Road trips are a great way to bond with your family and create lasting memories. We enjoy the freedom of taking things at our own pace, especially with the unpredictability that comes with having young children. It’s important to be prepared with the right road trip essentials so that you can be confident of an enjoyable trip.
Based on our experiences with road trips with our young children, here are a few essentials we’d recommend bringing along. Most of these apply whether or not you’re travelling with kids!
For navigation and audio
An easy to use phone holder is essential. While many cars come with in-built GPS systems, it’s always good to have a backup navigation app on your phone. For most countries, Google Maps works great (we used it lots on our road trip in Kyushu!) and in South Korea, Naver Map is your best bet (we used this extensively on our road trip in Jeju, especially when we were unable to find our destination on the car’s satnav).
Remember to bring your phone cable so that you can charge it in the car. Your phone can also be used for listening to music (curate your road trip playlists before the trip!) or audiobooks (borrow some from the National Library on the Libby app).
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For sun protection
Remember to put on sunscreen (this is my favourite), and sunglasses are essential for the driver, especially during hours like dusk where the sun is low and can be very glaring. For kids in the back seat, bring along sunshades or use a blanket or swaddle with stroller clips to block out the sun. Stroller clips are especially useful as they can be used in the car, on the stroller, or even to hang laundry if needed!
For naps
If you’re road tripping with kids, especially babies and toddlers, you’re likely going to plan for car naps. To help these naps happen (and last!), an eye mask has proven to be an amazing hack. If your child is resistant to putting it on before the nap, just put it on after the child has fallen asleep. This helps them stay asleep through changes in light (like going into then emerging from a tunnel) and preserves their nap length.
We’ve used free eye masks given by airlines, on which we tied the elastic to a shorter length, as well as an adjustable one like this.
For hydration
Hydration is absolutely crucial and it can be easy to forget to hydrate when you’re just sitting in a car all day. Bring a large bottle of water (and extra if needed) and have it within easy reach. A bottle like this is easy for a driver to sip from while handling the bottle with one hand, without spilling all over.
A hack we’ve used on trips through very hot areas (hello Death Valley National Park) is to freeze a bottle of energy drink in the freezer of your accommodation the night before, then bring the frozen bottle along in a cooler bag for the road trip. This helps to keep your snacks (like fruit) cool, while also serving as an ice cold thirst quenching drink as it melts through the day.
For young children, this bottle is our favourite as it can be independently handled by a toddler as young as 1+, keeps drinks cool, and does not leak easily.
For snacks
What’s a road trip without snacks?
Before we had kids, we’d buy all kinds of junk food to snack on while on the road. Now with young kids, we’re more conscious of making healthier and less messy choices. Snacks do help preserve a parent’s sanity, but cleaning up cheerios spilled all over the backseat isn’t anyone’s idea of fun.
For the very young ones, we like to use a spill-proof snack cup to help prevent spillage. As they grow older, snack boxes that they can manage on their own are our top choice. Remember to consider the choking risk in choosing car snacks. We prefer snacks that are low choking risks such as thinly sliced apples, quartered grapes, puffs that melt in the mouth, and yogurt drops.
When the kids are asleep, it’s time to bring out the stash of adult snacks! Another reason for the eye mask we recommended above. To keep them from seeing the adult snacks!
We usually bring reusable silicone bags and snack clips when we travel, so that we can buy snacks in larger quantities and fill up the kids’ snack boxes a little at a time. These are super handy to keep food with especially when you’re travelling from place to place on a road trip.
For toileting/diapering
Nappy bags are a lifesaver when you have just changed a poopy diaper in the middle of nowhere and need to carry your trash with you. We always have a roll of nappy bags in our diaper bag, which allows us to responsibly dispose of those stink bombs! The bags also come in handy as trash bags when you need a place to carry your trash.
For hand hygiene, nothing beats soap and water. Bring a little case of paper soap in your everyday bag and you’ll be set to wash your hands after dealing with any mess.
To hold everything in one place
Our favourite grocery bag doesn’t just hold groceries. It serves as a great car tote for all the essentials that need to be within arm’s reach when in the car. Keep the stuff you need in the main cabin in one of these bags, and leave the rest of your luggage in the boot so that you have space to lounge around and enjoy the car ride!
With these road trip essentials, you’ll be prepared for any road trip, no matter where in the world you are. So pack up the car and hit the open road!
