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What would it look like if the number of people who live in North Carolina's four biggest cities all got in their cars and drove to a different city on the same day?

The busiest travel day of the year is this week. How do you pass the time in the car? Join the discussion at the Debatables blog.

A lot like Thanksgiving last year.

According to AAA Carolinas, 1.5 million people in North and South Carolina traveled Thanksgiving week in 2006.

The organization will release its 2007 estimates for travel in North Carolina at 8:30 today.

Nationwide, the number of people traveling for the holiday is up 1.5 percent this year, the organization reported. A little more than 31 million — 80 percent of those taking trips longer than 50 miles — will drive.

Those drivers will pay an average of $3.086 per gallon for gasoline, or 90 cents more a gallon than last Thanksgiving.

Since listening to the sound of money flying out of your checking account isn't such a fun game, here are some old standbys to keep yourself (and your kids) entertained when those miles to grandmother's house are creeping — rather than flying — by.

* License plate games

See who can find a license plate from the farthest away. This tests your observation skills and geographic knowledge. Is Montana farther from North Carolina than Texas is? Try to collect as many states as you can. If that gets dull, see who can make the funniest acronym from license plate letters.

The youngest passengers can just try to spot the whole alphabet.

* Counting games

Counting cows is the classic. Cows on the right side of the road are points for the right-side passengers; cows on the left are points for the left-side passengers. If you pass a cemetery on your side, you lose all of your cows, but only if the other team calls out "cemetery."

Add more points (and math difficulty) by assigning extra value to things like horses, windmills or tobacco barns.

* Alphabet memory games

"I went to a picnic and I brought ..." or "We went to the zoo and we saw ..." Whatever premise you choose, remembering 26 alphabetical items is tough. The first person thinks of an item starting with A (apples or antelopes); the second, B (blueberries or bears), and so on.

If that's not enough of a challenge, limit yourselves to world leaders ("I went to the U.N. and met ...").

* Scavenger hunt

Make up a list of things that you're likely to see on the trip. The person who finds the most items on the list is the winner.


Sources: www.momsminivan.com and www.edmunds.com

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