Assuming that you are going to do more on your road trip than drive from Maine to San Diego with nary more than a five-minute bathroom break, chances are that you are going to make several stops along the way, seeing historical sites, visiting breathtaking natural wonders, or taking in a ballgame. Over time, a lot of these stops can blur into one big, hazy mass of fading memories. On top of that, as soon as you and your brood pile back into the car, screen time (or whining/fighting time) resumes as if it had never stopped.
In recent years, our kids have introduced a way to make our stops last a little longer, even once we have begun driving again, and to simultaneously open up some fun and insightful avenues of conversation. After every significant stop (and sometimes even after insignificant stops), everyone in the car - and there are seven of us, so it takes some time - has to rate the venue on a scale of 1 to 10, with full explanation. Everyone is free to rate according to their own system, and so a bad bathroom in an otherwise spectacular museum can cost points, while a boring hike that featured some comical incident can raise the score.
The real genius of this exercise is not the actual scoring of the site or even the fact that it holds off screen time for another ten to twenty minutes. The greatness of this conversation is how honest everyone is and how much meaningful interaction comes out of it. My teenager who does not care for American History (yet is doomed to repeat it on road trips) is capable of saying something along the lines of, "I'm not into the Presidents, but I can see why Taft's boyhood home [in Cincinnati] would appeal to someone who is interested. I give it an 8." That's a lot better than "It was boring". There is also a lot of guessing as to what other people will give as rating or what they will or will not like, and that is a giant step towards one of the major goals of the road trip - creating stronger family bonds.
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