4 Ways to Have Fun During Your Long-Distance Move

Loaded with your household belongings, the moving company’s truck is already on its way to your new home. Your family car has been packed with the open-first boxes and the items your movers wouldn’t transport (pets, plants, non-allowable goods). And now there’s only one thing left for you to do – make the long-distance move yourself. But as soon as you start the car, one question is bound to find its way into your head: what can you possibly do to add some fun to the endless hours of driving ahead of you?

And while each family member can bring their own individual entertainment equipment, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, e-book readers, books, magazines, etc., to kill the crawling time inside the car, it’s the fun activities done together with your fellow road trippers that will delight the hearts, enlighten the minds and keep the relocation morale elevated.

We have prepared for you some great ways to have fun during your long-distance relocation to your new city.

#1: Play games

The best way to banish any signs of boredom during the long hours on the road is to play enjoyable games. Standard board games (chess, backgammon, checkers, etc.) are not very practical for long car rides unless you happen to have their miniature magnet versions. Why? First of all, most of them are rather large and considering that you’re actually performing a house move, the interior space will be very limited, probably filled to the brim with household belongings of all shapes and sizes. And secondly, any vibrations due to possible bumps along the road or sharper turns will make the game pieces fly all over the car, and you definitely don’t want that to happen.

So, what kind of games should you play on your long-distance move? Boardless ones, of course. Here are some of the best boardless road trip games that will surely turn the long hours of driving into priceless long-lasting moments of pleasure and laughter.

• Rock, paper, scissors: a very popular classic game that should keep all road trippers well entertained for a certain amount of time. Each player makes a fist and after saying “Rock, Paper, Scissors” in three short beats, and forms one of the following three gestures on the fourth beat: a closed fist (rock), an open hand (paper) or a V sign (scissors). Rock beats scissors but is defeated by paper, paper beats rock but is defeated by scissors, and scissors beat paper but are defeated by rock. Same gestures tie the round and of course, whoever’s made the winning gesture wins a treat of their favorite ice cream at the next rest stop.
• Team storytelling: a great creative game to just cut loose and have pure fun. The goal is to compose a group story so one person starts the narrative with either a traditional opening line (“Once upon a time, in a Kingdom far, far away, there lived a handsome young prince.”) or an unconventional (or even bizarre) one (“Tom the Martian has always been proud of his two green antennas on his head, but one day while working on the family teleporting device…”). Then, the next person adds another line and the story just keeps building and building until all storytellers agree that it’s reached a dead end, in which case another round of team storytelling can easily begin. If you have kids with you in the car, you can encourage them to write down or even illustrate the best story once you’ve reached your new house.

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  License plate game: this is another popular game for road trips. It only takes a piece of paper, a pen and eagle eyes to emerge as a winner – observe the license plates of the passing cars and write down their corresponding states. The person who has the most state names marked down on their sheet of paper wins the game. You can make things more exciting by offering a reward of some kind to the eventual winner, a bonus for spotting all 50 states, or even one bonus point for each Canadian province.

• Other highly entertaining games include: Fortunately-unfortunately (one player makes an unfortunate statement and then another one counters it with a positive response), Spot the car (one person calls out a car model and the first one to spot it wins a point), Spelling bee (memorize words like bokmakierie (a bird) or fizelyite (a mineral) to impress your opponents) and Tic tac toe (Hint: The starting player has a clear advantage).

#2 Good food

With all the stress and anxiety from the hectic pre-move preparations, the road trip to your new home is the perfect time to try to relax before having to gear up your mental preparation for the next stage of your move. What better way to enjoy your time on the road than stopping at some great places that offer great food? After all, wise men have said it long ago, “Happiness rarely keeps company with an empty stomach.”

Thus said, and if at all possible, avoid the typical fast-food restaurants that are found along the highways. Instead, a 15-20 minute research on the Internet before you hit the road should be enough to find some really good places to delight your senses. For example, you can use UrbanSpoon to find excellent restaurants or diners along your chosen route.

#3 Visit local attractions

Your move may turn out to be pretty rushed, and understandably so. Even impeccably organized relocations might sometimes suffer from insufficient time for completing all the required tasks. While on the road, your desire to reach your new place of residence as soon as possible and deal with the closing relocation stages will probably be pretty strong. And since time has been your arch-enemy from the very start of the moving preparations, you wouldn’t normally think of taking additional time to visit worthwhile sites along your itinerary, would you?

And yet, why not give it another thought? That cross-country relocation trip with your own vehicle could be the only opportunity to visit historic landmarks in another state or specific places of great interest for you. Let’s say you’ve always been a country music lover, and let’s assume that your long-distance relocation journey will cross the state of Tennessee at some point. Wouldn’t you just love to swing by the city of Nashville and spend a few exciting hours at its Country Music Hall of Fame? Yes, you would. And for the record, it shouldn’t take more than an hour or so of browsing the Internet to plan your trip in such a way as to include short visits to locations you would certainly enjoy.

#4 More ideas to keep the fun times rolling

Another way to add more fun to your cross-country move is to play or tune in to some good music. Relaxing melodies will most likely calm you down if you’re feeling overly tense or nervous, while more lively and energetic songs will keep you pumped up for longer (if that’s what you’re after). In any way, music should be nothing more than a positive companion along the journey and under no circumstances should it be a reason for discord. Therefore, if any disagreement arises among the passengers about the style of music played over the car stereo, one solution to the issue is to alternate the genres every 30 minutes so that everyone is kept happy, while another option is to stop the music altogether and concentrate on other fun activities.

Furthermore, why not engage in a stimulating conversation that will melt the long hours like an ice cream cone in the summer heat? Any topic should be fine as long as everyone in the car is fine with it: intriguing (each companion tells the others about a movie they’ve seen or a book they’ve read that truly impressed them), educational (each tripper can say what interesting facts they know about the state that is currently being crossed), funny (each person can tell their top 3 favorite jokes), etc.

However, if even a single entertaining activity mentioned above seems to be distracting the driver, quit it immediately. Remember that a boring but safe cross-country relocation trip is much better than a fun but unsafe one.

So, with road safety on your mind, observe these handy road tips and you will definitely turn your long-distance drive into a fun experience. And may you never ever hear the much dreaded phrase, “Are we there yet?”.

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