Last month, my family and I spent a week in the Acadia area of Maine.
It is a beautiful place to visit, but it comes at a cost: about 11 hours in the car (from New Jersey). The idea of spending almost a dozen hours in a car with a 4-year-old and his two older cousins might give some parents nightmares, but honestly they were pretty good — for one major reason.
If you have been reading my posts here at BabyCenter, you know I like my gadgets. While I think the boys were good on their own, I brought a device that definitely kept them happy.
I knew that cell phone reception was going to be problematic once we got to Maine, so I started to think of ways to have some content to watch at the cottage and in the car ride. I discovered a SanDisk USB drive with built in wifi.
You can load all your music, movies, and photos to the thumb drive and then access the files while on the go without having to use the phone’s data plan (which wasn’t an option even if I wanted it to be).
This is one of those situation where I wasn’t sure how well this thing was going to work and it totally exceeded my expectations. I popped it into a portable battery and it ran the entire ride home. It was in use the whole week around the clock.
You can pick up a 64GB version for $35 at Amazon. Speaking of Amazon, we gave our son one of their cheap $50 tablets. For $50 bucks or less (it was $33 on prime day), the tablet is much better than it should be. The SanDisk app works on Amazon tablets and it made life in the car so much easier.
And if you are wondering, yes we totally enjoyed being out in nature (without electronics) with fishing, hiking, and biking every single day. But when night arrived, it was nice to have my music available or let the kids pick out their own movies.
Safe travels!
The SanDisk Connect made an 11-hour car ride a joy. There are multiple size options to fit your need and budget.
The Amazon Fire 7-inch tablet is $50 dollars or less (if you catch it on a sale day). This thing survived a drop down a flight of stairs. I am impressed for the price.
You can never have enough USB charging ports in the car on long trips.
If the kids don't have an outlet in the back seat, this KMASHI 10000mAh External Battery Power Bank will keep their devices running for hours.
Assuming the kids do get a little too loud, a nice set of wireless headphones will help drown out the background noise. I am a fan of comfortable over-the-ears options, but you do you.
Do you think the SanDisk Connect is something you could use while traveling? How do you keep the kids occupied on a long road trip?
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