On the road…again: Tips for road-tripping in the U.S.

A week-and-a-half ago, I had the experience (notice the lack of preceding adjective) of driving cross-country with my parents. If you’ve read my previous article, you’ll know that I recently was admitted to my dream graduate program, and thus had to leave my amazing job in the Bay Area to move to Chicago.

Because of the amount of stuff I’ve accumulated over the last few years back from college—as well as all my books—I thought the best way to get to Chicago would be via car. Initially, my plan was for one of my friends from college and I to U-Haul my stuff and have a mini-vacation in Los Angeles, Austin, and New Orleans along the way. Then, the plan was going to be for my mom and I to do the same. Then, my dad invited himself along, and the U-Haul was replaced with a Nissan Pathfinder.

Obviously starting out on a great foot.

Now, I have previously road-tripped a few times in the United States, but never this far of a distance. Last September, my mom and I drove from the Bay Area to Missoula, Montana, to see Andrew Bird in concert (he’s amazing, what can I say). For my undergrad, we all drove in a rented minivan from the Bay Area to Seattle over the course of three days—which was more than enough time in the car all together.

Now, we were going to spend four or five days together in a car, driving through the Midwest, with my mom being utterly fearful of my dad’s driving, and me not finding much of anything along Route 80 to stop at to amuse us between the panicked moments in the car.

What fun.

After experiencing this, I have just a few notes for you all who also choose to go on a 2400+ mile road-trip with your immediate family in the near future. Best of luck!

Make sure to know how much space you’ll need to fit all of your stuff.

I’ll admit, I was a bit overzealous in packing between the notification of my acceptance and getting in the car to drive. I have a fair amount of stuff—not even stuff that I really use daily or weekly, but stuff that I like keeping around just in case. I’m not a hoarder (yet), so not to worry.

However, I now know that packing six boxes of books first probably wasn’t my best idea. Especially because we had to leave two-and-a-half of those boxes behind.

Eventually, we were able to fit a good deal of my stuff in the car without having to resort to a last minute call to Hertz or trip to U-Haul. However, I was very adamant that I wanted to fit as much of my stuff as possible in the car for this move, as I have little to no intention of moving back in with my parents again (here’s hoping!).

Just please, please, make sure that you know the actual space you have to pack up your life in a 3 ton vehicle more in advance, and you will be golden.

You’re going to need something to do (because...)

Driving cross country can be long and tiresome. It can be even more so when you’re sticking to a schedule, and thus can’t make a ton of stops off the beaten path to explore and relax.

So, what better way to enjoy the trip than to listen to your favorite jams? For me, that meant bringing a fair amount of appropriate CDs that wouldn’t perturb my parents too too much. This included Sampha, Blind Pilot, and (my mom’s favorite) Matt & Kim. However, because my parents are huge fans of their own music, that meant that we also endured listened to Fleetwood Mac (love), Cat Stevens (love), Bob Seger (uhhhh), Les Mis (uhhhhhhh), and Hamilton (love, but VERY LONG).

Alongside the fun jams, you may also want to play some road-trip games. For us, this was mainly 20 questions (my mom chose roadkill as her first choice, and it was pretty downhill from there). Other fun games you can play include: Never Have I Ever, Would You Rather, Explain a Film Plot Badly, and, my personal favorite, See How Long You Can Pretend to Sleep Before Someone Realizes You’re Awake.

There might not be a lot to look at.

It is incredibly unfair to think that the Midwest is just a big desolate space of nothingness, but…the drive on Route 80 didn’t warrant many attractions to stop at. I think the only place I actually found that I wanted to stop was the Bonneville Salt Flats (where Casey Neistat filmed a commercial for Mercedes). Which is in Utah. And there are nearly 2000 miles to Chicago after that.

Truly, any little kitschy and non-threatening place you can stop, do so. We ended up stopping in a lot of small towns, which were cute in their own way. We even know now that Little America, Wyoming, has 75 cent ice cream cones, which is delightful and something you can’t find outside of IKEA usually.

Plus, you’re also going to be driving through some of the more well-known cities of the Midwest on this route: Reno, Nevada; Salt Lake City, Utah; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska; and Des Moines and Iowa City, Iowa. Truly, if we had more time, I would have thoroughly enjoyed exploring each of these cities more. Especially to see the University of Iowa, where the Iowa Writers Workshop is held, Park City, Utah, where Sundance Film Festival is held, and the Wyoming State Capitol, which looks like it’s straight out of Parks and Recreation.

Just remember, at the end of this road trip, you’re going to be in an entirely new and amazing place.

I have wanted to live in Chicago for a while…so getting into Medill at long last definitely made that quasi-far-fetched dream into a reality fairly quickly. I love living in cities, especially new places, and I have missed being in a place where I can legitimately walk/take public transportation everywhere.

It’s been a long road to get to this point, but I am so glad that Chicago was the destination. Looking forward to telling you all more about my adventures in this city soon!