Ideas for activities to make a long bus ride more fun

Do you ever dread a long bus trip? I do, but I know many ways to get me through the ride. I travel a lot for camp and have been on bus trips for as long as 20 hours. With school beginning, there are probably going to be some bus trips in your future.

I know that feeling when you are so excited to go on a trip with your friends. If you are like me, long bus trips are way more fun with your friends, but sometimes you just run out of ideas. It might be hard to hold a conversation for several hours, but you can do many fun things such as crafts, card games, reading or just listening to music. Here are a few ideas that I find interesting:

BRACELET-MAKING You can pick up some string and look up different kinds of strategies to make a perfect friendship bracelet or just make a simple accessory. String may not be easily accessible for you, but paper might be.

ORIGAMI A craft I enjoy doing is origami. It is something you and your friends can do together.

MADE-UP GAMES If you don’t enjoy doing crafts, maybe try just making up games. You can simply look outside and make up a game using all your senses. A game my friends and I play is sweet or sour — you wave to people in other cars and try to get them to wave back.

SMARTPHONES Phones are a great way to pass the time. Find different apps to play with your friends. My favorite app is Heads Up! It’s a simple game all of your friends can get involved with. A few apps that you and your friends might want to try include Game of Life, Mad Libs, Bingo, Scrabble and Wheel of Fortune. A very popular app is Netflix. With Netflix, it’s very easy to watch a lot of movies and shows that interest you. Although you have to pay a certain amount each month for Netflix, you can ask your friends if they have an account that you can share. What I usually do is rent a movie before I go.

BOARD GAMES Although it might be hard to do a board game on a bus, it is worth a try. Here are a few board games I enjoy playing: Candy Land, Chutes and Ladders, Operation, Sorry, and Monopoly.

SNACKS Something I do when I’m bored is eat. It is not very healthy to eat candy for a long period of time, but you can bring healthy snacks. Some healthy snacks I enjoy are veggie chips, fruit snacks, seaweed chips, cheese and veggies. Whenever I go on a trip, we all bring snacks and share them.

MUSIC The last thing I enjoy doing on a long bus trip is listening to music. Listening to music is calming. If you are trying to go to sleep, you can start to relax by listening to soothing music and blocking out any other noises on the bus.