Let’s talk about long travel treks and why you may have to do them. Ideally, in full time RV life it’s great to plan your travel days from one spot to the next and keep the hours at a minimum. So for example, two weeks somewhere, 1 to 2 travel days, and then you’re at another location again.
However, things happen, situations occur, circumstances arise–welcome to rv life and you may find yourself needing to complete longer travel days to make it to a destination. So what does that look like? For us personally, we have made the trip from the East Coast to the West Coast and back again under time constraints traveling each day a maximum of 6 to 7 hours then stopping for a quick over night. Travel like this can feel very overwhelming for everyone involved and sometimes there’s just going to be uncomfortableness that’s simply unavoidable due to the time in the car, quick turnaround, and just feeling pressure to make it to a desired location. Some of the tips that have worked well for us with dogs and children are easy to implement into your travel days, making a long trek more bearable.
One of the things that we love to do is stay at RV resorts on those short stop overs! You may immediately be thinking why would you want to waste money if you are only somewhere for an evening and here is why. The one particular RV resort, I would absolutely recommend is a KOA. They have dog walking areas, playgrounds, pools, and often even have mini golf, gem mining and bounce houses. If you’re there on a weekend, they will typically have an ice cream social, train rides, or some other family gathering in the evening.
One of the things that we have noticed that this helps with so much, is the fact that you really are not unloading your full RV or setting up on such travel treks. Usually, you’re running on a limited supply of food since you are not going grocery shopping. (BONUS– MOST KOA's have at minimum pizza and its great!) You may also not be opening all your slides and you definitely are not getting a ton of toys out or activities seeing as you have to just pack up the next morning.
These are always great options to get your wiggles out and get to enjoy different activities not in your RV and bonus you do NOT have to clean up and maybe you just order in from the KOA!
Other fun tips for long travel treks are get some really fun frozen foods that maybe you don’t treat yourself or your family to ordinarily. This makes for an easy meal! I also highly recommend all disposable dishes, silverware etc!
Take a peek at locations that have a local grocery pick up. We always will look for a Walmart on say the 3rd to 4th day and refresh on fruits and vegetables.
Saving exciting movies, games, or anything that your children may be into for those long journeys across are also a huge win.
Lastly, one of the things that has really helped us, and you may want to look into it is we do not open all our slides on these quick turnaround days.
Here's why... opening every slide number one creates more work, number two creates some more opportunities for work, and let’s face it our children can create a mess, being brutally honest here.
We love to keep our kids slide closed and do a blowup mattress in the living room. They think it’s fun and exciting and actually look forward to having a movie night and sleep over in the living room with us. I hope these tips help you on your long trek days. I also hope you know that everything you see on social media is 99% staged, so reading blogs, watching YouTube’s about all these important details for RV life will be key. Remember to always give yourself grace, time, and be prepared With Love,
Comments