Travel Tips and Hints
You like traveling or you wouldn’t be reading this! You also know the more you travel, the more you learn how to do things, and the more willing you are to learn from others. OK - here’s the way we do it! If you know of a better way, let us know. We’re always looking for new and better ways of doing things.
Make it fun!
Vacation traveling must, above all, be fun! Eliminate all the obstructions to fun and make light of those you can’t. Be flexible and flow with the circumstances.
This means we -
- Avoid specific schedules
- Visit unexpected attractions
- Stop at roadside information signs
- Stay in motels when it rains
- Keep meals and equipment simple
- Don’t make reservations
This philosophy rests on more than two decades and several thousand miles of backpacking where schedules, objectives, and detailed planning were frequently brushed aside by weather, terrain, and trails. We learned to relax, enjoy the scenery, and be willing to adjust to what we found. Now our “feet” are four wheels, our tent is a camper shell, and our trails are roads. Yet we are still backpacking, enjoying one fun adventure after another.
So how do we do it?
Let's start with -
Meals
On the trail we quickly learned that meals should be quick to fix, easy to clean up, and edible ... in that order! We wanted everything ready to eat from the package, or fixed in hot water. Ever try cleaning up from fried eggs, bacon, and pancakes in the rain while swatting mosquitoes?
Besides, pots and pans that are used for oil cooking are difficult to clean without lots of hot water and soap. If you don’t get them clean, the next meal may well be salmonella sushi! We’d rather travel, relax, and enjoy the scenery than wash dishes.
When traveling food is simply fuel to get us from one adventure to another. But we reserve the right to head to the nearest restaurant when it is raining and the mosquitoes are as hungry as we are! Besides, what could be simpler than paying someone to cook for you?
OK - here are our menus -
- Breakfast - Instant oatmeal packets, hot chocolate, and coffee (bags, not instant).
- Lunch - Ritz crackers, sliced cheese, fresh veggies, grapes, and diet soda/Snapple.
- Dinner - Rice or pasta sauces mixed with 10-12 ounces of canned ham, chicken, or beef. Ritz crackers, and diet drinks round out the meal. No dessert, at least for us. Our goal is to avoid gaining weight on our trips, and we need all the help we can get!
Sound boring? It’s not! Besides, we don't avoid special "treats." Every other day or so around 2 in the afternoon we look for a local coffee shop and check out their coffee and chai. So far the best we've ever found is What's Brewing on Broadway in Nakusp, BC, Canada. It's a little out of the way for most people, but if you're in the neighborhood, stop in!
OK - what about cooking?
Breakfast
At breakfast Bill fires up our 20 year old Coleman “Peak 1” backpacking stove and heats a pot of water. The stove puts out a lot of heat, but it also requires lots of pumping. If we have electricity at the site we plug in our electric tea pot. Either way we have hot water for our oatmeal and drinks.
When we’re finished, we rinse out our bowls and spoons with the left-over water and we’re done. Bill fills the stove before leaving, just so we don’t have to fuss with it at the end of a long day.
Lunch
For lunch we usually “tailgate”. We get cold drinks, veggies and dip, cheese, and fruit out of the ice chest. Out of the goodie box comes crackers and peanut butter. We sit on the tailgate and eat away!
Dinner
Bill fires up the stove or plug in the pot while Diane mixes the rice and meat. When the water is hot she measures out the proper number of cups, and off it goes to a boil for the prescribed time. It’s easier to start with hot water from the pot if we can. The stove does “simmer” quite well. We add the canned meat at the beginning so everything cooks together.
While we’re eating we heat a coffee pot of water on the stove or in the teapot. When we’re finished, we use the hot water to wash and rinse the dishes. It takes us less than 1 1/2 hours from pulling in to the site to putting things away.
What do you drive?
We drive a 1998 Ford XLT F-150 extended cab with a short ( 6 1/2 foot) bed pickup and - Here’s the “guy” stuff -
- 4.6 liter V-8
- 3.55 limited slip axle
- Leer raised canopy shell
- Bed liner
- 1/2 plywood “floor”
Bill’s made two sets of 16 inch wide shelves that go across the shell at the cab end. Each piece is 1/2 the width of the bed and fastens to a leg with brackets and wing nuts. These short sections are easy to remove and store, and the legs and brackets make them strong enough to hold our stuff.
He’s also made two 2 x 6 pieces that fit in the bed's rear 2 x 4 slot. These keep our water jug, ice chest, and food box from sliding around when traveling. When we’re not traveling we leave the floor and dividers in and store the shelves in the garage.
OK, how do you camp?
On the plywood floor we have a piece of high quality carpet scrap purchased from a local carpet store. On that we lay two backpacking foam pads - one full-length and one 1/2-length. Our suitcases are soft sided cordura nylon. During the day we roll the pads and sleeping bags into a large roll and stuff them under the shelves. We put our suitcases and other stuff in front of them. In front of the 2 x 6 dividers go our ice chest, food box (the “goodie box”), and picnic jug.
All we need for a deluxe camp site is a nice picnic table! (picture)
At night we put the ice chest and goodie box outside under a tarp or, if its rainy or there are bears in the area, in the cab. Then we roll out the foam pads and put sleeping bags on top of them. It’s better than sleeping on our living room floor!
If we have electricity at our site we clip a desk light to the shelves. We can also pop a DVD into our iBook and enjoy a feature film before retiring. On our Columbia River trip we experimented with two other electric items - a teapot for heating water and a small space heater. Both were a big success!
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