Need Suggestions for Teens on a Road Trip

Do you guys do audiobooks? Our last Disney road trip, we got hooked on the Temeraire series by Naomi Novik. Actually, I think you guys might really enjoy that series. It's very well written historical fiction from the Napoleonic Wars but in this world there are intelligent dragons that act as airborne fighters. I know you live in the "hinterlands" but check with with your library and see if they have unabridged books on CD to check out. You can import them into iTunes just like any other CD. The Chicago Public Library does audiobook downloads online, which is how I get 99% of my audiobooks lately. It's worth a try. Aside from that...sleep? Navigation duties? Making faces at passing motorists?

I agree with Becks on the audiobooks...find some interesting series they haven't read and it's nice to just sit and listen sometimes...good luck!

Aside from that, maybe some trivia books? That's actually how I did a pretty decent bit of prep for my nursing boards. On the drive home, Carlos would quiz me with questions from my NCLEX books. I think I got up to 50 questions correct in a row before I missed one. We drove through most of Georgia doing that. Incidentally, I just checked your local library and they DO have online downloads. All you need is the Overdrive program on your computer and a library card in good standing.

I'm with Becks about giving them navigation duty. I know in this day and age everyone uses GPS, but after being sent down dead end roads, etc., I never rely on them. When we were kids, my parents made us in charge of maps, highway instructions, etc. Every night we planned out our route, and made sure we knew when Dad would have to change highways, any construction going on, where rest stops and possible coffee/gas breaks would be. (AAA is great for that info). It meant we never asked "are we there yet?" since we always knew exactly where we were, and it gave my sister and I fabulous map and geography skills. And as we finally discovered years and years later, my Dad had no sense of direction, and NEVER knew where he was!

When I was a teenager who couldn't read in the car due to motion sickness (video games didn't exist yet), I daydreamed in the car on long road trips. For hours. Kept me very entertained. I still think a healthy imagination is the best thing a kid (or adult) can have.

On my last long road trip, we listend to the "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" audiobook (not great literature by any stretch, but much much better than the movie adaptation, and not to be confused with the magnificent "Lincoln" movie that came out later last year). It did make the time seem to fly by faster than usual. This was in a car full of old farts who weren't likely to be asking whether we were there yet, but I think it would help teens pass the time as well.

If you *really* want to make her suffer, also make her pack and unpack the car! We did 3 week road trips from North of Superior to California every fall, and nothing was allowed to stay in the car overnight! As much as we grumbled about it then, when it came time to move my son back and forth from residence at university every year, I was a pro! DH would look at the pile, declare it would never fit, and of course it did. After all that practice, I was very good at using every single square inch of space! Just tell her someday she will thank you for this.