The fifth edition of Road Trip USA: Cross-Country Adventures on America’s Two-Lane Highways (Avalon Travel, April 2009; $29.95) is now out, just in time for summer travel. In addition to having the pleasure of interviewing author Jamie Jensen last week about his updated book, he shared his top tips for taking a family road trip.

Here’s what Jensen has to say about hitting the open road with young ones:

1) Break the trip up into manageable, sane segments, rather than try to cover 600 miles at once. It’s hard for most kids to sit still for long periods of time, so stop every 90 minutes or so to get out, stretch, have an ice cream, take a swim break or see an historic marker. It makes each day special and different.

2) Let everyone make decisions, including the kids, otherwise people will get frustrated. (Dads in the driver’s seat in particular need to learn this lesson.)

3) Use the child locks in rental cars. (Jensen says his brother had a proclivity toward opening the back door during family road trips, before there were such things as child locks on doors …)

4) Have everyone use the Internet to research the trip. This lets family members learn about the destinations along the way and helps in planning itineraries. There might be sites, events or activities that the kids are excited about seeing, such as a minor league baseball game scheduled for the day you plan to pass through a destination. You can make these types of events themes for the day, or set them as a treat at the end of a day. (It’s not quite bribery, but it is effective.)

5) Use a GPS system, and let the kids program it. They’ll then be more aware of where they are and what’s coming up, plus it helps them to remember the places along the way. You can then download the route and map and have it as a memento after the trip.

Do you have a favorite family road trip tip? If so, share it here in our comment section or on the Jensen Q&A post for a chance to win the new edition of Road Trip USA. Individuals will automatically be entered into the drawing!

Giveaway rules:

• Comments must be left by Monday, May 4, 2009, 5:00 p.m. Pacific time.
• Only one entry per person.
• Comments must include a name and valid e-mail address. Anonymous comments are not eligible for the giveaway.
• To enter you must be a U.S. resident, age 18 years or older. Employees and vendors of TravelMuse, Inc. and their family members are not eligible to enter.
• Winners will be picked randomly. The first winner will receive the fifth edition of Road Trip USA, valued at $29.95. The next two winners selected will receive either the Route 66 or Pacific Coast Highway pocket guide, valued at $9.95 each.
• No substitutions including for cash are permitted.
• Winners are responsible for any taxes and fees associated with receipt or use of a prize.

In February, as the market was tanking, there was a lot of talk about 2009 being the year of the “Naycation”—aka the Lost Year, The Travel Nuclear Winter, etc.

Should this come to pass, it would be even worse than 2008, which was deemed the year of the “Staycation” by many, e.g., when people chose places close to home to visit for a day or a single over-night stay instead of really getting out on the road exploring.

We conducted a travel survey because we wanted to test this Pollyannaish theory. Turns out that the Naycation is just that—a theory. The majority of respondents to our survey were willing to make big sacrifices in other parts of their lives in order to KEEP traveling. People remain adamant about maintain their right to travel—so much so that many are willing to forego or cut back on other “luxuries,” like new clothes, fancy dinners or spa treatments.

This travel-fighting spirit and resilience needed a name; hence, the term “Yaycation” was born.

Armed with this simple understanding, we decided to empower people with a tool to help them identify ways to trim their spending in order to save some real dough for traveling—the Yaycations Calculator. It helps individuals see how much they’re spending on lattes, lunches and more, and identify where they can cut back.

They can then parlay that “found money” into trips to amazing destinations. Check it out, and let us know what you think. Where do you want to go today?

Kevin & Eric

After several months of end-user testing, countless design cycles and many, many cases of Diet Mountain Dew and Red Bull, we are excited to bring you the totally redesigned, simpler yet more powerful, TravelMuse Planner.

The Planner still lets you organize all of your travel research into one central location, create an itinerary and involve your co-travelers in the planning process. But with this release, you also get new robust Mapping and Search Tools that enable you to quickly find and save the information you are looking for—be it articles on a given destination or specific places to sleep, eat and see. You can also now use proximity search to find nearby restaurants, hotels and attractions that are closest to a given location—and view search results plotted out on a map.

In addition, we’ve incorporate more than 2 million user ratings and reviews for hotels, restaurants and attractions from TravelMuse and other Web sites, including Travelocity, TripAdvisor, Yahoo! Travel and more.

Finally, we’ve introduced Customized Travel Guides. You can now create a personalized travel guide—on the fly—that is 100 percent personalized and contains all your important saved research, with maps, your schedule and a detailed city guide. You can build, share and print tailor-made travel guides to take on vacation at no charge.

This is our proudest day at TravelMuse yet. We’ve listened to our users, engaged them in the design process and released something that we think is market leading. We hope you agree.

Kevin & Eric

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Hacienda San Angel in Puerto Vallarta, and wishing I wasn’t leaving. After spending five days in this fantastic Mexican coastal town, my absolutely favorite thing has been this beautiful hacienda in the old part of the city, with 21 rooms spread throughout five different buildings.

Once you’re enclosed within the hacienda, you’ve got three swimming pools to choose from, a handful of common areas (with Wi-Fi and even a free telephone to call people within the United States and Canada), a friendly and attentive staff, and the feeling that you’ve been transported back in time when you have all day to relax and do absolutely nothing. If you want to explore, you’re within walking distance of the old town and the shopping district, as well as the malecón (the seaside walkway).

When I arrived here two days ago, I immediately felt that I wanted to call home and send for my things so I could move in. I’ll blog more about my trip this week, and will have some Puerto Vallarta articles on the site soon. In the meantime, check out www.haciendasanangel.com and see if you don’t want to move in too.

The screams. The cries. The drool.

The sighs. The eye-rolls. The requests to be moved or have them moved.

The apologies. The shoulder shrugs. The stares of indifference.

Kids are simply excited, scared or bored. Passengers just want some quiet. Parents hope the flight goes as quickly and smoothly as possible; some understanding from their fellow fliers would be appreciated as well. I won’t even begin to speculate on the flight crew’s desires.

The recurring topic of whether or not there should be child-free zones on airplanes—or even child-free flights or family-only flights—is in the news again. The U.K. division of TripAdvisor has released the results of its March 2009 travel survey, which revealed that 79 percent of the 509 respondents say that there should be child-free zones on planes.

Photo: Daily Mail

A full 88 percent of respondents without children want an adults-only section, while 71 percent of traveling parents agree with them—with 20 percent admitting they sometimes wish they could sit in a separate section of the plane from their offspring due to their misbehavior!

I know after my return flight from Montréal last week that featured a young child whom parents let scream, run up and down the aisle, and regularly kick the seat in from him, I would have paid double to ensure a peaceful flight, sans enfant, especially after the little guy stumbled into me, bracing himself with saliva-covered fingers. (OK, well maybe not double, but a premium.)

On the other hand, there are kids who are fabulously well-behaved and can even make a flight more fun, compelling passengers sitting behind them into impromptu games of hide-and-seek and such. I also think that having kids surrounded by so many adults might help them to be on their best grown-up behavior, whereas if all the families on a flight are grouped together, … well, we all know the strength-in-numbers rule.

So a majority of passengers—both with and without kids—want adults-only sections on planes; however, it’s an unlikely proposition, especially with the economy still in flux.

Question is, if such a section were available, would you be willing to pay extra for it, and if so, how much? Or do you think family travelers are the ones who should pay extra for a kids-only section of the plane?

Giveaway deal: The first 25 people to answer with a comment on this post will be eligible to win a copy of Frommer’s 500 Places to Take Your Kids Before They Grow Up or Frommer’s 500 Places to See Before They Disappear, both by Holly Hughes.