Tips For Celebrating Thanksgiving On The Road

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If you live far away from the rest of the family like we do, perhaps we could inspire you to start thinking about celebrating Thanksgiving on the road with your own nuclear family! Call it a Thanksgiving adventure (or road trip), if you will–a great time to appreciate nature, history, and some much needed family time.

7 Tips For Celebrating Thanksgiving On The Road

Amid the heavier traffic during the busy holiday season, there are many wonderful options to explore when celebrating Thanksgiving on the road! We’re sharing 7 tips to help you plan and enjoy your upcoming family adventure!

Tip #1:  Get an oil change while shopping for road trip essentials

Isn’t it great when you’re able to accomplish two or more things on your To-Do List all at once? And, it’s even better when you get to save some money in the process!

Savings Alert: You can get an oil change with Pennzoil® Platinum Full Synthetic Motor Oil at the Walmart Automotive Care Center for only $44.88 (it’s on Rollback from $49.88 to $44.88 through December 27, 2016).

We let the experts make our life easier by getting the oil changed with Pennzoil at Walmart’s Automotive Care Center (while we shopped for some road trip essentials and Fall / holiday stuff at Walmart). By the way, we keep a running shopping list handy (on our phone) to make sure we don’t forget anything! Bet we’re not the only ones who do that!

Tip #2:  Plan your route

Some of the questions we like to ask ourselves before heading out are:

• Will we be taking the back roads / main road / combination of both?
• Do we want to see some scenic highways and byways along the way?

Most of the time, our decisions are based on places that we’d like to visit and we go from there. Of course, the weather conditions trump our route preferences (as does the traffic). We use a combination of apps and hard copy maps to guide us along the way.

There’s just something extra gratifying about reading the “hard copy maps” while going out on a road trip adventure (at least, for us). We don’t always stick to our original route plan (whether intentionally or unintentionally), and there are places where the GPS just doesn’t catch (we haven’t forgotten about our experience trying to find a shorter route to get out of Glacier National Park–but, we’ll save that for another post).

Are you the type who sticks to your route plan?

Tip #3:  Leave early (if you can)

If you can manage to hit the road before everybody else does for Thanksgiving, all the better! And, if you live in the Southeast like we do, chances are, you might still be able to catch what’s left of the color change. This year, we hope to visit the Japanese Gardens of Gibbs Gardens in North Georgia before heading up to the Northeast for Thanksgiving. We heard they’ve got an exceptional display of Fall colors through November 20th.

Tip #4:  Take a “nature stop” while stretching your legs

With some planning, we’ve been able to squeeze in some nature stops during our road trips. Thanksgiving season (and all throughout the Winter) is a good time to go birding here in Florida. From short hikes to nature drives, there’s plenty of opportunity to see and photograph wildlife. It’s a nice break!

Who knows? You just might be able to spot some wild turkeys roaming around during this time of year 😉

If you’re able to pad some extra time in your Thanksgiving travels, check out the Great Florida Birding and Wildlife Trail website (or a similar nature website in your area) for some ideas!

Tip #5:  Plan your meals (and snacks)

There’s a number of good family-friendly restaurants out there that are open on Thanksgiving. According to an article that shares ideas for dining out in Florida during Thanksgiving, the National Restaurant Association published a study which concluded that 11% of Americans celebrate Thanksgiving Day by dining out in one of the nation’s 945,000 restaurants.

Don’t forget to pack snacks that are great for road trip picnics (if that’s your thing)! Homemade granola in mason jars is one of our favorites. What’s yours?

Tip #6:  Leverage technology to connect with friends and family

Despite being away from family during Thanksgiving, we’re still able to connect with them by scheduling a time for a video chat! These days, we have Skype, Google Hangouts, Facebook Chat, and more–all on our smart phone (or tablet)! Sometimes, we purposely find a fun location for the video chat, so that it feels as if we’re all traveling together! Fun locations also make great backdrops for family photos (the ones we mail out just before Christmas… cough… we hope to get ’em out early this year)!

Tip #7:  Visit a historic monument

Thanksgiving is a great time to visit a historic monument to remember our nation’s roots. We remember spending a chilly afternoon in our nation’s capital before heading out to Plymouth, Massachusetts.

A trip to Plymouth, Massachusetts, is what originally sparked our interest to go on a Thanksgiving Road Trip. That was 2 years ago (already)! It’s where we got to see the National Monument To The Forefathers for the first time. It was pretty dark and cold that night, so we had to crank up the ISO on our camera to get this shot. We hope to go back this year so we can get a better shot–and we’re bringing a tripod this time!

Speaking of the cold…

Did you know that full synthetic oil performs much better in extreme hot and cold temperatures? Plus, Pennzoil Platinum® Full Synthetic Motor Oil with PurePlus™ Technology keeps pistons up to 20% cleaner than required by the toughest industry standard (and it keeps your engine cleaner than any leading synthetic oil).

We hope we inspired you with some trip ideas / tips for celebrating Thanksgiving on the road!

Remember to take care of your vehicle’s oil change before you go! Walmart is a good one stop shop for preparing your vehicle for the colder weather approaching.

If you’re located in one of the following states, it’s good to know that the following Walmart Automotive Care Centers in these states are now able to benefit from oil changes with Pennzoil® Platinum Full Synthetic Motor Oil: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Tennessee

Click here to find a Walmart Automotive Care Center near you!

Don’t forget that you can take advantage of the Rollback price of $44.88 on Pennzoil® Platinum Full Synthetic at your local Walmart Automotive Care Center through December 27, 2016 ($49.88 Rollback to $44.88).

Happy travels!

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