When you travel with your kids, you need a handful of travel accessories to keep them entertained. Personally, we use three things to keep our child entertained during long drive. I think you’ll find that if you provide enough entertainment during the trip it will go alot faster. I base my suggestions on actual trips to Florida, Pennsylvania and Missouri from the great state of Indiana.
The first necessary item is a Nintendo DS and a selection of games like New Super Mario, Pokemon, etc. This can provide several hours of fun. I know that our little guy can spend hours playing the DS. And, if they have the DSi, they can even take their own pictures as well. The only problem we have with the DS is if it is sunny, it’s sometimes hard to see. It would be nice to have a gadget that acted like a shade.
The second item that we use is an IPOD that we can put movies on. The last trip that we went on, I rented a whole season of Sponge Bob. Once he was tired of playing video games, we set him up to watch those. One additional travel accessory we use with the IPOD is a auxilliary out wire to the car stereo auxilliary in jack. Then, he can watch the movie and listen to the audio portion through the car speakers. You can always use headphones but I prefer this. It might drive you a little crazy but it works for us.
The last travel items we pack are books that we can read while we are driving. My wife will usually read a few books at some point during a long trip.
Preparing ahead of time will make the trip go alot quicker and without a lot of hassles about how much time its going to take.