When we took family trips, pillows and comforters in the car all around and the air conditioning was cranked up to iceberg. We would listen to story tapes, short ones and long ones for hours at a time.
My family used to drive from southern California to the Midwest. We would start off after bedtime and drive all night across the desert, and then stop around lunchtime at, iirc, Gallup, New Mexico.
My brother and I were supposed to sleep in the back of the station wagon.