Globalroamink’s Weblog

It’s June, which means that kids across the country are anxiously awaiting the closing school bell. But June also means that family road trip season is just around the corner.

When I was growing up, my parents were avid fans of the family road trip. Once classes let out, my mom and dad piled me and my brother and our two dogs into the trusty family station wagon and set off for Missouri, the state all my grandparents called home.

It was a long drive from Minnesota to Missouri — eight hours to visit one set of grandparents and twelve hours to reach the other pair. And of course, because we were kids, my brother and I peppered the trip with petty arguments and the ultimate of all annoying questions:

Are we there yet?

Perhaps, if my parents had stuffed the glove box with a copy of Kid Chat: 204 Creative Questions to Let the Imagination Travel, my brother and I would have had something else to occupy our minds.

The book’s authors, Bret Nicholaus and Paul Lowrie, came up with more questions than the summer is long to keep road tripping families from falling prey to the Are-We-There-Yet complaints. The book is overflowing with fun travel-related discussion starters that will pique everyone’s attention and encourage all bodies in the car to chime in.

For example, question 59 reads:

If you had to carry a suitcase with you everywhere you went and it always had to contain the same things, what would you put in it?

Or try question 196:

If you could do something to a rest area to make it really cool, what would it be?