Friday, July 12, 2013

Top Ten Road Trip Prep Items

From reading our posts, you might think our Road Trips are all "fun & games." Well, yes and no. Lots and lots of prep work go into Road Trips.

We look at Road Trips the same way we have always looked at River Trips.
There's an old, forgotten River Runner Motto, "Prepare for The Worst and Expect The Best." That's that way we rig for Road Trips.

Here are The Top Ten of preparations we deal with for a Road Trip:

1) Stranding. Bottom Line: How long can you be stranded and survive in style? We take this issue very seriously. It is the foundation of our rigging.

2) Emergency! How will we respond to an emergency of our own or someone else's? We spend inordinate amounts of time tweaking our First Aid kit and checking all those items which make emergency response so much more effective. That's one reason we dote on checking our HAM radio and the various repeaters in our Road Trip zone. We do also carry a CB radio as well.

3) Food & Liquids. There was once an old saying that "an army travels on its stomach." This is so true with our Road Trips. If we don't have an alluring, attractive, "river-trip-style" diet, our Road Trips would come to a quick and unceremonious end.

4) Maps & Navigation. Our Road Trip "Map Case" typically puts our travel zone into what Pro Football guys call "double coverage." We typically have twice as many maps onboard as anyone would think we'd need. We now also roto-root our GPS and clear the decks for each new Road Trip.

5) Vehicular Prep. In this case, we're traveling in Marvie. Marvie has just had about everything replaced we can think of to replace. We've even had the front end alignment triple checked. We're so Type A when it comes to Vehicular safety, it's borderline ridiculous. We carry two spare tires, three jacks, two manuals and more danged tools and so forth than you can possibly imagine. Only a Total Truck Geek could appreciate the various gear we carry.

6) Camping Gear. If Sweetie Susun's not happy on a Road Trip, then that trip is an abject failure. We go out of our way to make sure we have EVERYTHING to make any given camp a Happy Camp.

7) Rain Prep. Into every life rain will fall. Rain seems to be attracted to Road Trips. Trust me, we are TOTALLY rigged for rain. If you can't meet rain mano y mano on a Road Trip, you really shouldn't be there in the first place.

8) Documentation. Yeah, we carry way too many cameras, video devices and so forth--sometimes even one or two computers, too. If you can't document what you did (and why) then your Road Trip really didn't exist. Remember the old "If a tree falls in a forest..." routine.

9) Entertainment. Yep, we both crave some entertainment on a Road Trip. It can be as simple as a cribbage board or as complex as a remote XM radio setup. It all "just depends."

10) Natural and Cultural History. We love knowing the history and human and natural culture of the area through which we pass. We try to study up as much as possible on all those aspects both Before we depart and After we return. For example, this Road Trip will take us through probably at least six different wolf pack territories. We know one of those packs is called "The Four Eyes" pack. We're going right through The Four Eyes Pack territory. We've been "jonesing" to be in "Four Eyes" wolf country for a long, long time. This is really exciting for both of us.

Well, that's the Top Ten of Road Trip Prep. Thanks for reading. Many Cheers, jp

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