Tips + Tricks
for Your next Epic Road Trip

travel tips

Do you find yourself still itching with that travel bug and aching for adventure? Well, look no further! Here are my top ten tips to help you make the most out of your next road trip...

#1. Get your car checked out ahead of time! I cannot emphasize this enough—if I wouldn’t have gotten my car inspected, I would have never known that my brake pads were dull and needed replaced, and who knows what terrible things would have happened then! Do it folks, you'll thank yourself later.

#2 Bring snacks—even if you’re a healthy eater. Typically I like to keep my snacking down, but on long road trips when the only way to make good time is to keep stops to a minimum, it’s critical to have food (even just granola bars) in the car. When my family and I went through Wyoming, for example, there wasn’t an exit for gas or food for miles + miles, so we were lucky we had plenty of snacks to keep everyone happy. Which brings me to my next point…

#3 Be aware of the route you’re driving. By this, I mean know ahead of time where there may tolls along your route or might be a long distance between exits. This comes in handy not only for gas but also when planning for bathroom breaks. We were fortunate enough to have my aunt and uncle driving ahead of us to let us know the last big city in South Dakota we needed to stop at before everything was prairies and farms for miles.

#4 Have a copy of your directions. I’m not trying to nag you like your mother about printing directions, but I will tell you that there were plenty of times on our trip when we lost service or were in danger of a phone dying on us. Depending on technology isn’t always the best idea on trips like these, and at least writing down (or even just screenshotting) steps to take to get where you’re going usually isn’t hard and could save you a lot of stress in the long run.

#5 Pack light (if possible). I’ll readily admit that I broke my own rule here (and quickly regretted it). Since I was moving across the country, I packed up anything that hadn’t been loaded into the moving van, which caused the person sitting in the back seat of my little Ford Fiesta to pay the price. Spending hours crammed into a car with suitcases isn’t fun for anyone, so pack as light as possible!

#6 Do your research. It sounds obvious, but if my mom and I hadn’t looked into different routes to get from Minnesota to Colorado, we never would have thought of the Badlands and Mount Rushmore as a possible stopping place! Even more than Google, asking around can help you find hidden spots to check out along the way (that’s how we found Crazy Horse, a memorial tucked away in the Black Hills!).

#7 Charge things up! Every chance you get, make sure you’re charging your devices. This includes phones as well as cameras. Being out away from cities and developed towns can put a strain on your devices, especially your phone, so consider bringing along a portable charger or a charging cord for your car.

#8 Pack some CD’s. At the risk of sounding old-fashioned, packing CD’s can really cover your butt if you’re low on data and can’t get a good radio signal (aka are in the middle-of-nowhere South Dakota). If we wouldn’t have tried this, we never would have played Fly Over States by Jason Aldean which has the lyric, “Take a ride across the Badlands,” that played as we were driving through the Badlands! (Needless to say, that became our anthem for the rest of the trip.)

#9 Connect with your travel buddies. It may sound lame, but I’m serious when I say that some of the best conversations are had on the road. I learned so much about my parents, two people who I’d known all my life, simply through the questions I asked while we were essentially stuck with each other for hours in the car. It can be tempting to hole up with a good book or blast the radio, but taking some time to chat can make the whole experience that much better.

#10 Journal. Or, if journaling’s not your thing, find some way of documenting the trip. You’ll want to look back on this adventure for years to come, so it’s important that you record your travels. Your future self will thank you :)

Soooo what do you say? You up for it? Let me know below where your next trip will take you, and be sure to dream big...