At some point in every long road trip, you hit the wall. Not literally, I hope, but a figurative wall: You’re on a nondescript highway in the middle of nowhere, you’ve been “about two hours away” for something like six hours, one person is hangry but won’t eat the barbecue-flavored pistachios you got at the last gas station, someone else has had to pee for like 50 miles, and the shuffled playlist keeps hitting only the shitty songs. In other words, it’s all gone to cranky, passive aggressive hell, and it feels like the whole road trip was a bad idea.

But there is one simple solution to avoid all of the ennui, bad energy, and exasperation: Break up the trip.

It’s a straightforward pitch, but splitting up even a medium-length road trip by stopping overnight in the middle has made my driving days infinitely better over the last half-decade. For extended car trips—including ones as short as five hours—add one night at the beginning of the trip to stop about halfway between home and your endpoint, so that you have fewer hours to drive each day. Every leg of the trip feels more manageable, and even if you have to sacrifice one night at the destination, it’s more than worth the trade off to arrive calmer, happier, and ready to enjoy your vacation.