withoutwhatifs

So, we’ve been out on the road for almost two weeks now and there are a few things that I have learned about road tripping… and I learned them very quickly.

First… make sure your camper tires are chalked before you unhook said camper from your truck. Purchased blocks or even just pieces of wood will do. This will make sure that your camper doesn’t roll away… off the camping pad, making horrible noises… and embarrassing the shit out of you… and your wife… and even your dog will want to hide under the truck. Oh, and everyone in the campground will stare… for awhile.

Despite what you think… you can’t do all the driving… it’s tough to hand over those reigns… but after a couple days of driving for 4-7 hours… you’ll fold… you have to. Share the wheel.

National Park Campgrounds… a lot of people said “make sure you reserve a spot in advance…” Little did they know that when you call to reserve that spot they tell you it’s first come first serve… Which leads to Site Stalking… you hear whispers about it in questionable crowds… around late night campfires, and in hushed tones at the visitor’s center… but make no mistake… Site Stalking is for serious. Site Stalking is when you get to a campground and cruise through the loops looking to see who’s going to be checking out that day. Keep in mind, this is taking place at 5am to 6am… Once you find a decent spot that happens to be checking out that day, you stalk that site until you see someone moving around… then you just coincidentally happen to be in the area of their site and ask if they’re leaving… if they are, you fill out a site tag and put it where there’s is… this way, people getting to the campground after you will see your departure date, and move along. I don’t know if this is cheating… but it has to happen. It’s the natural order of things…

(No photographic evidence allowed… but it happened)

Be prepared to be tired the first week or two… maybe it’s because we’ve been moving so much to get across country to the places we wanted to spend more time… but you’re going to feel exhausted, even if you just spent 8 hours in a car… You’re going to need rest… make sure you plan for it. If you don’t… you end up laying down at 5:30 for a quick nap, and you wake up at 5am… (Although this is great for Site Stalking)

Another thing we’ve learned the hard way is that the scenic route is not always the best route, especially when you’ve already been on the road for 5+ hours, and the “scenic route” ends up adding two-three hours to your driving time, leaves you driving up and down a super steep mountain, in complete darkness through wind and rain storms, dodging deer, and coming very close to running out of gas. Sure, it was scenic, until the sun went down and it quickly turned into a white-knuckle, terrifying drive.

And then there’s Walmart. When in need of a free, easy place to pull over, park, and sleep for the night, Walmart parking lots are awesome, well lit, less sketchy than a rest stop, and it’s a lot easier than reversing into a tight campground spot in the dark. Plus in the morning, we were able to stock up on groceries and use their bathrooms to brush our teeth, as people looked at us like we were homeless.