How to Kill Time on a Road Trip

Road Trip from HellThe best part about a road-trip is the absolute freedom of the open road. (Sing "Born to be Wild" at this point if it gets you in the correct frame of reference to imagine a road-trip). In a lot of states, there are too few men in blue to patrol the open road, and you can set the cruise control as high as you want, listen to your music as loud as you want, and tune out the rest of the world. If you're like me, this will be satisfying for approximately 3.2 hours before you decide you will need to stop to stretch your legs, eat, get gas, pee, and/or smoke.

Then, you're back on the road for however long, trying to get your enthusiasm ramped up for another thousand more or so miles until you reach your destination. What should you do on a road trip when you get bored?

The  license-plate game is the old-school standby from way back in the day. You can play with two players and keep score by seeing who is the first to glimpse the license plate from each particular state. This gets old if there isn't anybody on the road and you are on I-90 heading either to or from Wall Drug.

My personal favorite game (probably because I am a deeply sick and twisted individual) is the Road Kill game. I give accolades to my friend Faryn for teaching me the finer nuances of this game. The idea is to do a state-by-state tally of road kill and see how well each state does picking up road kill victims. (If you are really, really hungry, and you are not a vegetarian or a vegan,  you can also eat some road kill.) Another way to play to is try to identify the animals, but this can get really gross, so it is not necessarily recommended.

Another old stand-by (which I remembered after perusing this list of road trip games) is Slug-Bug. All you have to do is find a Volkswagen bug on the road (it doesn't matter whether or not it is a new or old model), and hit your companions as hard as you possibly can in the arm. (As a disclaimer, I won't take any responsiblility if you hit the driver too hard and cause an accident.) This game, for some odd reason, is not too popular with parental units.

For backseat riders wishing to avoid the role of backseat driver, I highly recommend the Corners Game. As the driver zooms around a corner, let the force of your body slam against your fellow passengers. Again, this is not for the faint of heart.