• by Montgomery Miller
•  June 10th, 2018

Getting the Most Out of that Summer Road Trip

Your hitting the road with the family and preparing your vehicle for the big adventure. It’s a summer ritual thousands of Texas drivers will be participating in over the coming weeks. It’s going to be a blast, but there are some important things you can do to insure your adventure is memorable for all the right reasons.

Whether you’re travelling near or far, you’ll want to map out your route and conduct a thorough safety check on your vehicle. Summer driving in Texas is much like summer driving in most states except for the heat. Mid-summer heat in Texas can be brutal with temperatures soaring into the high 90s and 100s for much of the summer. The heat can crack dashboards, melt plastic parts and cause blowouts at high speeds. It also wears on your engine. According to heatkills.org, when temperatures outside range from 80 degrees to 100 degrees, the temperature inside a car parked in direct sunlight can quickly climb to between 130 to 172, so pets and children should never be left in a parked car, even for a brief time.

In advance of your planned trip, consider bringing your vehicle into your dealership or your auto repair shop of choice for a complete inspection. Have all of your fluids checked and topped off, have your tires balanced, rotated and inflated to the proper pressure as recommended by the manufacturer for high speed, high heat road trips. You may want to have your breaks checked and your air conditioner tested.  

Think about where you want to go and plan your route with consideration for hazards such as construction, accommodations, dining, attractions, historical markers and anything that may help to make your road trip more memorable.

If you’re travelling with kids, you can pull out a map or an Atlas, if you still have one as I do, and review the planned route with them, going over the different towns and regions you’ll be passing through on your journey. Researching, in advance, interesting facts or history about the places you’ll be visiting will make the experience more interesting for everyone.
   
If you’re travelling to the beach, a lake or a river, you might consider heavy duty floor mats to protect your carpeting. If you’ve got an SUV, a cargo liner will provide peace of mind and make clean up easy. What’s  the fun in going to the beach or lake if you can’t relax and make a big mess? If your dealership doesn’t carry them, WeatherTech makes mats and cargo liners for almost every vehicle on the planet.

Planning your entertainment in advance can offer some relief from fading radio stations and loss of satellite signal that can occur when travelling far from home. I’ve always enjoyed books on tape (CD or MP3 these days) for long drives. Choose a couple of books the whole family can enjoy and hit the cruise control.

Stocking a nice ice chest with bottled water, fruit juice, some bananas and crackers, will reduce the stops for fast food and keep everyone from getting hungry and cranky.

You’ll find some really useful road trip tips from AAA here.

So whether you’re staying in Texas, or travelling across the country, be safe, plan well, keep at least a quarter of a tank of gas in the tank and most importantly have fun creating memories to last a lifetime.