How to Prepare for Four Weeks on the Road?

Almost every road trip begins with the research necessary to create a game plan of desired destinations or sights to see.  For me, knowing hours of operation, sunrise/sunset and average daily temps are all important things to know when cobbling together my itinerary.  This is just one page of the work that went into my framing out my anticipated 25 days on the road.

The other key piece of information necessary to have is the travel route and time/distance between destinations.  I still find MapQuest to be the best online tool for my purposes.  Sometimes it feels like information overload, but time and again, I find myself thankful for the amount of research and detail I document before leaving home.  This is especially important when audibles are necessary due to unforeseen situations like weather, illness or just spending more time in one place than originally expected.

For this trip, here's how my mapping looked . . . I know it's very busy but all of the data was helpful while out on the road.

For those who followed along via Facebook, you probably recognize that I did in fact do a big end-of-trip audible working my way home through Topeka, KS rather than heading up into Nebraska.  That was somewhat of a mid-trip decision as to whether or not I wanted to stop in on the Professional Women's Bowling Association (PWBA) tour stop or check out the Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park in central Nebraska.  My love for bowling won out!

Once the research and routing have been completed, the next step is deciding where to overnight and whether car camping or some other overnight accommodations are preferred.  Calendaring was essential to organize my day-to-day plans, as well as to provide David with something to follow along as he monitored my trip to make sure I was safe.

Again this trip was unique not only in the number of days/nights on the road, but also the fact that I had friends & family along the way who had invited me to stay with them.  These were wonderful opportunities to spend quality time with some people who are very dear to me.  Their homes were a nice comfortable break to not only sleeping in my SUV, but also to share enjoyable meals with them.  Thank you Cindy, Dawn & Debbie for sharing your homes and local communities with me.  I will fondly look back on this trip and my time spent with you as highlights.

I realize that this may be way more planning and detail than most people do for a road trip.  I also know that sometimes you just want to get in the car and go.  But given my interests in specific US National Park locations and the fact that I was heading out during spring break and traveling over Easter weekend, I knew that to stay inside many of the top national parks in the country, I would need to book campsites when they first become available . . . which is generally six months prior.  So for many of my camping plans, I was booking back in October/November.  This was the case for Joshua Tree NP, Zion NP and Arches NP.  Some parks' campgrounds were on a first come-first serve basis which created other challenges.  In the case of Death Valley NP, I booked a campsite at the adjacent Xanterra property . . . and for Bryce Canyon NP, I reserved a nice room at the local Best Western hotel.  Some campgrounds were wide open even late in the planning stages, like Hovenweep NM which I booked just a week prior to hitting the road.

As much as I too would like to wing it on most road trips, it did bite me in the butt the night I was heading into Colorado after an early spring snow storm heading out of New Mexico.  My unplanned side trip (and hour long visit) to a vintage era bowling alley had me looking well into the evening for a campground.  Thankfully David was able to provide an assist, although the local motels I was considering booked up quickly, causing me to settle for a KOA with a less than desirable set up for me car camping in the winter weather.  But at the end of the day, it all worked out and set me up for a wonderful morning in La Junta, CO where I met some nice folks and had a great blueberry pancake breakfast!

About my SUV car camping set up . . . I have been car camping now for over 10  years in my Hyundai Santa Fe.  When we bought it back in 2014, I specifically wanted to be sure it would be comfortable enough to sleep in.  David & I have worked over the years to perfect my bedroll, and this trip was no exception in terms of a new learning curve.  That said, I believe my next trip out (July to NY) will be even better that last year's!

I've had folks ask me about my specific bedroll set up . . . so here it is!  We use a packing blanket underneath the lower half of the sleeping area.  With my 60/40 split back seat, the 60% side is the perfect width for my body.  The packing blanket helps to level out some of the steepness from the head to foot, leaving what I feel is a perfect amount of incline for my upper body & head.  I have a 2" camping air mattress as the bottom layer, with a 3" memory foam mattress pad added for comfort.

As far as my bedding, I have used just a sleeping bag . . . and I have also made the bed like at home with a sheet, blanket and comforter/quilt on top.  My latest version is a hybrid with a sheet used to cover the bedding (memory foam mattress) folded in such as way as the bottom acts as a cover sheet and then top is over me as the first layer of covers.  I have a nice fleece blanket to put over me if I get chilly at night . . . and then if I really get cold, I can unzip and open my sub-zero sleeping bag and lay it over me as I would a top comforter or bedspread.  It dropped into the mid 30's several nights and I stayed toasty warm!

Planning for eating on the road is a major process too.  Thinking about what general meals to have eating out of a cooler and dry box, rather than the drive-thru or restaurants is a major consideration.  As much as I enjoy a good meal in a diner, I don't like taking time out of my day to stop and eat.  Often my preference is to make a quick bowl of cereal or a sandwich while sitting and enjoying nature around me.

I do pack a box with the stuff I need to grill while on the road, but I have never round it very convenient to do.  That said, I will probably always carry what I need (charcoal, starters, lighter and grill utensils) even if they aren't used.  You can see "that box" of supplies in the photo above, to the right of my bedroll.

The box in the photo to the left is my "dry box" which general has snack items, cans of soup, crackers, bread and trail mix.

In the front passenger floorboard is my Kooltron cooler which runs AC/DC and is a wonderful improvement over regular ice dependent coolers. When I first start out on any road trip, I almost always have some precooked bacon and hard boiled eggs in the cooler.  They make a nice breakfast, and a day or two into the trip, I enjoy making egg salad for lunch.

There are times when I need to supplement this cooler with ice, since the refrigeration doesn't run when the car engine is off.  Generally if the nighttime temps are below 50° F this cooler will keep things safe.  But for nights like in Death Valley when it was still in the 70's overnight, I did add a bag of ice to help keep my milk and yogurt cold.  For nights spent in a hotel, I can take the cooler into my room and plug it into the wall outlet to run it through the night.  It really is a very versatile cooler which I'm glad to have.

I will have a separate blog post about dining on the road, with a lot of photos of some of the "meals" I had while on this trip.

In the meantime, I will close this entry with a photo of perhaps the most important meal prep that happens before I hit the road . . .