Having just traveled in car with my four children across the country and watching most of my carefully thought out travel plans (including writing a few articles) evaporate before my eyes, I thought I’d share some “Jewish travelers on the road advice”.

The first being to allot even more time than the extra day of driving you cautiously and diligently planned for in the first place. This is especially important if you do not travel on Shabbat. It is essential to consider what you will do if you do not arrive at your destination before sundown on Friday. I’d like to suggest that along with all the tourist attractions you outline along the way, you might also consider identifying synagogues along your route. One great thing about Judaism is you can call any synagogue – and if not any synagogue – any orthodox synagogue - and be set up with a family for Shabbat.

Bring your Siddur. If you don’t currently pray, you may want to consider taking it up before embarking on a cross-country road trip with young children. You’ll find yourself praying that no one will have to go to the bathroom in the next hour, praying that other drivers on the road care as much about safety as you do, and praying that it will be your turn to drive again so that you can control the music that is playing in the car. On another note, you can recite the Traveler’s prayer as you set out in travel each day, asking for safe arrival at your destination.

A good Jewish mother is never without food. If you observe the Laws of Kashrut, you may be nervous about making an extended trip in the car. But, it’s really not that hard to find food you can eat along the way. Grocery stores will always have fruits and vegetables, bagels, cream cheese, chips and crackers. Or, if you are anything like our family – you prefer to gain ten pounds while you are in route to your destination. If that’s the case, you can find fructose corn syrup laden candy bar and fried potato chips at every gas station from here to eternity. If you are like me and observe the Law of “no stomach shall remain empty for too long”, you will need to pack a cooler and fill bags with snacks for noshing along the way. We kept turkey, cheese sticks (eaten separately, of course), baby carrots, hummus and soy milk cold for the first day and a half with giant ice packs. You also might want to review your policy of “no eating in the car” because if you have to stop for every snack, it adds a lot of travel time to your day. I, however, will maintain the “no eating in the car” policy since we are traveling in a car we purchased two days before we left (car accident, totaled car, forced to buy new one, everyone ok – thank G-d – but that’s a whole other story).

Which reminds me – Accidents. Children under five? Under eight? You can’t schedule or plan bathroom breaks (though we tried and my husband is not giving up for the way home). There is really no flexibility when a child in the back is yelling “I have to pee, and I can’t hold it”. No matter how many times you ask him to let you know before it is an emergency, it is always an emergency. Instead of the children’s museums and biological parks we had intended to stop at, we saw a lot of disgusting road stop bathrooms and made a lot of stops on the road when there were no restrooms nearby.

Plan for the unexpected (right!). We experienced three traffic accidents – one of which caused us to stop completely for three hours. It was like a giant block party with everyone getting out of their cars, opening up their motor homes for others to use the bathroom, sharing snacks and meeting people who were cutting us off the moment before. All together our traffic accident stoppage slowed us by five hours and fifteen minutes. Then there was the construction traffic that caused us to drive 40 miles an hour when we should have been going 70 miles per hour. We did not get out of the state of Arizona on our first day driving. We also had a two-year old who started throwing up a few hours after we left the state. Our second day of travel was disrupted by the cleaning of car seat, car and child – along with buying new clothes, a towel to carry the rest of the trip, and a visit to urgent care on the third day of travel.

Road trips are great fun and road trips with young children can be exciting, spontaneous and rip roaring fun. To protect our family from future road trip calamities, I’m packing a tin filled with Tzedakah money. Every time we see a homeless person, we will pull over and give him or her some food. Every time we purchase something at the grocery store, we will donate to whatever charity they are collecting for. And, whenever we stop to pay a toll, we will make sure to pay the toll of the driver behind us.