10 Items to Have in Your Car for the Perfect Road Trip

I really shouldn’t complain about winter, I live in southern Utah, we don’t get snow, and for the most part it doesn’t ever get really cold. But I am totally looking forward to I the beautiful weather that Spring has to offer! I can’t get my mind off of going on a vacation. I keep thinking of very lavish places to go such as Hawaii, or a cruise! None of which I will be going on but I am excited for a few fun family trips we have coming up! In a few weeks we are going to be headed up to Goblin Valley in Utah for a camping trip with some extended family. My kids are so excited and can’t wait to go camping. I love camping but I think it’s a lot of work for just one day. Ooh week, I am excited because my kids are excited. Today I wanted to share with you some items that we always take with on road trips to helps my kids and husband be happy and make it the perfect road trip!

10 Items to Have in Your Car for the Perfect Road Trip

Jumper Cables – These are definitely a must have for any vehicle. You never know when you might need them or you might be able to help somebody out if you have them. These are good to have for any road trip, but also just a drive into town!
Snacks–  Kids are always hungry, right? So snacks are definitely a must when it comes to going on the perfect road trip. One thing I hate about snacks in the car are the crumbs. So I am a big fan of snacks that don’t create a big mess. A few of our favorites are cheese sticks, carrots, trail mix, fruit snacks and sliced apples, to name a few.

Water – We don’t like to give our kids a ton of water when we are going on a road trip, but it is definitely needed. If you give them each their own big bottle to drink within an hour of being on the road trip you are going to have to stop to go to the bathroom. We keep the water bottles up by is and hand them to then when needed. It’s also a good idea to keep a case of it in the back of your car on a road trip just in case of emergency it is a wonderful thing to have back there.
Travel Blanket – Whenever we go on a road trip my kids always grab their own small blanket and sometimes a pillow. Another good ideas is to put some bigger blankets in the trunk for emergency reasons or just in case you need to pull over and have a picnic. We have used blankets for both purposes.

Flashlight – A flashlight is a very important thing to always have in your car, but especially important if you are going on a road trip. We have had to pull over and look under our hood a few times and if you dingy have s flash light it’s hard to set in the dark. These magnetic flashlights are great because you can stick them on your hood and can use your fingers to check if something is wrong. We have also used  flashlights for our kids to hold to read books if they don’t fall asleep well in the car.

First Aid Kit  – The perfect road trip isn’t always perfect. Sometimes accidents happen.  Having a small or large a first aid kit is a definite need to have in your car. We have a small glove box first aid kit with a few Band Aids a little bit of ibuprofen, & a sewing to. But we have a bigger work it in our trunk where we keep larger bandages common neosporin, a little bit more medicine, and some essential oils. You never know when somebody might get hurt. Yesterday we were just visiting my husband at work when my son decided to do a box jump into the car and split his shin open. We had no Band Aids left in our first aid kit so he had to put a wet wipe on it until we got to the instacare to get stitched up. I am definitely going to be restocking my first aid kit this next week.

Audiobooks – One thing we really love to have in our car all the time even if we’re just going into town, are books on CD. You can get so many books at the library. You can also get a lot of audiobooks downloaded to your cell phones or electronic devices. I swear books on CD are like a magical zone out pill for my children. If I ever hear them fighting in the car or being really loud, I turn on an audiobook and they are quiet as ever! Make sure you find good books that the kids are entertained by. My husband also loves them because they him also stay awake when he has a good book to listen to. Here is a list of 30 Great Books to Read as a Family.

DVD’s– The main key the perfect road trip are happy kids!  Sometimes road trips can get pretty long and a movie is nice to have as a distraction for the kids. Growing up that was never an option for us, but I will say it is nice to have on long road trips! We usually let them pick one for the way there and one for the way back. 

Music –  We absolutely hate the radio. There are too many advertisements and just not very great music anymore. So we love to download great music onto our phones so that we can listen to some fun music while we are in the car. Pandora is also a great option also! 

Road Trip Travel Games–  I remember being a kid and playing a lot of fun games with my siblings in the car. About a year ago I created these really fun road trip travel games that I printed out laminated and gave to each kid that could write when we went on our big trip to California. The kids loved them. We still have them and they use them every so often! Here is a link to download the 5 games. I recommend printing one packet for each child in your family. My son loves the license plate game and continues to keep playing it whenever we are out and about.

A few other items might include a paper map incase your car GPS isn’t working,  A Rental Car (sometimes it’s nice to rent a car for more space), and all your meals packed in a cooler to save money by not going out!

Writing about all these and thinking about road tripping gets me excited to go on a vacation! We are thinking about taking a road trip back to my husband’s mission to San Francisco later on this year! But we have some other ideas also. Are any of you going on a fun road trip soon? I would love some other great ideas to put in my road trip bucket list? 

Happy ands safe travels!!