What a Trip!

Craig

Sep 7, 20219 min read

One funny challenge we’ve been grappling with is how to plan out our life on the road. There are many factors we need to consider as we decide where to go, how to get there, and how long to stay.

SLEEPING AROUND

The most important factor I like to consider is where we plan to sleep that night. We’ve created quite a toolbelt for figuring out a nice sleeping spot and we flip through our arsenal when planning out our days. For a free night’s sleep, we first look at the RV Parky app, which lists area Walmarts, Cracker Barrels, and other roadside spots and also includes user-generated data to ensure that overnight parking is allowed at these spots. I love the user reviews, as it gives extra peace of mind that others have successfully spent the night in these places. If we’re looking for some local fun spots or more scenic overnights, we’ll take a look at Harvest Host, where we’ve had some lovely and peaceful nights at farms and wineries. As we learn how long our water tanks last, we’ll also factor in overnights at local campgrounds. These are great spots to enjoy some outdoor grilling, fill up on water, and empty our trashcan. Campgrounds are also a great spot for us to feel like we’re getting our little home re-settled for some more time on the road. As we’ve moved out west to areas that have federal lands, we’ve started getting our feet wet with dispersed camping. One exceptionally useful service for that is an app called FreeRoam. It is a free app that offers surprisingly robust features and a very well-designed interface. In the app you can select various filters of things to show like public or private campgrounds, overnight stays like Cracker Barrels and rest stops and even amenities like dumping and filling stations. In addition, you can display layers on the map showing cell carriers’ reported service areas, federal lands and even fire and smoke hazards. The site reviews even list the expected cell service for the major carriers. It’s an app that we’ve started utilizing much more now that we have BLM and Forestry Service lands to boondock on, but will likely keep in rotation when we head back east.

WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?

Once we feel that we can securely find a spot to sleep for the night, the next thing to consider is what to do in each area! We like to balance outdoor activities like hiking and kayaking with more "tourist" activities like strolling a downtown or visiting the popular spots. We particularly love to do "food tourism;" trying foods and drinks that are special to a region. Vermont is known for its craft beer scene and its cheese, so we tend to indulge in those when we're there. We try to balance spending conservatively with ensuring we can fully experience and enjoy our destinations. As much as we do love dining out in new places, we do have to feel that it’s “worth it.” Are we trying something innovative and cool? Is this a regional treat? Are we missing an ethnic cuisine that we haven’t had in a while? Breakfast is a meal that we almost never eat out for, largely because we can make ourselves a good breakfast on the cheap. Fast food is another thing we tend to eschew in our travels. As vegetarians, there’s only so much fast food that is accessible to us, anyway, (although there is more and more, every day) and it tends not to be worth it. When we’re doing long stretches of traveling, we prefer to make sandwiches or eat snacks while we drive. Figuring out where it’s worth spending a few dollars can be tricky, since it involves poring over a bunch of menus online, but sometimes it just pans out, like when you stumble across a Lebanese restaurant and get to order a dish that your grandmother used to make.

An interesting issue that feels like the definition of a "first-world problem" is that there are so many options available when planning our trip. Because we only have a framework of anchor events to plan around, that means we're often able to do whatever we want. That can present a challenge because how do you narrow things down from a nearly limitless list? As an outsider, it can be hard to know what's truly worth doing in a particular city or state. Is Giant Cow in Wilkes-Barre worth a special trip? Should we visit the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame? If we go to this ball of twine should we skip the other or make sure to go so we can compare? It can, frankly, be a little exhausting sifting through so many cities and towns and points of interest. What has been especially helpful in our trip planning to new cities and towns are websites like Trip Advisor that offer lists like "Top 20 Attractions in Tulsa" and Atlas Obscura for finding some off-beat fun.

ARE YOU FUR REAL?

One of the issues we have had in our planning is ensuring that places are dog-friendly. Since we travel with our dogs and do not have air conditioning, they go practically wherever we go. It can be especially frustrating to find that an outdoor park or destination does not allow pets, particularly when it's not well-noted on their website. In many circumstances we try our best to understand why pets may not be welcome, but sometimes it seems arbitrary or just outright exclusionary. These challenges can complicate our trip planning as a surprise "No Pets Allowed' sign can derail our agenda. We're going to work on checking Bring Fido and checking other sources before assuming that places will accommodate our furry companions.

On the matter of traveling with dogs, we should discuss hotels. For us, we tend to use hotel stays as an opportunity to keep the dogs in a safe, secure, comfortable space with temperature control while we do things that aren’t dog-friendly. The only wrinkle in that planning is that not all dog-friendly hotels are created equal. Many hotels will have size, number or breed restrictions - you can have a combination of pets up to X pounds, only one pet, no Pit Bulls or Rottweilers, etc. Another primary factor is whether a hotel allows unattended pets - something that we had not expected. We had assumed that all pet hotels would allow the fur-guests to remain in the room, but many forbid it and some require crating for unattended pets. Most hotels that allow pets charge an additional pet fee, for which we’ve seen ranges from $25 to $100 per pet. I’d like to believe that those fees are intended to cover additional cleaning services to handle things like allergens for subsequent guests. That said, it can be a bit of work to find the right hotel for your needs, but it is possible. Bring Fido can be a great starting point, but many hotel booking sites also offer a “Pets Allowed” filter to aid in the searching. When in doubt on pet policies, call the front desk and clarify. Please be a respectful guest and don’t try to sneak your pet in to avoid the fees; hotels don’t have to allow us to bring our four (or less)-legged companions with us and we should all try not to give them reasons to change their policies. Also, at least one hotel policy we encountered charged a much higher fee for discovering unannounced pets.

PARKING

We are fortunate in having a short bus that we can often fit reasonably well into street or lot parking. Parking structures, however, are completely off the table for us. Having tackled some of our first cities, we're learning how to navigate that new facet to our plans. One thing, in particular, we've learned is that not all "lots" listed on Google Maps are truly open lots. Many parking structures are listed as lots and the opposite has also been true. We'll probably start factoring a "Street View" in when deciding where to park in cities. Some cities have specifically allocated large vehicle parking, like St. Augustine which provided a free lot for large trucks, trailers and RVs.

THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Another big priority for us is outdoor time. We'll use lists like the ones we find online to also find nice National or State parks, or even local gems. We've also been known to enjoy an afternoon stroll through a beautiful cemetery! Once we've settled on a park, we'll check their website to see if they have any recommended hikes or sights to see. I'll also use AllTrails to look for popular hikes and mileage for different hikes to figure out what we're in the mood for. Our Reese is 10.5 years old, and while I sometimes think I need to take it easy on him, that boy is our personal trainer!! He's got the energy of a puppy when scaling up elevation on hikes. We’re also not above Googling “Best dog-friendly hikes in The Catskills” (see what I did there?) to find something suitable for our little munchkins. If someone else has taken the time to do the research and put the information out there, why not use it?

ALL WORK AND NO PLAY MAKES CHARLOTTE A CLEAN BUS

As sexy as accounting for chores can be, it’s not our favorite part of trip scheduling. We tend to use chore days as rest days. It's not that we're just lounging around, but we're not hiking and kayaking on those days. We'll find a coin-operated laundromat and clean our bedding and laundry, taking time to clean the counters, sweep the floors and tidy up while our laundry gets tossed around. We need to take care of our chores approximately every week, so that means making sure we're in a moderately sized town that often. So far we haven't had much trouble, in that regard. We've been able to locate plenty of laundromats and one state park we stayed in in South Dakota even offered a few laundromats distributed throughout the park.

LET'S GET TANKED!

Finding fresh water and dump stations is something that we haven't had a ton of experience with. One of our new favorite apps, FreeRoam, lets you locate dump stations, fresh water, non-potable water, trash and showers. When we arrived at one state park, knowing we were low on water, we asked an employee at the camping area whether it would be alright for us to fill up. We've only tried it one time but, if we end up in a similar situation in the future, we'd certainly try it again. Our primary sources for fresh water and dump stations have been campgrounds. We enjoy the occasional night in a campground anyway, so we sprinkle them into our trip planning to make sure we've always got water in our tanks.

Speaking of tanks, fuel is a big factor in our travels. A day primarily comprised of driving will use a whole tank of fuel, approximately 35 gallons. If you haven't seen a fuel pump in a while, that adds up fast! We do our best to find fuel savings where we can - as a T-Mobile subscriber we regularly get fuel savings at Shell and we use GasBuddy to help us find the best rates in the area. In addition to finding the best prices, we also try to maximize our fuel economy. We use a device called a ScanGauge to monitor many of our vehicle's on board computer data and diagnostics. Some of the data available includes current and average fuel consumption, on a per-trip basis. By monitoring our active consumption and the average, we can modify our driving habits to maximize both. More miles per gallon means less dollars per day, which is a real bonus! While we try not to let our tank get too low (especially with a sometimes-unreliable fuel gauge), we do also carry a spare five gallons for emergency situations. Since we have Google Maps in our dashboard, we can also use that to locate fuel stations, but it doesn't allow us to filter out stations that don't serve diesel.

EXERCISE

Another consideration we have to make is exercise, for us and the boys. Emily has taken up running, so every other day we need to find a nice place for her to get out and stretch her legs. On long travel days we also try to start off with a good walk for Reese and Winston to get out and work off some energy and strut their stuff. It's not exactly challenging to find parks and green spaces, but it can be hard to get an impression of how nice a place will be for Emily's morning run.

ALL TOGETHER NOW!

We typically will look for places along a particular route - if our next confirmed destination is Kansas City, we'll plug it into Google Maps and take a look at what's along the way. We'll decide if we want to break up longer stretches with a few planned pit stops or if we want to get some miles behind us. Once we've found a place that checks off a few of our needs, like filling our various tanks, providing some activities and a place to sleep, we can add it to our calendar. We usually keep our schedule in pencil and paper so we can improvise and make changes as we deem necessary. We try to keep a decent weekly plan while also leaving room for improvisation, detours, and random roadside fun!