We recently took a 12-hour road trip to Texas to visit the grandparents. In addition to the clothes, shoes, blankets, pillows, and snacks we packed into the van, we also had The Gadget Bag. This sacrosanct bag contained every technological gizmo that we could not do without; whether for the road trip across the southern US or to make it through the five days of visiting technologically-challenged Mama and Papa.
With two tween kids, plopping a DVD in the minivan’s player is just not cutting it anymore. Take a look at what we carried along on our trip and let us know what you need to make it through life while on the road.
- Mario Kart driving wheels
- Wii controllers
- Wii
- DS (dual as there are sharing issues)
- Car lighter power converter
- Cell phones
- iPod Nano (there is another one here too, but I could not find it for the pic)
- iPod Touch, 16GB, loaded with 3 movies (recently replaced with a 3G S, Woot!)
- JBL iPod speaker port
- Dell 9-inch Mini
- Sims 3 DVD (so the kids can “make” Mama in the game)
- iPod USB power converter (for charging)
- 10,000 hour LED reading light
- Amazon Kindle
- iPod-to-RCA video cord (hooks up to minivan DVD player, for playing movies from the iPod Touch)
Not shown: ceiling mounted 10.5-inch DVD player, XM Radio FM modulating tuner, DVD case, about a dozen power cords and chargers
Note: I remember riding from Columbus, Ohio to Miami with three brothers and a sister in an Oldsmobile Cutlass back in 1984. All we had was a bucket of crayons and a few coloring books. My kids just don’t know how good they have it. God bless my mother and father!
