Video: Road Trip Essentials

And if you pretell your beverages, before you put them in the cooler, it's going to help stay cooler for longer. I would also recommend using cool packs instead of actual ice to save the mess from the ice melting. And you put these in on top of the drinks to make sure that the cool air stays down on the drinks. And then you put the cooler in a place that's easily accessible, so everybody can reach it. And also try to keep it out of the sun to keep your drinks cooler for longer. It can be a pain to lug around a bunch of car adapters. So if you plan to use a lot of mobile electronics in your car, you might want to invest in a power inverter. This inverter has two outlets and is rated to 150 Watts. Now you're going to want to check the electronics that you're plugging in here before you do that, because you want to make sure you don't overload the inverter. A GPS is useful to have, especially if you're traveling in an area that you're not familiar with. A lot of cars have GPS as an option. If your car doesn't have that, you can buy a portable unit like this one, where you can get step-by-step directions to an address that you input into it. On a road trip. you obviously need music and if you don't feel like bringing along a bunch of CDs, an MP3 player is probably a good option. A lot of cars have MP3 jacks that you can directly connect your MP3 player to. But if you don't have one of those, an FM transmitter uses radio waves to play the music from your iPod through your car stereo. One of the most common problems you can have when you're out on the road is to have your battery die, which is why it's a good idea to bring along a pair of jumper cables. Now, jumping a car can be a little intimidating if you've never done it before, but if you know what you're doing, it's actually pretty simple. On this particular model, the Corolla, you're going to want to take the red clamp and put it onto the metal part of the positive battery terminal, and then take the negative clamp and ground it against something metal and unpainted. So now we should be just about ready to hit the road. For cars.com, I'm Lindsay Bjerregaard. And I'm Alex Braun. <v Announcer>For additional information on this car or any other, go to cars.com and our blog KickingTires.