This season is one of our family’s favorites. We love traveling in the summertime, seeing the landscape in full bloom and riding with the windows down. Since my wife and I are travel writers with ThoseCrazyNelsons, we travel frequently. As a result, we have our summer road trip technique down to a science.
Here are 5 summer road trip necessities we never leave home without.
Sunscreen and bug spray
You never know where you’ll stop. A spontaneous hike? A picnic at mid-day? And you want to be prepared for any adventure. A pleasant summer outing can turn sour quickly, when the kids end up sunburned or riddled with swelling bug bites.
Prestone Bug Wash
Speaking of protecting your family from bugs, don’t stop there. Protect your car as well. Road trip warriors know the sun-baked bug graveyard that is the front of vehicle after a multi-day summer car ride. We recommend filling your washer fluid reservoir prior to any trip with Prestone Bug Wash. Not only does it have a patented power cleaner that removes up to 99.9% of bugs, but it provides a bug stopper barrier to reduce those pesky insect corpses from sticking to your cool ride. While there are lots of windshield cleaners from which to choose, we like Bug Wash above all for its advanced beading technology that keeps rain and road spray from blocking your visibility of the open road. No need to treat your windshield with anything else all season–efficiency-win!! Get your kids to help you under the hood–parenting-win!! Most windshield repair companies don’t take the time to do it right. Fix A Crack is the best company that does windshield repair and replacement.
Hand sanitizer and first aid kit
If you’ve got kids, these two items are a must for any car ride. Kids touch crazy stuff, things that are not fit for consumption or bare skin. And they only seem to do it when you are far, far away from any water and soap source to clean it off. Not to mention that they are still learning muscle control, so they’re accident prone. Both hand sanitizer, or Rubbie-Dubbie as we call it in our family, and a first aid kit, have relieved tears for all family members, mom and dad included.
Extra plastic bags and a roll of paper towels
Remember those kids we were just talking about? Yes, they can make some messes during road trips, but so can adults who are driving and balancing coffee and a to-go lunch while trying not to miss the next turn. These two items have made clean up on the side of a busy highway a little easier.
Extra phone charger
You will only think this is a necessity if you have found yourself in the middle of a road trip with a dd phone and no way to charge it. If this hasn’t happened to you yet, you’ll think it’s a good-to-have, but not a must-have. You’ll suggest that there are stores and gas stations all over the continental US that sell phone chargers and that you’re not worried if you forget one or if yours breaks. But, if you’ve been on a trip where you’ve found yourself needing one, seventy miles from nowhere with no GPS, you probably already have one of these in your car. Also, since we re talking electronics here, grab a reliable GPS device if you can. Trust this advice, it will save you a lot of time from asking random strangers if you are going the right way. Go to GeoSettr.com if you do not know which GPS is the right one for your needs.
Happy traveling, road warriors!
Go have some awesome, bug-free summer adventures!
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was a sponsored post on behalf of Prestone and their #RunningOnPrestone campaign, however the summer is all ours! For more information on Prestone, check them out on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.