PART 1 of “You Do NOT Need an RV to Travel” (a witty recap of our cross country month long road trip in a Prius with 2 big dogs)

This is PART 1 of “You Do NOT Need an RV to Travel” (a witty recap of our cross country month long road trip in a Prius with 2 big dogs)

Background and Travel Preparation

In early September of 2021 (yes.. I know I’m late in finally getting around to posting this!), my husband Josh and I embarked on a journey like nothing we’ve ever done before. We took on a cross country trip to celebrate his recent completion and earning of his PhD. 5 long years of blood, sweat and tears (maybe less blood - but definitely a lot of sweat and tears) plus a ton of hard work.. Josh had been planning this opportunity for so long.. a chance to travel across the country and take off a full month from the more mundane routine of life, knowing that when he starts a new career it will be unlikely to get an opportunity to do such a thing once life and routine settle back in. As a self-employed “ARTrepreneur”, I fortunately can enjoy the luxury of taking off and traveling whenever the hell I want to… so I was ready for this! (but keep in mind I’m not truly boasting because that freedom is in lieu of having any of the benefits, perks, or security of a conventional job 😉 nonetheless though I’m happy as hell in my personal career choice.)

ANYWAY.. Josh spent months beforehand, even in between writing paragraphs for his dissertation, planning a route for our trip. The route then included the destinations we most wanted to visit with a rough itinerary, all potential accommodations for each location and of course, a long-ass packing list. The itinerary was adjusted several times, things crossed off and many things added. Research had to be done that everything on the list was dog-friendly, or that we would have accommodations that day where we could leave the dogs. Or of course, when needed to we just took turns exploring something if it didn’t allow dogs, no biggie. Most of the adjusting happened once we were on the road of course, because shit happens and spontaneity is most definitely a good thing when traveling. I express this very important part because preparing for a big endeavor of traveling for a month or more definitely requires planning.. but TOO MUCH planning can also be a bad thing and restrict freedom to explore new places as you stumble upon unexpected adventures along the way. I suggest meeting somewhere in the middle and have a loose plan that can easily be adjusted later on as you go.

Packing the Prius

So…  leading up to Day 1 of our trip, we packed the car. When I say we, I mostly mean Josh. The week before this trip was a massive anxiety filled time crunch for me personally, because I had just returned from another awesome trip and had several client projects to finish and get out the door before embarking on this new adventure (if you don’t know me personally, I’m a full-time artist - which while being my dream job also comes with waves of hustle and bustle, and piles of stress and anxiety, just like any self-employed job does). I painted and worked long hours all week while Josh planned and packed. That’s pretty much how our dynamic works as I am an ADHD plagued scatter-brained artist and he’s an organized and typically easy-going guy that totally has his shit together most of the time. It was me however, that came out to find our living room in an explosion of travel supplies he had in heaping piles and I made the announcement that it was definitely not all going to fit in our Prius. At least not with us and the dogs fitting too.

We made some adjustments to the packing list and were rational about what we actually needed. This can be a struggle for a lot of people while deciding what to pack. What was worth the space and weight in the car? And what was just a luxury that we likely wouldn’t need that badly or even have a chance to use? We stuck to the essentials… which was definitely still a LOT of stuff, but we both agreed and reasoned that each thing we ultimately packed was definitely necessary. (I put together a summary of our packing list with more details of what we definitely needed on the trip and some things we wish we didn’t pack. If interested, you can view our packing list here.)

Before you judge us crazy people for traveling cross country in a low clearance prius with so much stuff (and big dogs) I will tell you that we had spent the previous year or so comparing different options and we even went shopping at an RV dealer, which had us heavily contemplating the necessity for a $90k+ traveling home that would require more maintenance than we were willing to give, and the commitment to use regularly and often to make it worth it. The idea of buying a used one or converting an old van (way more our style as we are thrifty, resourceful and frugal) was too overwhelming - we are two un-handy people with overly tight schedules that would not feasibly allow for such a project. We just wanted to pack and go when we want, and using a vehicle we already owned ended up being the most feasible for us. Suggestions of renting one were considered, but then came heavy contemplation of the true inconveniences of traveling with an RV, and what limitations and lack of flexibility that could bring to our itinerary (having a small car allows easy city exploration, less maintenance, easy height clearance and accessible parking in any and all destinations).

In the end, after weighing multiple options we were able to receive a generous gift of a roof cargo roof rack from a friend in our local Buy Nothing Project Facebook Group. The use of this cargo storage bin would give us extra space in the car and a more realistic vision that we could actually live out of the car for a whole month (well.. we still had some concerns about living in a prius, but read on and you’ll see that we have become masters at winging it and making the best out of every situation). We bought cross bars for the car but they ultimately didn’t seem super secure, so we got creative and used a combo of custom clips adhered under our windows’ gaskets, and a few ratchet straps wrapped around the bin for extra security, which mostly stored extra clothes and supplies we didn’t need on a daily basis. (We use our prius regularly for my art shows and transporting our canoe to use at local rivers, so we’ve sort of become masters at strapping shit securely to the roof 😆)

Anyway - once we had that bin packed and secured to the roof, and everything loaded in the car we were off! Except as we pulled out of the driveway I stopped to get out and realize that our car was really low to the ground. Like REALLY low. Lower than ever. I got paranoid and started researching our car’s pay load in fear we were going to blow out a tire before we even made it out of Gainesville. Doing some quick mental math we decided between the weight of us, the dogs, and everything in and on the car, we were probably right at max capacity. There wasn’t much we could take out of the car at this point so we just took off with a wish and a prayer and that bad sinking feeling of disaster left my mind once we got on the road. The car felt very heavy - but I just had a feeling we would make it and be okay. (Spoiler alert…. We made it and would be okay ☺️)

Before I get into the nitty gritty details of our entire 31 day trip, I’d like to highlight a few things. 

- First off, this blog is LONG. It’s literally taken me months to even post this first part 😝… and yes, there are multiple parts. I figured separate parts might make it more digestable for the average brain. I don’t like reading long shit in one sitting so you probably don’t either. You can read part 1 now (because that’s all that’s available at the moment anyway) and Part 2 when it’s ready! BTW.. There really isn’t any short way to write a month-long travel blog. And as a creative brain, I don’t write things that lack description of detail, what is the fun in that? So if you’re legitimately interested in our trip or are searching for inspiration, this will be super insightful and interesting to you. If your patience are thin and you’re not a reader though, you might want to skim down through the photos and just reference some highlighted areas and links below that look interesting. Promise I don’t care and won’t be offended, I’m really mostly writing this for me anyway. I’m planning to (eventually) supplement this blog post with more specific highlights of each state, and some of the best areas to visit. Stay tuned for that. Some day…

- Second off.. this trip did NOT have a set destination. I think that was the most commonly asked question during our travels and the more I was asked the more I appreciated every moment along the way. Every single stop was a destination. Traveling in between destinations was a destination. The journey was the point, every destination was just part of that. This made the trip the most interesting and driving only short tolerable distances at a time, instead of a constant eternal time warp wondering “are we there yet”. Our technical furthest spot from our home was San Francisco, but this was not the main goal of the trip, nor a more special destination than anywhere else we stopped. It was just one of the countless areas we explored and happened to be the farthest away in mileage from home on our route around the US. We initially headed straight west along a more southern route of the country, traveled up the Cali coast, and then headed back eastward from San Francisco to travel a different route than what initially took us westward.

- Thirdly - this was the most amazing month of my life. I’m living my dream as an artist and I have traveled a lot, including to several different countries… but I have never ever seen and done so much within a month’s time. I’m pretty sure we did more in this month than most people do in their entire lives. If you’re up for adventure … then get out there and DO THIS! It sounds dumb and cliche but you only live once.. and we refuse to be elderly and incapacitated one day wishing we traveled the country in a prius with big dogs back in our younger days.

- Next.. just a little bit about us as humans, (in case you don’t know us personally) to give some perspective to our travel choices. We are fully vegan, we are frugal and thrifty, we love our dogs, and this trip taught us to be spontaneous and to embrace and live in the moment. We are very eco-friendly, we love artsy things, we love the outdoors and hiking, we love adventure, we are pretty low maintenance and it doesn’t take much to make us happy. We are young, fit, and able to sleep on uncomfortable surfaces and really not afraid of “roughing it”. These values strongly impacted the choices we made while traveling - including our sleeping accommodations, activities to do, and places we ate.

- And lastly - I’m going to talk about money, because I realize a lot of readers want to know how much they should budget for a trip like this. Perhaps that’s why you’re here.. because you want to travel and just want to know the point here.. what should you do and how much money will it cost. In total, we spent $4201 over the duration of 31 days. Keep in mind this included ALL of our food, gas, pet supplies, parking expenses, lodging/accommodations, cost of attractions, national park entry and all leisurely shopping, spending & souvenirs. When I say souvenirs.. I will embarrassingly admit that we spent a few hundred dollars on bumper stickers alone because we have a legitimate sticker addiction. We considered this a real vacation, so we definitely did splurge on food and eat out a lot, but we are great at saving $ and balanced it out with eating canned food while we were in the middle of nowhere and stocking up on snacks and cheap options at supermarkets and health food stores whenever we could - bringing our monthly budget of food to $1396. We splurged and stayed at a hotel in two locations - specifically when in cities where we wanted to do activities without the dogs, but the rest of the time we cut back on costs by mostly camping and crashing at rest stops a few times. (And when I say splurged, let’s be real, we’re talking Motel 6 here, because once you’ve been camping for a month, ANY hotel is a major upgrade and there is zero point in throwing away money on fancier accomodations). In total, our lodging for 31 days cost us only $737. The hardest thing about this was me letting go of the need to shower every day. The longest we had to go without showering was a whole week. Yes, that sounds absolutely horrible but it was a week that the temperatures were really cold (freezing, actually), so we didn’t even sweat and lived in several layers.. I was honestly too cold to shower, many days I didn’t even change or take off any of my warm layers of clothing so not being able to made it pretty tolerable. We showered the nights we stayed at a hotel, at a friend’s, or in a campsite with showers. These opportunities were rare, so keep this in mind when planning your itinerary to suit your personal needs. (One hack for this is get a gym membership at a chain with showers and just utilize gyms across the country. We are members of the YMCA but didn’t end up doing this because it was more trouble than it was worth.. for us, especially with the dogs and all.)

OK so I’m getting into the itinerary…. Here we go!

Day 1

📍 Pensacola, FL & Louisiana:

Once we were on the road, our evening goal was to end up at End of the Line Vegan Cafe in Pensacola, FL for dinner but sadly they closed early due to short staffing! This was disheartening as they’re far away from home and we only get to eat there when we pass through on road trips. We love their food and highly recommend them if you ever are in the Pensacola area. There’s always a silver lining for us though, and we found a cute health food market around the corner with lots of vegan food in the cafe at Everman Co’op! We picnicked outside with the dogs, drove a few more hours and then “camped” in the Prius at Louisana’s welcome center. We decided we were on the move to cover ground and make our way to Texas where we actually had camping reservations, and didn’t need to focus time or funds on fancy stays to get there… a welcome center was welcoming enough for us. 

How did we do this you say? We took out the biggest items like our cooler, dog crates, etc. from the back of the car. We left the back seats laying flat, pushed the front seats all the way up as far as they go and layered our sleeping bags and blankets to create what was probably just a bit tighter and shorter than a typical full sized bed. We wedged as much as we could on the floor of the front and back seats, and in the area of the front seats, middle console and dash. We stuck camping gear that could lay flat under the car, and left our big cooler right against the side of the car but within our parking spot. This was acceptable and non-invasive to other people resting overnight in their cars and overnight security didn’t have an issue with it. It wasn’t the most comfortable night of sleep, but for a free and safe resting spot it wasn’t bad at all. Rest stops are well lit, have other people/cars around, and often times feel more secure than camping in the middle of nowhere, so if you can physically handle it, don’t rule this out as an option while budget traveling. We woke up early and started the next day with fresh blueberries and soy milk from our cooler with oats, and some mushroom matcha coffee because we were prepared and packed plenty of food. We ate, freshened up in the bathrooms (once you start traveling a lot and are roughing it most of the time, ANY legitimate rest rooms with running water become a luxury.. so take advantage whenever you find one!). We headed out and continued driving west.

Day 2

📍New Orleans, Houston & McKinney Falls, TX:

We spent our morning in New Orleans, LA, one of our favorite cities. Unfortunately, most of the city was still without power and dealing with damage from hurricane Ida that had literally just passed through shortly before so we couldn’t really explore much or stay for long. We visited our favorite tree… the 300 year old Tree of Life and did a little climbing. Fortunately the tree was still there as several other nearby live oaks had been destroyed in the storm. We grabbed some local juice from the one place in town that appeared to be open and also stopped into Cocoally to support our FAVORITE NOLA vegan artist Ally Burguieres. I had been in touch with her family and was notified when they reopened the shop - so we popped in before leaving and got a few cute things. As an artist, I love supporting other artists and small businesses whenever I travel! Since we didn’t explore too much on this stop of our trip, I will suggest reading a couple of past blog posts I wrote about our previous travels in NOLA if you’re interested, including a guide to traveling with dogs in the Panhandle & NOLA and a guide to the best vegan food (keeping in mind that a lot of my restaurant recommendations no longer exist as a bunch of small businesses sadly closed during the pandemic).

 

After a short time exploring, we got back on the highway and kept on rolling. Sometimes life brings you lemons…. In the form of 5 gallons of your drinking water spilling all over EVERYTHING in your car. No matter how well you pack you can’t always win. Sooo.. when this happened to us (a huge semi truck stopped short in front of us, so when Josh hit the brakes it caused a major flood from our water cooler) we decided to make lemonade and sunbathe in a hot ass parking lot while waiting for the shit to dry. (No actual lemonade was involved btw). Yeah, we did get some weird looks. And yeah, those are several dozen Lara bars drying out on the pavement.

 

We got back on the road and eventually made it to Texas - we stopped in Houston for the best Mexican food we’ve ever had at Cascabel Vegan. We enjoyed a ton of great food including a special platter of mixed tacos and BOGO desserts. Service and food were wonderful. We then kept driving to that night’s destination - Austin! Josh pre-booked us a campsite at McKinney Falls State Park and we had already planned to arrive late and had the code to get into the campground. We threw up our tent, got settled into our first night NOT sleeping in the car.. and even had access to showers and bathrooms at the campsite. 

Day 3

📍Austin, TX:

We woke up and enjoyed hanging out in Onion Creek for most of the morning. The water flows through through a gorgeous massive bed of exposed limestone/volcanic ash at McKinney Falls not far from our campground which was right outside Austin. It was nice to explore early before the crowds arrived, and was a good way to tire out the dogs before heading into the city.

We then got into town and I quickly fell in LOVE with Austin. I decided on this day that Austin would hold a piece of my heart once we left and this was a place I would love to live one day. The people are all friendly, everyone everywhere loves dogs, the vibes are fantastic, and there is literal vegan food, cool art, and fun stuff to do absolutely everywhere. Austin loves everybody. Austin is definitely one of those “weird” cities.. a sister city to Portland, Asheville, and Gainesville. We got lunch at Counter Culture and their delicious watermelon gazpacho, Reuben sandwich and raw noodle salad were unforgettable. We roamed along South Congress for the funkiest of shops, funkiest of people and funkiest of vibes. A great area for artsy, hippie dippie stuff and the fun local vibe - every store welcomed dogs and even gave them treats too!  I never pictured myself wanting to live in Texas, but it felt like it could be home here. 

 

Day 4

📍Austin, TX:

This wonderful day brought more adventures in Austin! We had camped again at McKinney Falls and headed into town early. We explored the downtown farmers market with a variety of great local vendors. I stocked up on some microgreens, juice, and fruit, trying to stick to the raw diet I had been sticking to for the weeks leading up to our trip (I’m not a strict raw vegan, I’m just a vegan, but I regularly eat a lot of fruit and a mostly stick to a Whole Foods plant-based diet as my body feels the best on it!). It was nice to have access to the healthy foods we enjoy eating at home while supporting Austin businesses and farmers.

We then visited the Austin Central Library, but had to take turns as it’s not dog-friendly. A friend recommended we go here because it has one of the best roof-top views of the city and the library itself is huge and beautiful. We stumbled upon a cool art and vintage market and later watched the bats emerge at South Congress Bridge (we didn’t get good pics because it was too dark!). 

We fell in love with Juiceland - a great Texas chain with the freshest juices and smoothies. This is apparently a favorite of the locals. (Coupon HACK - If you sign up for their rewards program you’ll be eligible for a coupon on your birthday. Since we don’t live there and would never get to use our birthday coupons, I conveniently scheduled both me and Josh to have birthdays that week and each got $5 off coupons to use on more juices while we were there).

Then to counteract the healthiness of our juices we also got amazing vegan ice cream from Sweet Ritual, an all vegan ice cream shop! Right next store was The Soup Peddler with delicious soups, wholesome foods, and another full juice bar.

Austin Pets Alive! is an awesome animal rescue in Austin. They have a lot of thrift stores located throughout town, so I made a point to stop into a few because I love thrift shopping and especially enjoy seeing what I can find in new cities. (My favorite find in one was a vintage Halloween shirt that I got a thousand compliments on every time I wore it this October, and zebra print leggings with pockets.. WINNING!). The stores are dog friendly of course, and all proceeds go towards their rescue efforts to help animals. Finding thrift stores along the way when traveling is also always great in case you don’t pack enough or the right clothes.

While in Austin, we also became obsessed with the vegan fast food place Project Pollo. They serve vegan fast food options but with better and more wholesome ingredients - so still FAST, somewhat processed but a little better for you?. They donate a portion of proceeds to animal rescues and have a pay what you can option for people that can’t afford their meals so that they can make plant-based foods accessible and affordable for EVERYONE. That was enough for me to hand over my money - the food being delicious was an added bonus. They do a ton of community work and at the time of me writing this they are only one year old  (as they continue to expand I hope they come to Florida!) We got a chicken sandwich, loaded papas, Buffalo chicken mac n cheese and a pumpkin spice milkshake that was the best milkshake we’ve ever had (made with oat milk and real pumpkin).

Day 5

📍Austin, TX & New Mexico:

We spent another night in our glorious tent (remember.. tent camping in a 5 person/dog tent is a huge upgrade from the car!) and did some morning “doga” before packing up camp.

We did a hike at the lower falls at McKinney to explore the rest of the state park before leaving and found a nice trail and more waterfalls that were beautiful, but it was really crowded with people and dogs so we didn’t stay too long. We headed to Mueller Farmers market in town which had completely different vendors and was much bigger than the downtown market. We got some smoked tempeh burgers, kombucha, and more fruit, all from local growers/makers. This market has literally everything and is worth checking out! Right by the market location is a permanent fixture - Rebel Cheese, which is an entirely vegan cheese and wine shop with sooooo many cheeses. When I say so many… I mean an entire case filled with so many locally cured and important cheeses of all taste profiles and flavors from everywhere you can imagine. The best part? They offer unlimited samples. They’re a little pricey so I splurged on getting an ounce or two of some of my favorites. My favorite of them all was a unique sweet cinnamon cheese. They also have a menu with brunch items and breakfast sandwiches. I met a few cool people here while I was waiting in line.

We love Whole Foods so we had to check out the Whole Foods Headquarters on our way out of town…. It was a dream seeing where this supermarket was born. The ginormous location had restaurants in it and a huge Juiceland as well. 

It was certainly sad to leave, but we got back on the road and kept moving west into New Mexico. We finally arrived at our destination - Bottomless Lakes State Park where Josh also had made a reservation in advance, so our lovely campsite was waiting for us along with bathrooms with showers only a short walk away.

Click here to read PART 2 of our cross country adventures, starting with Day 6 of our trip….. featuring ALIENS, saguaro cacti, territorial coyotes and more.