Good times are a top priority here. From time to time, we all forget to make the best of what comes along and act a tad like cynical sticks in the mud. It’s cool, but listen: you're sowing the seeds of your own sadness with resistance to what happens along the way. If your car breaks down and you're stuck for three days in Nowheresville because Bob the mechanic has to mail order a part to fix your radiator, it's up to you to make the most of that weird, boring, memorable experience.

If you're not embracing the moment, you're creating resistance to what is and totally sabotaging yourself dude.

9. Play the best road trip games:

The High-Five Game. Collect as many high-fives as possible from strangers in a set amount of time. This is a great game to play at rest stops, downtown, or in other congested areas. Usually, you're limited to one high-five per person, but convincing a stranger to give you one hundred high-fives is pretty awesome and should be considered a viable option as well.

The Anal RV Game. It’s not what you think! RV's just have the best names. Add the word “anal” before or after to make them even better.

One Hundred Yard Dash. Sometimes after hours of driving the best thing you can do is pull over and hold a good ole' fashioned foot race down the side of the highway with your friends. It's good for the soul, for your sense of freedom, and gets the blood flowing in your legs. If you've been sitting for hours, there's a decent chance someone will tweak a muscle — keep this in mind, especially in your first couple steps off the line.

High Stakes Musical Chairs. Many know this as a “chinese fire drill,” but that's kind of racist, so I just made up another term right now. The driver stops at a red light, puts the vehicle in park, and yells “high stakes musical chairs!!!” Everyone must exit the vehicle and find a new seat before the light turns green. If the light does turn green and someone takes longer to get back in than everyone else, the new driver is free to leave them at the intersection. It's in good taste to make them walk less than a mile to get back to the car, but teasing them by lightly stepping on the gas as they're about to climb back in a couple times is highly encouraged.

Padiddle. Someone spots a vehicle with one headlight out: they yell “Padiddle!” and slap the roof of the car. Everyone else must slap the roof of the car. The last person to do so must remove an article of clothing. Clothing cannot be reapplied until the next destination is reached. For a greater frequency of clothing loss opportunities other happenings can be added such as yellow lights, certain types of cars, and road signs.

10. Don't use your phone too much.

Your phone is the chief distraction from everything unfolding in front of you. It tethers you to home, to news, to social media – to everything going on somewhere else. Part of the purpose of the road trip is to step away from your life back home and view it from an outside-in perspective. Your phone can totally sabotage this perspective switch.

Use your phone for good: for navigation, music, finding what's best to do today, letting your people know you're alive etc. Not for evil: allowing news and social media to pollute your experience, a means of alleviating boredom, or withdrawing from awkward situations etc.

11. Take photos after the experience.

Perhaps the slipperiest, most dangerous combination of technology is a camera paired with social media, offering a trade our socially-wired brains are too tempted to make: the firsthand experience of life for future social approval. Which is why places people want to see most have paradoxically become places where people see least. Instead of revel in wonder, most opt to siphon the experience through the straw of a screen as they set their mind to extracting a profile picture from the experience.

A complex problem we could spend much thought examining, there's a simple solution: experience it first, capture it after.

12. Navigate without turn-by-turn directions.

Map Apps are not designed to get us there the best way, they’re designed to get us there the fastest way. Leaving interstates for “blue highways,” the backroads of America, offers a more varied, authentic experience away from the corporate-chain-lined, high-speed grooves of interstate-sameness paved across our country. As CBS correspondent Charles Kuralt once so perfectly put it:

“Thanks to the Interstate Highway System, it is now possible to travel across the country from coast to coast without seeing anything.”

Instead, seek the scenic route. This is most easily done with a set of printed maps, but you can use your map app without asking it for directions as well. At minimum, consciously choose between the couple routes your GPS offers. A big part of a road trip is deciding where you’re going to go. Don't totally entrust your adventure to algorithms — make some decisions, and mistakes, yourself.

13. Go when the going is good.