We all dream of that feeling of being free, prancing around in bare feet, feeling the wind in our hair, and hanging our hands out of the window of a fast-moving car. We all fantasise about leaving the safety and regularity of our everyday lives and living, if just for a moment or two, with nowhere to be and nothing you have to do. It’s this allure of freedom, among other things, that makes the dream of an American road trip so desirable.
We want to marvel at sights we’ve seen in movies, look up at the stars and relax under the candy floss skies. We want to drive along a road with no end with music bellowing from the car stereo and snacks piled high in the cup holder.
I found myself doing just that at the beginning of the year, sleeping in a teepee to the sounds of wolves howling at a full moon and stopping on the side of the road for a snowball fight – and I’ve never felt so free.
Of course, there are a lot of things we don’t imagine, like getting stuck on a highway, in peak hour traffic because one of you (okay, it was me) misread Google Maps or driving along a beautiful highway, only to have a truck sped past you and flick a stone into your window and cause a crack (thankfully, we didn’t get charged for it.)
For all of the hours you spend familiarising yourself with maps of the area, you can’t predict what could happen on a road trip. Even this blog post can’t completely help you, what it can do, is share our tips for having the perfect road trip and also share some of the things we wish we had known (and packed).
Don’t try and drive the whole thing
There are many sights to see and places to explore that can only be reached by car, and I highly recommend driving as much as you can, after all, this is a road trip! But if you, and your travel buddy, want to survive it’s vital you both get time to relax, which is hard if you’re driving 7-8 hours a day, just to have one day exploring a new place. Don’t drive more than 4 hours a day, that was our number one rule and was only broken on the one day we met traffic delays. Any more than 4 hours and you’re exhausted, and that night and your next day is ruined by tiredness and crankiness.
Do your research and see how long it takes and what’s worth driving, for example we flew between Colorado and Texas because that’s a huge drive and we didn’t have time to stop and we caught the train from Houston to New Orleans because we read it wasn’t an overly exciting drive (compared to what we had already seen).
We drove the following over one month, with many, many stops: LA – SANTA MONICA – VEGAS – GRAND CANYON – WILLIAMS – MONUMENT VALLEY – COLORADO SPRINGS – DENVER. I highly recommend driving this as over this time (and in the space of a few hours) we saw incredibly beautiful scenery, our highlights were Monument Valley, Million Dollar Highway (part of the San Juan Skyway) and the snowy drive from Denver to the Rocky Mountains.
Think Like Your Mum and Dad
It’s likely your mum and dad are not on this trip with you, though I’m sure you’re getting messages each morning and night asking for regular updates … but the issue with not having wise parentals on the trip is that there’s no one to remind you to do the basic, but important, things like go toilet before you leave ANYWHERE, even if you don’t need to go … and to always pack snacks, and a little water. It’s also important to make sure your snacks have some healthy options, cause once you’ve eaten your way through truck stop burgers and hotdogs, you’ll probably be ready for some fruit.
Of course, there are other basic but very important things like:
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- Check you have enough petrol for each day, cause sometimes small places will not have a gas station and that can make for a very, very stressful leg of the trip …
- Have Google Maps at the ready and downloaded should you get lost in the middle of nowhere (because if you’re going to get lost, it’s going to be then).
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- If you’re hiring a rental car, take photos before and after just in case! And always, always fuel up before dropping the car off. I know it sounds basic, but at 3AM you’ll probably forget and you don’t wanna know how much it costs to fuel up … a lot, for the record.
- Consider the time of year you’re going and the type of car you get. We had a small engine, and a car that was not fit for the snow, and while we survived we were lucky not to get stuck at any point…