I never truly appreciated my car as much as I have this year. Since early March my family of 4 has been locked down and had to remove ourselves from society. Just like that we stopped seeing everyone and doing anything. We no longer had daycare, preschool, or work outside our home. The car quickly became an adventure each and every day. With two small children who are used to going to play grounds, indoor gyms, trampoline parks, the mall, playing with friends and cousins we had to get creative.
Like many moms the first few weeks went ok, we would go for short walks, play games in the house, and just enjoy the extra time together. It quickly became repetitive and boring for my 2 and 5 year old. It was time to get creative. We moved to the car and came up with all kinds of adventures.
8 Fun Activities to Turn Your Car into a Fun Place
Free outdoor activities to drive to
We are a family that always does something every weekend. Usually it cost money, and it is something that involves a lot of people. When that had to end we got super creative to find things to do that was not around anyone. We did things this summer I have never done before parks with unique landscape to hike to, we drove to a creek and went swimming, and a Sunflower garden.
Tour cover bridges
We took a drive that lead us to 10 different covered bridges. At each one we would get out and explore the area some had creeks under where we could throw rocks in or look at the way the bridges were made.
Trip to where mommy and daddy grew up
We took multiple trips to walk down memory lane and to share with our kids our childhood homes, stopped at a park for a walk where no one was at so we could easily keep our distance.
Drive thru events
It is amazing how many places started offering drive thru events in my area. So we were able to go to a drive thru asian light show at the zoo, drive through animal park, and now for fall we have a drive through halloween display and Christmas a number of drive through light shows to go to.
Getting lost
This is always fun to do. We turn off our GPS and let our son pick the direction and route. We found ourselves in some very interesting places that we would have never drove to before.
Picnic in the trunk of car
During summer when it got nicer we packed lunches and found an empty place at the park or even empty parking lot to all climb in the back of our Volkswagen Atlas and eat our lunch together.
Playing Pokemon Go
I never was one to get into this game, but when you don’t have a lot of options for activities we jumped in with both feet. Car scavenger hunt for Pokemon turned into at least once a week adventure.
Car scavenger hunt
We have done a scavenger hunt bingo, scavenger hunt cards, I spy version of game, looking for specific items and see how many of something they can find. If you don’t want to be creative and come up with your own I loved the road trip scavenger hunt because it has variety depending on where you are driving.
The car continues to be our source of entertainment this year and will be for the foreseeable future. If you are a parent looking for an outlet, grab your kids and jump in the car, the change of location does a great job changing everyones attitude.
