Our family was only 30 minutes into an 8-hour road trip from Maine to Vermont, when my four-year-old son, Jenner, reached his limit. "I'm tired of driving," he said. "Can't we just go home?" Home was 3,000 miles away on the opposite coast, and I'd already exhausted my supply of travel tricks--not to mention patience--on the 6-hour plane ride from California the previous day. Then my husband had a brilliant idea. "I'm looking for a car with a canoe on top," he said to Jenner and our six-year-old daughter, Kaela. "If you guys find one, I'll pay you each a penny."

After the kids cashed in on a canoe-carrying car, they found, at our prompting, a pickup truck with a dog hanging out the window, a farm animal, a sign with the word "eat" on it and lots more. Before long, I was searching for a place to exchange dollars for more pennies and Jenner had forgotten how much he hated riding in the car.

In the course of logging about 60,000 travel miles with my kids in the past eight years, I've found that most complaints from the backseat can be tempered with simple solutions that can actually make it fun to travel as a family. A good game, for example, makes the miles fly by. In addition to games, I've developed many activities and strategies designed to amuse the most bored backseat drivers. I've also included seven suggestions for dealing with the complaints my husband and I have heard most often. I hope they'll help smooth your own family's journey.

When she's not doling out pennies to her backseat passengers, Susan Fox is a freelance writer in Palo Alto, California.