bag in the car to collect any garbage along the way.

Thanksgiving Car Travel Tip # 5 Make sure your vehicle is in top shape:
Bring your car into the mechanic before you go to have any strange noises investigated, fluids topped off, tires checked, and an oil change. While you might not want to shell out the money for this, it could save you from a Thanksgiving-ruining headache when you're 500 miles from home, stranded on the side of a highway with three whining kids.

Hopefully these tips will help you keep your sanity during a family road trip over Thanksgiving!