What games did you play in long car trips as kids? We use to drive about 10 miles through the woods

[applegrove]

to get to our cottage. Naturally my sister invented a game where you opened your window and tried to grab as much foliage as possible. The dirt road was only one lane wide so both sides of the car were practically in the bush. The person who had the most leaves and branches by the end of the trip won. It was a little risky.... because there were wild raspberry bushes with little thorns on them periodically.

[FSogol]

1. Did you parents smoke a lot of pot or something?

They're no way my Dad would have been mellow enough to lets us kids stick our arms out the window and grab stuff.

As for games, I mostly fought with my sister. Or found out-of-state license plates.

[applegrove]

2. My dad was a lot of fun when it came to playtime. A gentle bear of a man. If someone hurt

themselves they would have told us to stop.

[FSogol]

5. Lucky. I have a great Dad, but that game would have never flown. n/t

[Nikia]

3. "Cemetery"

Count as many farm animals as possible on your side of the car. You lose all your animals when you go past a cemetery. Whoever has the most animals when you reach your destination wins.
I remember my dad laughing as we were playing it on our way to my great grandmother's home in Michigan because after you got into town before her house, there were cemeteries on both sides of the road. He did not tell us why he was laughing, of course, until we both lost all our animals.

[applegrove]

6. We used to play "Beetle" where you counted the number of volkswagon beetles you saw. Of course

it was the 1970s. The fun part came when you passed the volkswagon car dealership in Hull Quebec.

It got to be such routine game, on the same trip up to the lake, that you anticipate the houses that had beetles in the driveway.

[muriel_volestrangler]

22. Pub cricket

Rural version:
Count the number of legs of animals on your side of the car - you can't estimate number of animals, you have to count them, and then multiply by 4 (or 2). Birds that fly across the road count for both sides. Those are your 'runs'. Every time you go past a pub on your side, you lose a wicket - you have 10 wickets before your total score.

Urban version:
Count the number of legs in each pub title (or on the sign) on your side of the road. Eg 'Marquis of Granby' is 2; for the 'Coach and Horses', you have to look at the sign to see how many horses are pulling the coach. If the pub name has no legs at all (eg "The Crown&quot , you lose a wicket.

[begin_within]

4. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral

One person would start by thinking of something. All they would say was whether it was animal (which included humans), vegetable or mineral. Everyone else took turns asking questions, which could only be answered "Yes" or "No" by the person thinking of the thing. You just took turn asking questions, until someone finally figured out what the thing was. Whoever guessed it right then became the next person to think of something for the rest to guess.

That game had nothing to do with what you would see out the windows as you were driving. But we did have another one that did involve other cars. Back in those days there were plenty of Volkswagen Bugs still on the road. If one was near the car, it was important to be the first person to shout out, "Love Bug!" There was no real winner or anything, it was just something you did if you saw one. Sometimes it would be funny if a VW was driving along in the next lane, and nobody noticed it for a while until someone finally did and shouted out, "Love Bug!"

[limpyhobbler]

7. is 10 miles a long trip? We counted out-of-state plates, or

did "I'm thinking of something blue" and that kind of stuff. But that was if we had to rive like hundreds of miles. For 10 miles we didn't have any real games.

[applegrove]

8. It was 1/2 an hour on the highway, then half an hour slow on the one lane wide dirt road that

when over a mountain in the deep woods. So it was an hour long trip. We did have longer trips as a family for sure. I remember driving to Nova Scotia which is one or two days. We also drove to Cape Cod and Florida from Ottawa.

[ellaydubya]

9. Finding letters of the alphabet on road signs

Whoever got to "z" first won. Of course, signs were simpler back then (50s,60s) and on country roads fewer than you would find today on our highways. We also looked for deer.....my dad's idea and a smart one because it took a lot of concentration- which meant less fussing between the siblings.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

10. We watched for Burma Shave signs.

Don't stick your elbow
Out too far
Or it may go home
In another car.
Burma Shave.

[OxQQme]

11. Apply the word 'anal'

in front of the car's model name.

Anal Explorer

Anal Rover

Anal Fit

Anal Probe

whatev.....

[LiberalEsto]

12. I Spy

with my little eye,
something that begins with an L

[XemaSab]

13. Take the three letters from the plate of the car in front of you

and see how many words you can come up with.

For example:

IEY

Mickey
Piney
Identify

or

IRO

Iroquois
Nimrod
Hiroshima

And so forth.

[IcyPeas]

31. we did that license plate letter thing too...

funny, we all like scrabble type games to this day.... wonder if was our early start

(p.s. I still do it to this day)

[rrneck]

14. The "stay off my side of the seat" game.

Followed by the "don't make pull this car over" game.

[applegrove]

15. LOL! Followed by the "You're copying me you copycat!" game.

[jberryhill]

16. Bang on the roof to wake up the dog!

[applegrove]

17. Didn't know you were of the Romney clan. LOL!

[FSogol]

21. Duzy!

LOL

[6000eliot]

18. Punch bug.

It never ended well.

[Major Nikon]

19. The Quiet Game

AKA

Shut the Fuck Up You Little Bastards!

[Tsiyu]

20. Mad Libs

And "I spy."

[boston bean]

23. We use to have my son count flags

he thought it was fun! And it was something for him to do. This was pre-DVD in the car.

[geardaddy]

24. 20 questions

The license plate alphabet game

[woo me with science]

25. Honk polling of other vehicles

Yes, we were political even then.

The idea was to get other cars to honk by holding up a notebook with a "Honk if you..." poll question on it, and see who could get the most honks. I once beat my brother by using the message, "Honk if you aren't wearing any pants."

[PassingFair]

26. I was a horrible child. The "game" we played in the car was called "The Fed Up Game"...

There were usually three or four of us bouncing around in the back of the station wagon
at any given time. We were all very cute....

The object of the game was to make the people behind us get "fed up" and
pass us.

We would wave sweetly or throw a peace sign at the people behind us, then we WOULD NOT STOP
waving and being cute. This would eventually make the travelers behind us acutely uncomfortable.

The game was scored thusly:

Driver or passenger waves back: 1 point
Driver passes us: 2 points
Driver or passenger flips us off: 5 points

We played this game for YEARS before my father, who always drove the speed limit,
figured out what we were laughing at, and why people gave him dirty looks when they
finally managed to speed past us.

[Adsos Letter]

27. The Baseball Bat To The Mailbox.

[clyrc]

28. I spent a huge chink of my childhood in the car

Um, chunk, not chink. on edit.

My dad was in the military, so we moved a lot, but even when we weren't moving my parents didn't stay home much if they could help it. We played "that's my house" and occasionally "I spy," but we also had this game where one of us started a story and then passed it on to the next person. That game could last a long time. Of course I also played the "stare out the window game", and "fight with my brother and sister game." It's funny when I think about it now- we always had a car full of kids and pets and many times luggage, so stuffed in the car that sometimes I couldn't even sit, I had to lie on top of stuff. Dad would play the "get lost in the middle of nowhere game," or the "OOPS! almost going over the side of the mountain game," which scared me. Once, in California in mid October, he played the "running out of gas in the first blizzard of the season in the mountains when none of us had coats" game. We were moving from South Carolina to Hawaii, and we drove to California with suitcases packed for Hawaii, never thinking it would be so cold in parts of California. We should have figured it out when we were so cold at the Grand Canyon, but oh well.

Oh and one game my dad hated was the "clean up after pet accidents" game. We had one dog who was car sick every time we took him in the car, but we couldn't leave him at home so a clean up job it was. Then there was the time our cat crawled underneath dad's feet when he was driving and she had diarrhea- dad was not amused.

[Canuckistanian]

29. Only 10 miles to your cottage? Wow

We had to drive 3 hours. But it was worth it. Camping all summer long. Waterskiing, treehouses, swamps with frogs and a crystal clear lake.

Oh, and my sister and I used to keep a running commentary on the scenery going by. What house had changed, new signs, etc. And Bozo bubble gum and Animal Crackers. It was a special "drive to the cottage" thing. We never played games, it was too exciting watching stuff!

[applegrove]

30. We had 25 miles on the highway first then 10 miles on the dirt road. Yes we had rituals too.

There were specific benchmarks like the Seguin property, well tended garden and stream, that we drove through. We had frog ponds, gardens, sand piles, waterfalls, and lake sports aswell. Good times those were.

[Mopar151]

32. We kept a list in the car of state plates

See how many we could get in a summer - I think we got close to 40 one year.

[grasswire]

33. we liked moo-ing at cows

But mostly we sang. My father taught us all the songs written by Stephen Foster, riding in the car.

[Ruby Reason]

34. My family sang.

I know a lot of older songs (my dad was a WWII vet) and it left lots of fond memories for me. We sang everything from Christmas carols and religious songs, to the silly, nonsensical, to patriotic...nothing was unsung if one of us knew it.