Digressions of a Sponge for Knowledge: Road Trip Tips

A road trip can be an amazing thing. Open road, exploring small bits of the country, and taking each adventure as it comes. There are not set rules, and you don't need an agenda to make a road trip great. Here's a few tips that you might want to keep in mind before you take your next road trip.

The car matters. Take a roomy, comfortable car with AC, heat, and great for listening to music. Don't forget to take into account reliability and gas mileage when deciding what car to take, either.
Pack snacks in an easily accessible area. If you are like me and think hotel coffee sucks, take a stash of ground coffee and some filters to make your own in the hotel room. Bring other food you might be able to make use of in hotels -- most have mini-fridges, coffee pots, and microwaves. This can cut costs if need be. Espresso/cold coffee, lots of water, granola bars, and snack-y items are a must for me -- we had locally made kettle corn that was AMAZING.
Great listening choices.

Make good Pandora stations of all your favorite genres -- shuffle all your stations together to get a good mix.
Make good playlists on CD or your phone/mp3 player (for when Pandora isn't getting great service)
Comedy -- We personally love Comedy channel on Pandora, which plays snippets of great comedians. This never seemed to get old for us, and definitely is a nice change from constant music.
Audiobooks -- C isn't huge into audiobooks, but I LOVE them. They are a great way to pass the time while READING.
Podcasts -- Another way to switch it up when you're tired of music. I personally love the Moth Podcast that my mom turned me onto - it's a podcast of stories told in storytelling jams. They are (mostly) adults telling adult stories - and the themes are all over the map in terms of subjects, and are usually funny -- with a few heart-wrenching ones thrown in for good measure.
Learning languages - so maybe this is better to do by yourself, as it might be hard to do with more than one person in the car, but pick up language-learning CDs or podcasts for the car, and get that much closer to knowing another tongue!

Download apps! The apps I downloaded were SO useful on our sporadic car trip. (Please don't be one of those people that operate these while driving. Let the passenger do it, or pull over first.) Some of the most awesome:

Hotel Tonight by Hotel Tonight, Inc. - Good quality, great deals on hotels - that night only. We found great hotel deals in Jacksonville and Daytona Beach -- but they only have large cities. If they don't have great deals left - they tell you that city is all booked up for the night. Overall, good, but check TripAdvisor if you aren't having any luck.
TripAdvisor - picks up on some good locations to visit, and also good hotels. This let me see the various prices that I could get for the same hotel room through different sites -- the hotel's site is not necessarily the cheapest! I booked one hotel room through a third site while practically in the parking lot because it saved me $20 from what the hotel itself charged.
GasBuddy - finds the cheapest gas in your area while you're on the road. Using it, I saved about 25 cents per gallon on several occasions, because it alerted me that the cheaper gas was only about a mile off of the highway.
Yelp! - This was great for finding great food places that we wouldn't have found otherwise. Plus, you can write reviews, and remember things that you liked when you come back.

Games along the way. Although I'm sure there are a lot more out there - I will point out the two that I downloaded that were a lot of fun for us. And no, I'm not talking Candy Crush, but rather games where multiple people in the car can be involved at one time.

The License Plates Game. See how many of the 50 state license plates you can get while you're on your trip. Have the passenger write them down, or download an app to keep track of them for you. I used The License Plate Game by Joseph Levine, which is easy and worked well.
Road Trip Bingo - This is a lot like Road Trip I Spy. There's so much to look at out there that this is a great way to start noticing it all...and turn it into a competitive game. There are apps for this as well - the one I liked best for us (...and was free, duh), was called RoadTrip Bingo, but it doesn't look like it's on the app store anymore. The best replacement I'm seeing for it is Roadtrip-Bingo by Toughturtle LLC, which lets you choose from different boards that deal with different subjects - car logos, food logos, around town, etc.
Would You Rather? - You can pull the questions from the web, from an app, or from your own brain. Regardless of where the questions come from, this can jump-start hilarious discussions and give you a lot more insight into the inner workings of your companion's mind. Look out, sometimes it gets a little dangerous in there. Some websites to get you started:

AAA - AAA is a great safety net. I knew if we broke down or got locked out of the car, etc, I would be covered. They also give out free maps at their offices if you're going somewhere, and their app is GREAT.
Stimulating conversation. This is your chance to really get to know the person next to you. Ask them questions about themselves (not too intrusive!), and see what they are like, where they went to college, what their childhood was like, top 5 favorite movies, what Disney character they would want to be. There are so many ridiculous questions you could pose that could spark stimulating conversation, and that will be memorable in and of itself.
Be okay with silence. Although you want some stimulating conversation, be mindful that if the other person isn't feeling talkative, you'll have to let it go. Silence is only as awkward as you make it.
Lastly -- think about a road trip as being a grand adventure! Get in the mindset to be flexible if things don't go quite as planned, and remember that the fun is in the journey. Relax, have fun, and BON VOYAGE!