Don’t Repeat These 5 Mistakes On Your Next Road Trip.
It is the thought of the next trip that rings happy bells in our hearts. Having the next trip destination sorted in our head keeps us motivated to cross the sea of mundane. For me, the thumb rule is to plan the next trip as soon as I’m done with my current one. My next trip would be doing cross country in the US in like 2 months from now (yayiee). If you have any tips or advice for me please do let me know in the comments section. I confess that I’m a travel addict and I truly hope that you are too.
But first, let me share the wisdom that I have gathered from my travels so far. To be honest, I have learned most of these must-dos the hard way. Some of you might be smart enough to be already doing all of these things but I was not. And for those like me, don’t worry I shall share my travel stories with you right here.
December 2017
Death Valley National Park
The temperature in most of the National Parks varies widely between day and night. I realized it the first time while we were in Death Valley National Park in California. Death Valley is notorious for being the hottest place on earth so I wore a tee and was happy with my decision until the sun went home and stars joined the party. Death Valley is also famous for its night sky. So we stayed till it got pitch dark and very cold. Though the night sky was sizzling with stars and the party got better and brighter than I ever expected; poor me was shivering, I mean literally. So I spent most of the time inside the car peeping through the windows, twisting my neck like an owl. Now, I always wear clothes in layers especially when I go to the National Parks.
Lesson Learnt. Always Wear Layers!
August 2017
Fremont Peak State Park
Talking about the stars, do you like gazing at the night sky? Looking at that big bright star, do you wonder whether it is Venus or Mars or maybe Saturn. If yes, then my dear curious friend you need to download an app that helps you identify the celestial beings in the sky. I first realized it when I went to State Park not very far from my home to see the Milky Way. We (my husband and I) were sitting in our car with no roof, sipping on coffee (which we packed from our home and luckily was still hot), adjacent to the observatory at the peak of the Fremont state park. It was the first time I saw Milky Way in its full glory. In that moment my life was perfect, the only thing I wished at that time was someone to tell me the name of those shiny little things.
Now I use SkyView app, it’s free and easy to use, there are a ton of others too, you can find one that suits you the best. The night skies in most of the National Parks are lit with stars so why not we make the most of it.
Lesson Learnt. Always have the night sky app handy!
September 2017
Klamath National Forest
It was the fall of 2017 when we took a road trip to Portland, Oregon from San Francisco (home) in our 1999 anniversary edition, Ford Mustang. We had spent the day in majestic Redwood National Forest and were headed to our AirBnb for the night. As always, we set the destination in Google map, filled up gas, put on the songs and were set to get done with the last leg of the journey for the day. The map took us through Klamath National Forest and maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere along the that lead us on a broken road. The road went on getting narrower and the forest denser. It’s when our phone had no network and road turned into more like a paved path(imagine driving Mustang on such road) we realized that we are lost. Situation now was that we are in the middle of the forest, it was getting dark, we didn’t have enough fuel to drive back 2 hours to the highway, didn’t have a downloaded map, there was no car or another person around us from whom we can ask for help; the only option we had was to keep going forward in the hope of highway or help from a stranger if we meet one.
Thank god we had enough water and food in our car to survive the night in a forest if it came to that. About 40 mins driving in the forward direction, our phone caught network and we steered ourselves in the right direction. Now we make sure to download the offline map for our entire journey on our phones.
Lesson Learnt. Keep offline maps downloaded on your phone!
July 2017
Pacific Coast Highway
This story is about my first Highway 1 trip. I had just gotten married and moved to SF. The first thing that every fellow human does or should do when in California is the Pacific Coast Highway road trip. So did we. We rented a car, download our favorite music, booked Airbnb in LA, packed our stuff, popped in the car, rolled down the windows and here we went. We were in a happy zone listening to our favorite songs, clicking pictures every now and then and marveling at the beautiful coastline. With a 100 miles range left, it was time to fuel up the car. I checked on the map, there were two gas stations in the next 60 miles. The one that came later had cheaper fuel so we decided to go to that one. To our dismay, this gas station was closed and then next was in like 55 miles. The situation got a little tricky there, we had close to 45 miles left in the car and the next gas station was about 55 miles. We got nervous about not being able to reach the gas station before we run out of the fuel. So we fixed our car speed at 55mph and rolled up the windows for the best fuel efficiency.
Thank heavens, we reached the gas station before we ran out of fuel otherwise who knows how many miles we would have to walk. Since that day till today, the rule of thumb for us is that fill up the gas as soon as it drops below 50% mark.
Lesson Learnt. Fuel up your car at the halfway mark!
May 2019
San Francisco to Yellowstone National Park
We embarked on our longest road trip in May of this year. We clocked around 3200 miles in 5 days averaging 9 hours of driving every day. As we had to spend so many hours on the road I had downloaded quite a lot of songs. Though the changing geography kept us entertained, we got bored of listening to songs, it started feeling monotonous after some time. So adopted a new strategy, whenever we had a strong signal we switched to listening podcasts.
So it is fairly recent when l had this happy realization that I should download podcasts and audible books before every road trip. This way we shall learn something new while enjoying the scenery. I would recommend the Breaker app for podcast recommendations. It’s pretty cool.
Lesson Learnt. Download favorite podcasts & audible books along with songs.
If you are planning to go to Yellowstone in the future, you can refer to this article on Must-Visit Spots and Walks in Yellowstone NP.
September 2017
Denver, Colorado
Pack Lots of patience
Though this entry might seem odd believe me, making a conscious decision to be patient when traveling really contributes towards having a good time. I’ll share a short story from my trip to Colorado — We had booked a flight from SF to Denver and then a rental car with Turo. Luggage took its own sweet time to come and when it arrived one of the zippers of our backpacks was open and some of our stuff was missing. So we complained at the helpdesk, they couldn’t do much at the time except for sharing the complaint number and their email address. We were exhausted after 8 hours of travel and with many hours of traveling still ahead of us, we decided to pursue the case of lost items with the airlines over email after the trip ends. We booked an Uber to take us to the rental car address. The person who met us there was an employee of the rentee and had no idea where the car was and could not contact the owner.
Now we were in a fix, should we book another car, should we download our angst on this person or should we just wait for him to be able to contact his employer. We chose the latter, after about an hour of waiting, anticipating and speculating, we got the car. What happened was that the previous renter returned the car late and the car owner forgot to inform his employee that we would be coming to get the car.
The car was dirty when we got as we got from the previous renter directly; so we had to clean it ourselves before we could use it. This experience was a real test of patience. Retrospectively, if we had not been patient with the circumstances at that time, we might have spent more than one hour booking another car, picking it up and paying more money.
Lesson Learnt. Pack Lots of Patience.
Always carry some food and other basics
There is no specific story behind this one. I know this one is a no brainer; hence did not count it in the 5 mistakes I don’t want you to repeat. I felt the need to add it here as having these in your bag is a vital element in having a hassle-free trip. One thing we know for sure is that not everything goes as planned. Better to be prepared than sorry. Also please let me know if I have missed anything here, I hope you guys remember I’m going for a cross country trip in 2 months, looking forward to your suggestions. Here’s a checklist of all the tini-mini things you can consider putting in your backpack :
- Water Bottle
- Hat or Cap
- Sunscreen
- First Aid
- Rain Coat/Windcheater
- Binoculars
- Hand Sanitizer
- Backup battery for your camera/phone
- Small Bites/Ready To Eat
- Bug Spray
Happy travels to you and hope we meet in one of our future trips or we can plan something together!
