The Family Driving Vacation is Alive and Well, With an Assist From High Tech!

Who doesn’t have fond memories of family road trips - those landmarks of childhood fun and adventure? It’s a fine American tradition, and parents today are continuing it -- fueled, in part by the current economy.

(Yes, cost-effective family driving trips are experiencing a strong revival. It’s generally cheaper for a family of 4 to drive to a relatively close vacation destination, than buy 4 plane tickets to a more distant mecca. Plus, there are lots of sites to be seen along the way.)

But wait!! – how do you begin to handle the kids for all those hours in the car? It’s simple. Today’s family driving vacation begins at the intersection of nostalgia and high tech.

Parents and grandparents who fondly remember “Magic Miles” – and other card/car games designed to pass the miles away (Oh, look, I found a red barn first!), now wisely employ high tech substitutes to achieve the same objective.

It’s easy to keep kids amused in the back seat, with handheld classics like Nintendo 64, or Gameboy, or Playstation, or Xbox 360 and then there’s the new iPod Touch. http://www.apple.com/ipodtouch/ with all its games and music apps. (Don’t make me name them all!) There’s also the DVD player mounted for back seat viewing -- all these toys equally capable of forestalling the eternal question: “Are we there yet?”

In case the kids want to share the voyage enroute with their friends, they can tweet about all the fun, on their iPhone using apps for Twitter www.twitter.com .

Parents can make their kids feel important by asking them to document the trip with a flip camera www.theflip.com and, at their leisure, upload the video to YouTube www.youtube.com so the inevitable slam-on-the-brakes while we dine on MacDonald’s mishaps with spilled ketchup can live eternally online.

And the kids aren’t the only ones on the receiving end of high tech toys for driving vacations.

For the grownups, planning these roadtrips, Expedia has a brand new tool called Drive Getaway. You plug in where you are in the country, how far you want to go on a tank of gas or less and they'll come up with all kinds of ideas and places that you can go with the kids for one, two, three nights, and they’ll have a list of links to nearby hotels and additional attractions.

Or, try this one: http://www.favoritefamilyvacations.com/family-vacations-road-trips.html

Plus, with GPS, it’s easier than ever to find your vacation destination, and find your way to the restaurants, lodging facilities and attractions there and enroute.

Forgot your camera? No big deal, just have the kids take photos with your phones and send them home.

And, when you get back home, or enroute if you want to take the time, you can post these photos in your Flickr account www.flickr.com or on Facebook www.facebook.com or build your own family web site at www.familydrive.com – and share your trip, if you haven’t already done so, with millions of your closest friends and relatives.

It’s just another iteration of that old saw: The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Got any more ideas for keeping your kids entertained with mobile devices on your family driving vacation? Share them with us here: