ATLANTA -- In the midst of holiday travel, plenty of parents find themselves dreading one particular holiday tradition -- the long car trip to grandma's house with a back seat full of bored kids.

For decades, traveling parents entertained their offspring during cross-country car treks by playing ''car games'' -- hunting road signs for the letters of the alphabet, seeking license plates from every state, counting cows at roadside farms.

But those games, some parents say, are dying, killed off by technology. Who needs ''Backseat Bingo'' when you've got packs of iPods, Playstations and in-car DVDs playing ''Finding Nemo''?

''Unfortunately, technology has taken over our car for road trips,'' Stephanie Tucker of Norcross wrote in an e-mail. ''Our two oldest children (teenagers) have their own portable CD players with the headphones and our youngest (12 years old) enjoys his handheld video games. To add insult to injury, last Christmas we bought a portable DVD player so they can watch movies in the back seat while my husband and I talk with each other up front. ... Such is life in the year 2005.''

For some families, a technological respite from Interstate boredom has become part of the routine on the annual holiday road trip.

''Our kids don't even have televisions in their rooms,'' said Beverly Bergman of Sugar Hill, who sounded almost apologetical as she added, ''but when we take long trips with the kids, we have a TV we put in the car for them to watch.''

Still, Bergman tries to follow the old ways at times. On family trips, she still plays rhyming games with her children, aged 10, 7, and 5. ''They're bored, and it keeps us awake, too,'' she said.

Then she conceded the truth: The kids prefer TV.

Juanita Little of Lawrenceville has a different approach. During her annual trip home to Philadelphia to visit family, she limits her kids' DVD watching to night time. During the day, they play car games, such as the trivia card game ''On The Go.''

''I just took a trip, and we did a trivia game called 'On the Go,' and I try to play the sign game to do the alphabet. You start with 'A' and keep going,'' Little said. ''But I don't hear about too many other people playing the games. I think technology has kind of taken over.''

Which raises a good question: Why not? Other parents think that resisting entertainment technology is like sticking with a horse and buggy.

Lori and Sonny Wadsworth of Douglasville, traveling to San Antonio with their two children, said microchips made their trip peaceful.

''One's on the Game Boy, and the other is on a computer,'' Lori said via cellphone as the Wadsworth clan passed Austin earlier this week. ''We're listening to the XM radio that my husband got me for Christmas. And I'm reading.

"It would probably be fun to do some of the games, but the car ride is a lot easier if we let them do their own thing. They're on vacation.''

Here are a few tried-and-true ideas for kid-friendly games to kill a few hours riding in the car. Remember, the rules are flexible. They often vary from family to family. Must remember: no whining.

n License plates. Be the first in the car to spot a license plate from each of the 50 states. Or play with Georgia tags only and spot as many as possible from the state's 159 counties.

n Cow poker. Takes two players or two teams. Each watches one side of the road and counts all the cows passed during the trip. At the end of the day, the player or team with the most cows wins. But if you pass a cemetery, all your cows die and you start counting all over again.

n The Alphabet Game. Be the first to spot each letter of the alphabet, in order, on road signs as you drive past. (One letter per sign, please). Soon, you, too, will be cheering when you pass a Dairy Queen and collect that Q.

n Backseat bingo. Before the trip, make paper "bingo'' cards using the standard five-by-five grid. But instead of numbers, fill the grid with the names of sights you might see while on the road: buses, trains, blue cars, red cars, a Mazda Miata with the top down, a cat, a dog, etc. Winner is the first player to mark off five squares in a row, or to fill the four corners.