🎵 Recipe for Making a Long Drive More Fun
help from Gemini Nano Banana and Photo Studio Pro app for Android
Are We There Yet?
Even adults ask this question if the drive is long enough. Though sometimes, it’s also because you need a rest area really bad. Lol 😅🧎♀️➡️
But what if you could turn that into, “No, we can’t be there yet! We haven’t finished the game!!”? And there are so many ways you can play it that some of your time can go by just thinking of new ideas. I think this was a sanity saver when following a slow truck on a highway from Arizona to Roswell New Mexico where we just couldn’t get around and we felt stuck there for at least an hour.
Christmas Songs Game
So, you’ll notice the Christmas songs in the picture above. Christmas is all year around in our hearts, so that’s one of our favorite lists. We take turns exchanging letters, and when each of us comes up with our song, we sing one verse and one chorus together. You’ll also notice that the letters for the turn can be anywhere in the title (our rules), but you can make it more difficult by saying the song must start with whatever letter you’re on.
Depending on the list (Christmas songs, Christian songs, pop music, etc.), when you’re doing songs, you can choose to demand the letter be in the title, or choose that it can be in the first line since we know some songs by popular lines rather than official titles. On other lists like TV shows, stuff you can get at Walmart, popular brand names, or famous product slogans, it’s a little harder to bend the rules, but it’s your travel time, so do what works for you. For example, if someone uses “It takes a licking and keeps on ticking,” you can choose T for Timex, W for watch, or any of the other letters that start words in the slogan.
Some Ideas to Get Started…
Christmas Songs (DEF since you have ABC above)
- D: Do You Hear What I Hear?
- E: Oh Come, Oh Come, Emmanuel
- F: The First Noel
Christian Songs and Hymns
- A: Amazing Grace
- B: Blessed Assurance
- C: Create in Me a Clean Heart
Other Songs (We do older ones of course 😁)
- A: A My Name is Alice (Donny and Marie’s Deep Purple album)
- B: I was Born Under a Wandrin’ Star (from Paint Your Wagon)
- C: Catch a Falling Star (and put it in your pocket)
That last one often gives us some great laughter as we remember songs like Ah, Shaddup You Face (shared below) and Junk Food Junkie (below).
One issue you might run into is difficulties with the letters X and Z. (Sometimes Q but when you’re doing slogans, you’ve always got The Quicker Picker-Upper for that letter.) You can agree to leave out the hard letters or let the one who gets it try to find something or beg for mercy. 😺 Whatever makes it fun and not stressful will make the travels enjoyable.
Slogans, Products, or Clichés
- A: An Apple a Day
- B: Chef Boyardee
- C: C and H Pure Cane Sugar
TV, Movie, and Book Titles
- A: Angels in the Outfield
- B: Beauty and the Beast
- C: Courageous
I think that’s a good starter list for your next travel game. A to Z also works for each person finding something that begins with their letter as seen on the road outside the car. That one at least guarantees an X for next exit signs. You can look things up when you have a signal. Or, you can create some A to Z lists before you ever leave, but half the fun is trying to think of something when it’s your turn.
A Few More Fun Ideas
Oh yeah, on the subject of turns, you can also do the one where each person says the line of a story based on what letter they currently have. And an alternate to that is that somebody starts a story, and each person must continue it beginning with the last word in the previous line. Of course, the one for quick thinking is where the first person starts with a word and the next person says the first thing that comes to mind. You might end up with a string like apple, eat, meal, steak, baked potato, etc.
Please try one or more of these games next time you travel, and let me know if it added some fun or helped consume time while keeping your communications working better than having everyone’s face buried in a device of some sort. Now, here are a couple of fun videos:
This was the only one I could find with lyrics, and it’s fine, though I’m not a big fan of just watching someone share selfies. I watched it all the way through to make sure there’s nothing inappropriate, though.
And you can look up some others for fun like I’m My Own Grandpa, but one day I might do a post of nothing but funny music. In the meantime, go travel and have fun while you’re on the road, or gather some friends for a story/game night and play without getting on the highway.
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