I wonder when Eliana will be old enough for this

I have seen this idea on Martha Stewart before, but thanks to our recent road trip have had renewed interest in it. I wonder when Eliana will be old enough for something like this? I'm guessing it will be sooner rather than later, I just have to put some thought and work into it. It would be nice to have some special activity bucket that's just for longer trips in the car. Currently our source of travel entertainment for her is the DVD player, and I think she could use some variety other than Blue's Clues, Veggie Tales, and the BBC Planet Earth series.

Traveling with Eliana...

We went for a Sunday drive yesterday. It was a little longer Sunday drive than I was expecting! But we got to see a lot of country and stop by some places we'd wanted to go, so it was good. Ellie only slept for about 30 minutes or so of the whole drive and spent the rest of the time playing and pointing at things and eating and watching Baby Einstein or Blue's Clues. While Ellie was sleeping, we came to Virginia City, which is one of the places I have wanted to visit. It looked like it was going to rain, so we drove around a bit and then stopped so Leif could find out more information. That's about when Ellie woke up, and just in time to see a little train!

She thought the train was really cool, so we'll have to come back sometime and go for a proper tour of Virginia City, train ride and all.

We made a point of stopping a few times to let Eliana get out of the car and run around. We stopped at a veterans memorial park in Dillon and Ellie had a blast running on the curvy sidewalks, looking for prairie dogs and magpies.

For the most part, Eliana was happy to sit in the car for hours as long as she had music to listen to or a DVD to watch. Then when there was something interesting to see, we'd point it out and she could explore a little. But the downside to living in MT is that it takes a LOT of driving to get most places, unless you explore locally. But she did very well in the car and I'm glad, because it means we can take more road trips and get out to see some new things this summer! I guess we'll have to tackle camping next...