We love Road Trips and we would like to help you to make wonderful experiences while tripping with the car. Traveling along the road gives you a wonderful feeling of freedom. The freedom to explore places that can be hard to access in any other way. Making a Road Trip is a really special way of traveling cause not the destination is where you want to be and what you’re waiting for. Being on the road is the destination. It doesn’t matter if you’re making a road trip in another country or if you make it around your home town – we’re sure you’ll love it. We’ve compiled 21 of our favorite Road Trip Tips and Tricks to make your trip wonderful.
Because the greatest part of a road trip isn’t arriving at your destination. Its all the wild stuff that happens along the way.
Emma Chase
1. Make a packing list
Make yourself a list what you need to pack for the trip. Start with the list around 4 weeks before the beginning of your journey. Each time something comes to your mind put in on the list.
2. Make a road trip playlist
What would be a road trip without good tunes?
3. Download an audio book or a podcast
We love to listen to audio books while we’re traveling. It doesn’t matter if we’re sitting in a speedboat or if we’re flying above the clouds, listen to some stories is always a good way to pass time.
4. Make sure you can load your electronic equipment in the car
Keep a charging adapter in your car with a power strip for all your electronic equipment. So, you can charge your power bank or your mobile phone in the car.
5. Take a picnic blanket with you
There’s nothing better than making a picnic while road tripping. And even if you’re not eating outside, it´s really cozy to have a blanket with you. For example, you can sit on your blanket while watching the sunset.
6. Take enough provisions with you
Food and enough water are one of the most important things while tripping along the road. If you find a beautiful place you can stop and eat something – we’re sure, you’ll love it. By the way it´s also a better for your budget if you buy some food in the supermarket instead of eating in restaurants each day. Don’t forget to take some fruits with you. They are always a wonderful snack.
7. Wear comfortable clothes
Keep in mind that you’ll sit a long time, so it makes sense to wear comfortable and cozy clothes. As the co-driver it makes sense to take some snuggle socks with you if you want to take off your shoes.
8. Don’t plan to much
It doesn’t matter if you arrive at a special place or not cause the destination is your way (except you have to end the road trip at a specific place for example, where you have to give the rental car back). Most of the time we just start driving no matter where it will take us and that’s always wonderful.
9. Don’t book all your accommodations on the road
If you’re not road tripping in the main holiday season (as we did it in Cornwall last August) you’ll always find a place to stay for a night or two. So, if you make a spontaneous and unplanned road trip also book your accommodations on the road. Maybe this tip will save you from having to cancel hotels or get stressed because you have to go to a hotel that is 500 kilometers away.
10. Drop a pin if you park your car
When you park your car at an unknown place, drop a pin on your navigation system on your mobile phone. It may spare you some panic attacks if you think you have lost your car.
11. Take cutlery with you
If you have cutlery with you there’s nothing in the supermarket you can’t buy. For example, some salad or yogurt. But the best about it is that you reduce use your plastic consumption cause if you order some take-away food in the restaurant you don’t need their plastic cutlery.
12. Take some cans for food with you
Cans are a good storage for food you bought in the supermarket and didn’t eat completely. For example, the buns you bought today and would like to eat tomorrow. And it’s a good way to protect the things in your back from crushed fruits like peaches or bananas (we had already tree times big messes in our back due to crushed fruits).
13. Take a notebook with you
While road tripping we always get wonderful ideas. If it’s the same for you (and we’re sure it is) you should write them down. If you’re a little bit old-school like we are, use a notebook (don´t forget the pen), if not write it down on your smartphone.
14. Collect memories
No, we don’t mean memories like experiences we mean memories like bills, the bottle caps from the beer you drank while watching the sunset, the serviette of your favorite take-away restaurant and so on. Back at home you can put them in a photo album together with your best pictures or you can make “road-trip-memory-box” and put it in there.
15. Give your car a name
No matter if it’s your car or if it’s a rental car you should give it a name. You’ll spend so much time together with this car so it’s a little bit like a family member and family members always have names. Here are some of our favorite names (if you give your car one of these names, please tell us, we would love to know that): Berta, Alfons, Findus, Petro, Hulk, Bernd, Pumuckl, Liselotte, Herbert, Karl, Otto, Elisabeth, Harry, Elsa, …
16. Take a picture of the whole gang
Yes, as You may suggest already your car (which has hopefully a name now) is also part of the gang. So let’s do a super cool shot – we’re sure this will be a wonderful memory-photo.
17. Take rest stops and share the long drives
Driving could be really exhausting cause you have to be concentrated all the time especially if you have to drive on the other side of the street than you´re used to it. For safe travels it’s important to stop sometimes and take a deep breath not only for photographing beautiful things along the road also for regenerating (by the way it’s also very important for your body that you move around and don’t sit all day long). Changing the driver is also a nice cause then everyone in the car can enjoy the views bit by bit.
18. Rules of the road
Make sure you know all the traffic rules in country you’ll be tripping. You can find the corresponding tips and advice in the internet.
19. Mark your favorite stops at a map
It doesn’t matter if this map is part of a navigation app or if it’s a paper map, you should mark your favorite stops. One day you’ll be very thankful that you still know your best places of this trip. For example, you can recommend them to your friends if they are thinking about doing the same trip.
20. Read a book
If you can read in the car (I’m going to get nauseous) it’s a really good way to pass time. You can read out loud, so your driver also gets some entertainment, or you’ll read a little bit (for example, in a travel guide) and summaries what you have already read.
21. Download offline maps
Sometimes you won’t have GPS or WiFi, but you’ll need a map. Simply go to the area you will be road tripping and download it to your phone (before you start your trip).
We hope our tips were helpful for you and you´ll have an unforgettable road trip. If you have any questions, thoughts or some more tips, feel free to share them in the comments below with us! We would love to read them!
Bleibt gesund und passt gut auf euch auf!
Alles Liebe,
