Road Trip Toddler Snacks

Twizzlers. They saved me while taking an 8 hour car trip with my kids by myself. I also had some drinkable yogurts (not gogurts, but the cup kind) and cheese and summer sausage. String cheese is a hit and can take a few minutes to eat. Also the large pretzels are not so messy.

As for toys, balloons worked really well when we took them to Tennessee last year (20 hours one way). I found a pack of balloons and a pump at Target and it took up a lot of time. they were messy - whenever we opened a door, they would fly out, but they took up a lot of time!

Good luck!
J.

cereal like cheerios, its not junk food, and healthy. Or any other cereal that melts easy in the mouth so you dont have to worry about choking, that was my biggest fear every time we made a trip, even just into town. I wish you luck on the trip and have lots of fun.

On my sons first road trip we had freeze dried fruit... costco used to sell brothers all natural and it almost melts in their mouths, but i haven't seen it there in a while. you can order online but its waaayyyy more expensive. Whole foods has some similar thats also expensive but at least you don't have to order in bulk! Nutri-grain type bars, string cheese or cheese slices, bananas, goldfish/teddy graham type crackers, fruit leather (like fruit roll-ups but made with fruit only), pop tarts, you could make a pb sandwich before leaving with very little pb if they wouldnt make too much of a mess with that..maybe even a grilled cheese if they ate it soon after leaving. If there's other fruit that they do like (strawberries, melon, grapes, peaches) you could try a fruit salad. Maybe keep a bib on them the whole trip, lol. Also, I'd recommend getting something like a snack trap to hold their food that way if they throw the bowl or fall asleep and drop it you won't have food all over the car! Good luck and I hope they sleep a lot!

We do a big variety of crackers, freeze dried fruit (some varieties are easier to chew than others), fruit snacks (Mott's makes a really good one with no food coloring), Pirates Booty (like Cheetos, but organic), potato chips, bananas, string cheese, etc. Of course, there's always cookies. :) Anyway you go, I would plan a day to take all the car seats out and detail both the car and the seats when you get back. For drinks, we use diluted juice or Kool-Aid. We traveled 120,000 miles over the last three years with kids aged newborn (13 days) to almost 6, so if you have any other questions, we've probably encountered the issue, and I'd love to help out if I can. To cut down on reaching into the back seat, I break down the snacks into serving sizes and put them in snack bags. You could probably get by with cutting the sizes in half. Then they can hold onto the bag and eat and pass it back when done. A little bit more does make it into the seat and onto the floor this way, though. Have fun! California was one of our favorite places to go!