I get so MAD!

November 5th, 2005 at 01:48pm Posted by Bill

As promised way back in early September, here are a few games that we’ve found make road trips a bit more enjoyable, especially with kids cooped up in the car.

1. License plate game, Hayes style.

I took the standard license plate game, and kicked it up a few notches. I created a page with a picture of every state’s license plate, as well as Washington DC’s plate. You can download it as an 840KB PDF format here (and yes, I’m aware that I have North Dakota twice, and that there is no South Dakota. Sue me. Or create your own.)

I printed five copies, one for each of us. When we would see a car from a certain state, we would put a line through that state’s plate. The first person to cross off all 51 plates, or the one who crosses off the most plates by the time we reach our destination, is the winner. We only count single-family passenger vehicles, like cars, pickups, SUVs, minivans, and even RVs. No busses or semi trucks. We only counted cars that we saw driving, not parked.

2. Alphabet game.

The standard alphabet game can be played on road trips of any length. The basic rules: Find words on signs that begin with each successive letter of the alphabet. It is a collaborative game, with everyone helping to find words in order; in other words, each person does not have his own alphabet to run through. You can’t use any word on any part of any car, including the make, model, or any ads or logos printed on the car. You can only use one word on any single sign, so if a sign has the words “Alpha” and “Beta”, you can use “Alpha” as the A-word, but you then must look for a B-word on a different sign.

On shorter trips, including trips that include driving through town, the game can be more fun when several rules are relaxed. It can take a loooong time to find an X-word for example. You can choose to either allow a word that has X anywhere in it to be the X-word, or you might purposely drive near a sign that has an X-word, like a copy place that has the word “Xerox” in the window, or by a hospital that has an “X-ray” sign. You can even choose to find the X-word out of order if you come across it before you’ve reached X in the alphabet.

Happy driving!

Entry Filed under: Family, Fun, Cars