Over fall break I took a road trip to Pittsburgh with some friends and found that road trip games can go a long way toward keeping you sane.
- Road Sign Alphabet: Find all the letters of the alphabet in order by just looking at road signs. Sounds easy enough, but wait till you get to Q.
- 20 Questions: You know the drill. Infuriate your friends by being the small-time actor that nobody knows about.
- Count the Roadkill: Pretty self-explanatory.
- Zitch dog!: For every those "How I Met Your Mother" fans out there, every time you see a dog, yell Zitch dog! And then you get a point.
- Punch Buggy: You should always be playing this. Always.
- Red car: Five points for every red car. To make it more exciting, 50 points for every blimp. If the blimp is red, you win.
- Alphabet Chain Restaurant: Try to come up with a chain restaurant that starts with every letter of the alphabet in order. This could work with other things, like hotels and gas stations.
- Pop Challenge: Listen to a pop music station. Everyone chooses one song and whoever’s song has played the most by the end of the trip wins.
- I Spy: A classic.
- The Quiet Game: I’m putting this on here for the nostalgia. Do not let yourself get roped into this game. Do not.
- State License Plates: Try to find all fifty states on the license plates of cars along the way.
- Padiddle: For night driving--if a car drives past you with only one headlight, yell “Padiddle!” and hit the ceiling.
- The Death Challenge: Hold your breath between graveyards.
You can, of course, modify any of these. We didn't want to listen to a radio station for several hours for the pop challenge, so we put the same ten songs on shuffle on someone's ipod and got points for how many times our own popped up. These have my personal seal of approval because I played every single one of these games on this trip. Except that last one.
