Road Trip Preparation

Being ‘on the road’ for 11 days requires some planning. Even though I’ve done it enough times before that I should be ‘experienced’ there is always a niggling worry that something might be forgotten. The usual things are on the list: 

• Pick up tourbooks from AAA.
• Check the travel times between destinations with Google maps.
• Load the lodging reservation information details onto my Kindle - and print the summary.
• Plan the food for ‘picnic’ meals. I am making Pumpkin and Ginger Scones the day before we leave and will take the ones left after we enjoy them fresh from the oven. Also on my list are hummus and veggies, nuts (cashews, peanuts, soynuts). This has been a great year for apples so they’ll be the primary fruit for the road.
• Arrange for house/cat sitter.
• Water the house plants right before we leave. I have a sweet potato that sprouted recently; I planted it in a large pot indoors and have a grow light for it; it is growing very rapidly. My plan is to baby it through the winter and then plant it outdoors in the spring….so that next fall I’ll have quite a crop of sweet potatoes - but it needs to survive our being away.
• Look at forecasts for destinations before packing. Weather is pretty changeable this time of year…and where we are going is generally warmer than Maryland….but is it warm enough to get out the warm weather clothes again?
• Checkout ebooks from the library and make sure they are transmitted to the Kindle. I am not taking any paper based reading material on this trip!
• Create a mindmap for quick reference and re-plans while travelling. The goal is to get the most pertinent information (destinations, addresses, availability, travel times) condensed into a one page reference. Most of the time we can look up information on a smart phone if we need to - unless we are somewhere without cell phone coverage. 

Usually the things we forget are easily remedied - either with a quick purchase or by deciding that it wasn’t so essential after all!