The License Plate Map

Starting point: Lancaster County, PA

Destination: Greenwood, SC 

Our maps app said it would take 9 hours and 52 minutes to drive that distance. But if you add in the inevitable road construction and the child who needs to visit rest stops with shocking regularity and occasional meals to stave off starvation, ten hours wasn't going to get us to the wedding in Greenwood. I knew we would need something to entertain the children along the way. 

We have Scribd, that wonderous library of audiobooks which we listened to by the hour. And we have an endless store of music that we listened to or sang with.

But my stroke of genius was taking along a blank map of the US so we could color in the State of each license plate we saw. John was already locking the house door when I decided to print one, so I begged his pardon and dashed back to the school room long enough to print a blank map. At first there were many spaces to color. But as the trip wore on, coloring in the spaces of much-needed states gave the same rush as fitting in the last pieces of a puzzle. For a long time, Kentucky and Vermont were the only two we needed to finish coloring the eastern half of the US. We dearly wanted them.

I suggested to John that he drive through a rest stop solely so we could read the license plates on the semis. He humored me, but just when we slowed on the ramp of the rest area, the child-with-the-mouse-like-bladder needed to go potty which meant we parked with the cars instead of driving through the corridor of trucks.

Even without a nest of truck plates to aid us, we saw a car from Kentucky in South Carolina and a Vermont tag in Pennsylvania after dark, less than two hours from home. The children were sleeping, so I colored in Vermont with deep satisfaction. 

Our map at the end of our trip

If you want to use this idea, I suggest you consider: 

1. a map for each child. We had one map and while it made the game a fun family event, it also created the question of who gets to color in the spaces. With only two children who wanted the pleasure, it was easily resolved, but larger families might run into larger issues with this.

2. a blank map instead of a labeled one. If I had thought of this fast enough, my children would have honed their map skills along the way. 

3. a map with Canadian provinces as well. After we saw a plate for the third province, I drew them onto the map and hoped no Canadian or cartographer would look at my sketches too closely.

4. coloring each state every time to you see it. This would make commonly seen states dark and infrequent ones much lighter. We considered coming up with a plan for this, but decided against it lest we wear holes in the page for the states we traveled through. But I still think it would add interest to the map of an older child. Color the state black after seeing it ten times, if you don't mind keeping score. 

All told, the map was great entertainment. Even for the mom.