9 Best iPhone Apps for a Road Trip

I'm a father of five and airfare is expensive. So almost all of our family vacations involve driving somewhere. Whether it's a weekend road trip to the beach or a 10 hour road trip to Disney World, we spend a lot of time driving with 5 kids in the car.

My iPhone has been a lifesaver on these long road trips with kids. There are so many great apps that trying to decide which ones are worth downloading can be a challenge. So I've put together a list of some of my favorite iPhone games for a road trip, along with some apps that are just plain essential for helping mom and dad find food, hotels, check the weather, and save money.

iPhone Turn by Turn GPS Navigation Apps
I'm not a huge fan of GPS apps for the iPhone, mainly because I think it's sometimes easier to have a standalone GPS system that you can mount in your car and leave alone. But if you don't want to spend the cash on a separate system and would prefer the convenience of always having your GPS with you, here are some good choices. Of course you'll need an iPhone 3G to use these.

Tom Tom for iPhone: Tom Tom gives you all the functions you'd expect in a standalone GPS navigation system. Turn by turn directions with voice, locating points of interest nearby, like gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and whatever else you may be looking for. Tom Tom for iPhone sells for $99

AT & T Navigator: This is AT&T's "official" GPS navigation app. Like Tom Tom, it has all the features you'd expect from a GPS navigation system. But AT&T's pricing is a little different. Instead of a larger one time cost, they use a subscription model. AT&T Navigator is $10 a month. This is a great deal if you only want to use it for the occasional trip. But if you want something you'll use all the time, it may end up cheaper to buy Tom Tom.

iPhone Apps for Finding Places to Eat
Well, you've got to eat. And if you want to find a little more variety than the standard fast food place, there's an app for that. Many apps in fact. Here are two of the best.

Urbanspoon: This is perfect if you want to avoid the arguments when everyone wants something different to eat. It uses GPS to find your current location, then you give it a shake and it picks a nearby restaurant for you and gives you lots of info about that restaurant, including telling you how many people liked it and how many didn't. But if you want to give more input on the choice, you can do that too. Just pick the cuisine type and/or the price range and it will pick a place that meets your selections. If you just want to find the closest place, it will do that too, and show you where it is on a map.

Yelp: This is a straightforward app for seeing restaurants and other businesses nearby. It shows you the address, user ratings, distance, and price range. It also includes maps and shows you how to get there. Yelp is about more than just food. It's really a multi purpose locator app. Need a gas station, pharmacy, grocery store, bank, or whatever, it will find the ones that are close to you and give you the communities opinions about each business.

iPhone Apps For Saving Money on Gas
GasBuddy: On a long road trip, gas can be one of your biggest expenses, so saving a few bucks on every fill up can really add up. The GasBuddy iPhone app lets you enter a zip code, or uses your GPS to determine your location, then shows you where the cheapest nearby gas is. It shows you the locations, along with the prices, and gives you directions. It will even keep track of your savings, based on your cars MPG, tank size, and how many miles you drive per year.

iPhone Apps For Finding a Hotel
Travelocity: If you do any traveling, you probably know that Travelocity is one of the web sites for booking flights, cruises, hotels, car rentals, and vacation packages. The Travelocity iPhone app is perfect for finding a place to sleep when you're traveling. It gives you a nice easy way to see all the hotels that are nearby. You'll get a list of results that show you the location, star rating, and if available, the price for that night.

iPhone Apps For Keeping an Eye on the Weather
The Weather Channel: Yes, the Weather Channel has an iPhone app and it gives you all the information you'd find by watching the Weather Channel. It gives you a map view with live radar, cloud coverage, temperature, precipitation, and even UV index. This is a free app and it's perfect for keeping you informed about what kind of weather to expect wherever you are driving.

iPhone Games for a Road Trip With Kids
One of the hardest parts about taking long family road trips is keeping the kids occupied. I can't even count the number of times I've been asked "Are we there yet?". One of my favorite ways to keep the kids entertained is by playing games that the whole family can play. Normally, you don't think of the iPhone as something that everyone can enjoy at once, but trust me, it can be. Here are two of my favorite iPhone games for a road trip.

Family Car Games: This app gives you a list of 100 road trip games for children and adults. You can scroll through the list or let the app randomly pick one for you. For each game, it gives you general info, like difficulty, type, length, and # of players needed, along with detailed instructions on how to play the game. The iPhone isn't used to actually play the games, but it's a great resource when you are trying to think of ways to keep the kids busy. With 100 games for a road trip, you can drive for days without hearing "Are we there yet?".

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt: This app is a variation of the classic game that almost all of us played when were were kids. Instead of having a whole list of things to find like a normal scavenger hunt, this game has you looking for one item at a time. The goal is to be the first player to find the object that the app has selected. Once someone spots it, you hit that player's button, they get a point, and another item is randomly selected.

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt is loaded with over 140 different things to look for. Not just objects, like a yellow car, a basketball hoop, a motorcycle, a cow, a horse, etc. but also words that you might see on billboards, road signs, or semi trucks. Items are selected randomly so no two games will be the same. To keep it easy for non-readers, you can pick whether you want to include objects, words, or both.

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt also allows you to skip an item, so you never have to worry about getting stuck looking for a river in the middle of a desert. It supports up to 6 players, let's you choose how long the game will last, by choosing how many points it takes to win, and gives you easy score keeping, by providing a button with each player's name and their current score. Road Trip Scavenger Hunt is one of my favorite games for a road trip.

Road Trip Scavenger Hunt
Road Trip Scavenger Hunt - one of my favorite iPhone games for a road trip