To give this post a little more context, you may want to check out my recap of our recent cross country trip (PART 1). We spent a month traveling in and basically living out of our prius.. with two big dogs! Here’s a guide on what we packed, which I’m sharing in hopes to help out others planning a similar trip to ours. Credit goes to my husband Josh for putting together our original packing list, which of course was modified and adjusted as we started packing the car and were ready to hit the road!
Here’s a summary of just some of the essentials needed for our trip that we found were a very good decision to pack:
- camping tent (used 25 times) ours was large for 5 people so it fit us and two big dogs comfortably
- sleeping bags, pillows, blankets (used every night, for both us and the dogs)
- cot or sleeping pad (I enjoyed sleeping on a cot rather than the ground. Josh preferred sleeping on a sleeping pad on the ground rather than a cot. Try one of each out and see if it’s comfortable for you and if so, it’s worth bringing if you’ll be camping more than a couple of days... your back will thank you later!)
- many reusable water bottles especially XL sized ones 50oz+ (good to stock up on water every chance we could get.. finding good drinking water around the country isn’t always as easy and accessible as one might expect. You must always DOUBLE the water you need when you have a pet)
- large cooler (used every day! This is great for storing any perishables during your trip.. you can grab ice at just about any campsite, hotel, or gas station and it will typically stay cold for a full day. When not in use, the cooler was great to store random items to make more space in the car. I also used it to protect electronics such as my iPad when we were in the hot desert, and camping at below freezing temperatures. Having this allowed us to buy fresh fruit along the trip, and keep our leftovers from restaurants until the next day)
- lanterns (If you’re camping.. this is a must! I recommend at least 2 per person on the trip - a headlamp to wear and one you can hang or put around the campsite. We used these every day, and specifically used the headlamps for night hikes)
- towels (whether you get many opportunities to shower or not.. towels are a must for any public shower facilities. If you have dogs, bring a few extras in case you choose to bathe them on the trip. If you spill water in the car or have a mess to clean up - they may come in handy when least expected)
- Dr. Bronners soap gel, a bucket, and clothesline (Dr. Bronners was recommended to me by a friend a few years ago when I was in Ecuador.. it can be diluted with water and used to wash literally anything - your body, your hair, your clothes, your dishes. It’s an all natural castile soap that doesn’t have added ingredients except essential oils to make it smell great, and it’s safe for the environment if you need to dump it out at your campsite. We used a plastic tub/basket/bucket to wash dishes. Since we had a place to do laundry at one point during the trip we didn’t wash our clothes in the bucket, but we did use the clothesline to dry out stuff that got wet on the trip - it was a lifesaver! A clothesline can literally be any type of rope or heavy duty string with some clothes pins, doesn’t need to be fancy)
- 1 month’s worth of clothing (I planned to wear several outfits more than once and was cautious to not overpack for this trip due to space. After wearing outfits several days in a row AND unexpectedly getting to do laundry halfway through the trip, I didn’t even wear about ⅓ of the clothes I packed. If you have the space and won’t be doing laundry, pack enough clothes for the number of days of your trip. If you may not get to shower and plan on wearing clothes over and over, pack about ½ as much. All of my clothes were comfortable activewear and quick-dry material perfect for all activities, lightweight and good for layering if needed)
- extra shoes (shit happens… shoes can and will get wet or damaged on the trip and buying new shoes isn’t the easiest purchase when on to go, so I always pack TWO pairs of sneakers/hiking shoes, 1-2 pair of active sandals like Chacos or Tevas, and a pair of slip ons or flip flops which also double as shower shoes.)
- Winter jackets, gloves, hats, and other warm layers (who needs warm clothes in the desert?!… YOU do!) Even in areas that exceed 100 degrees during the day, they can drop below freezing at night. We had at least 2 nights where some of our stuff froze and a layer of thick frost formed over the tent while we were sleeping. When we initially planned the route, we did NOT plan on going anywhere that cold, but our itinerary changed during our trip. Do your research, and check all of the potential temperature ranges of where you plan to travel to. If part of your itinerary is open-ended.. DEFINITELY pack for all weather extremes just to be safe!
- Camera, journal, phone. I used my phone as a journal AND camera throughout our trip. I usually travel with a camera, but this trip I didn’t want to worry about the security of my camera and also knew charging it would be difficult. As you’ll see in my main blog post, writing everything down and documenting with photos really came in handy for this blog - so writing on a phone or iPad, or hand-writing in a journal is soo wonderful! If you don’t plan to blog about your trip or share with anyone else, you definitely should still keep a log of your travels for yourself later on. You’d be surprised what you’ll forget months or even weeks later! Having photos will be a free souvenir and personal keepsake that you’ll literally treasure for the rest of your life.
- All the pet stuff: collapsible dog crates (for hotel stays), comfortable well fitting harness, extra leash or two, paperwork (vaccination status in case you need to board them or put them in daycare, any certifications such as CGC for some hotel discounts), food, treats, food AND water bowl, Kongs, toys, and enrichment activities if your dog gets restless on long drives, medications, etc. Our dogs are big so we brought a 30 lb. bag with us on the trip but were able to stop at a pet store to buy another bag when we needed it so felt we could have packed even less. If your dog has specialized food plan ahead and pack enough for the whole trip.. if their food can easily be purchased anywhere, pack less to save space in the car and potential damage to the food due to temperature extremes in the car.
- Car basics: make sure you have a spare donut, jack, and basic car repair stuff in or under your trunk since you may likely find yourself in the middle of nowhere without service or AAA access. We also purchased some motor oil halfway through the trip and this was a huge necessity to top off our oil when we thought we had a leak.
And here are a few things we packed, that we honestly could have done without:
- an extra tent (we had an issue with a tent breaking on a camping trip in the past due to damaged poles so we packed a spare in case it were to happen again… but we didn’t need it and it took up extra space. We could have just bought a tent on the go if needed, every walmart and sports good store sells tents)
- Air mattress (we had a foolish vision we’d be “glamping” but most of our campsites ended up not even having electric hook ups and it was more trouble than it was worth to blow it up anyway since we were moving to a new camping location almost every day. We crashed at a friend’s for 2 nights of the trip and they had an air mattress for us to use - so this wasn’t necessary for any of our trip)
- electric travel fan (despite some locations being hot, we didn’t have an electric hook up to use it. Overall most camping nights were beautifully cool and we didn’t really feel a need for it. It was a 12” box fan and took up space in the car so we wish we never brought it. If you’re camping in hot locations at night, get yourself a fan that can plug into your car or works on batteries instead)
- So much canned and non-perishable food. (We always figure it’s better to be safe than sorry but there was access to purchase food in every major city and area we passed through, so we could have saved a lot of space to pack less initially and restock along the way)
- Large bag of dog food (we could easily buy more in smaller bags along the way… but depending on your pet and their needs, decide if their food brand is easily accessible and if they would be okay settling for something else if you can’t find what they normally eat)
- A large 5 gal water jug (was a great “idea” except it spilled and toppled over in our car on day 2, which soaked all of our stuff and wasted a ton of filtered drinking water that we spent time filling the day before we left. After it spilled once we decided not to use it again because it was hard to secure in place well enough to insure it wouldn’t spill again… and it just took up a lot of extra space in the car, even with other things packed inside)
- pop up tent, for shade (I brought an EZ up tent preparing for rain or intense heat at some of the campsites but we lucked out on the weather and it only rained one night, and it was only hot and sunny at one campsite. We used it once for sun, and if I were to have known this I wouldn’t have brought it since it did take up a chunk of space in the car)
- I brought my IPad to “get work done” on the trip, but in reality I did most of my work and communication on my iphone. The stress of keeping track of the iPad throughout the trip outweighed most of the benefits of having it. With high heated areas in the desert I had to keep it in the cooler, but I also had to wrap it well to make sure it didn’t accumulate any moisture. Most times I wish I didn’t bring it, so depending on your profession and personal needs, decide if it’s really worth bringing extra tablets, laptops and technology - this is a chance to get away from all of that, after all! I initially planned for this to be a work trip for me and I wanted to paint and create in every state… but it ended up being a major mental break from work and was more recreation than anything. I brought a lot of paints and stuff that I don’t entirely regret bringing, but just like the iPad - I constantly had to repack and move them around to accommodate the extreme temperatures and prevent them from getting damaged.
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