My boyfriend and I are about to embarck on an 11 hour (or so) road trip. Anybody got any good road trip games for adults in case the conversation starts to lull? Someone once tried to describe something called Road Trip Poetry to me, but I can't remember much about it.

I don't care what anybody says. Jason you're the greatest.

Caution KB what I am about to post is going to sound very, very lame. But, after 8 hours you won't care....

My father use to make us play these stupid car games as kids so now I can share them with you. The first was a game he called "buzz". Works like this, take the number 7, and every time you start counting out loud and come to either a number with 7 in it, or a multiple of 7 then you need to say buzz instead of that number. If not then you lose! So it would go something like this....1,2,3,4,5,6,buzz,8,9,10,11,12,13,buzz,15,1 6,buzz,18 well you get the idea. Works best the faster you go.

Second one is what we called challenge. Works better with more than two people, but oh well. One person starts with a letter and then the second person adds a letter on to that, and then the next person adds on to that, etc. The goal is to try and get the other person to a point where they have to spell a word, in which case they loose and assign a "p" to their score (the first person to get a p-i-g losses). Of course if you are spelling along and someone throws out an x or something you can challenge them in which case they must state what they are trying to spell and spell it. If they are correct you get a p if they are wrong they get the p.

And a game my wife and I play is to count the tejano stations on the radio and then count the religious stations on the radio in a particular region and see which there are more of. Surprisingly they are usually pretty even.

Let's see how we can get this young couple to not pay attention to the driving and play games!

Don't worry x. We'll be careful. Besides, we're driving from Dallas to Marathon Texas. 90% of the time there won't be anything around for miles to hit anyway.

I thought of one for myself: the alphabet one. Where you pick some category, like dead celebrities, and then take turns going down the alphabet thinking of names that start with each letter of the alphabet. Lame yes.

KB,

I officially feel sorry for you now. I too reside in Dallas, and have made the drive to Big Bend (this is one of my father's famous road trips where I learned such wonderful games). Recently my wife and I just completed to Dallas to KC drive, which damn near killed us and was one of the few trips which there were more religious than tejano stations along the way.

My favorite game since I was 10 has been the alphabet game. You look at the signs along the highway - Howard Johnson, Bob's Big Boy, Exit 10, etc. and look for a word that starts with the next letter of the alphabet - example A-Al's Car shop, B-Bob's Big Boy, etc. The hardest are X and Q, but it still keeps you occupied. As long as you drive in an area with a lot of signs along the road, it's not bad.

We used to play the buzz game but it was a lot harder thatn the one mentioned. There were two numbers that you had to deal with. Besides 7, I think it was 5 so there would be numbers like 35 where you had to say buzz bang.

count how many people you see holding a WILL WORK FOR FOOD sign...

My mom, sisters and I also played 7's on road trips- I thought it was dumb at 13, but some years later it's one of my favorite road trip games.

We also played a cows and graveyards game- you counted the number of cows you saw, but when you saw a graveyard, you called it, and that cancelled everyones cows. Person with the most cows at the end wins.

Our family does better with (unabridged) books on tape than with games. Classics like A Tale of Two Cities or The Scarlet Pimpernel are often a lot better to listen to than to read. We get so engrossed that we have to turn them off when driving through unfamiliar cities.

I agree with Travellyn. Get a books on tape (or CD if your car doesn't have a tape player) You can rent them at the public library or buy them inexpensively at BJs or Costco.

We love them -- even my non reader son who didn't want to stop! Find authors you'll both like -- Grisham and Baldacci are our favorites, though we recently listened to Steve Martin reading his new book.

Thanks everyone (including Fodor's for deleting the one obscene response) for all the great ideas. I had to laugh at the counting cows and graveyards one. Some parent got some peace for a while after coming up with that one. Books on tape are a great idea. I'll check them out.

I am not advocating any consumption of alcohol on the road ever for the driver. That being said, the best road trip game of all time is "green sign" where you have to drink (pepsi of course) every time you pass a green sign on the highway.