Skip to content

Menu

  • home
  • about
    • about
    • connect
    • resume
  • learning
    • learning
    • books
    • data science
    • volunteering
  • live fully
    • live fully
    • recipes
    • celebrations
    • travels
    • happiness project

Archives

  • January 2025
  • July 2024
  • June 2024
  • May 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • February 2024
  • January 2024
  • December 2023
  • November 2023
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • August 2023
  • July 2023
  • June 2023
  • May 2023
  • April 2023
  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006

Calendar

July 2011
S M T W T F S
 12
3456789
10111213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31  
« Jun   Aug »

Categories

  • Air Travel
  • Alabama
  • Amsterdam
  • Apartments
  • Aquaruims and Zoos
  • arabia
  • Arizona
  • arts
  • Asia
  • Atlanta Area
  • Attractions
  • Bahamas
  • Balancing
  • Beach
  • blogs
  • Blue Ridge
  • books
  • bts
  • Buildings
  • BYO
  • California
  • camille
  • Camping
  • Cape Cod
  • care
  • Caribbean
  • celebrations
  • chloe
  • circles
  • college
  • Colorado
  • cooking
  • crafts
  • daily
  • decatur
  • decatur daily
  • Dreaming
  • eastham
  • Eating
  • England
  • episode
  • Europe
  • Events
  • exercise
  • family
  • favorite photos
  • Florida
  • food
  • France
  • friends
  • friends
  • Friends and Family
  • ga history
  • garden
  • gbkZoo
  • Georgia
  • Georgia State Parks
  • Getting Around
  • Getting There
  • Greece
  • happiness
  • health
  • Highlands Region
  • Historical
  • hobbies
  • holiday
  • homeown saturday
  • homeschool
  • Hotels
  • house
  • Idaho
  • Illinois
  • Iowa
  • Ireland
  • Japan
  • Kansas
  • Kentucky
  • Kids' Needs
  • KidViews
  • kindie
  • learn
  • Learning
  • like
  • local
  • Louisiana
  • Maine
  • Maryland
  • Massachusetts
  • Mexico
  • Minnesota
  • Mississippi
  • Missouri
  • Monaco
  • Montana
  • Museums
  • music
  • National Parks
  • Nevada
  • New Mexico
  • New York City
  • news
  • North Carolina
  • Northern Ireland
  • Ocean City, MD
  • Ohio
  • On the Road
  • On the Sea
  • On the Train
  • Oregon
  • Out West Trip
  • outtakes
  • parenting
  • Parks and Farms
  • Pennsylvania
  • pets
  • photo
  • photo friday
  • photo-a-day
  • photography
  • pine lake
  • Plains Region
  • Planning
  • random
  • rant
  • Rants
  • Reader Input
  • Recreation
  • Remembering
  • Restaurants
  • Rhode Island
  • roll
  • Room Service
  • school
  • Scotland
  • Seeing and Doing
  • self-care
  • Sharing
  • simple
  • sing-a-song
  • Slideshows
  • South Carolina
  • South Dakota
  • Spain
  • Specialty Stores
  • Street Food
  • Street Markets
  • summer fun
  • techy stuff
  • Tennessee
  • Texas
  • Theater
  • thoughts
  • Tips
  • Travel Sites
  • travels
  • Turkey
  • Utah
  • video
  • Virginia
  • volunteer
  • Walking
  • Washington
  • Washington DC
  • weather
  • wilt
  • work
  • Wyoming
  • xm
  • YearInReview

Copyright gobbledy goon 2025 | Theme by ThemeinProgress | Proudly powered by WordPress

gobbledy goonmy journey, destination unknown
  • home
  • about
    • about
    • connect
    • resume
  • learning
    • learning
    • books
    • data science
    • volunteering
  • live fully
    • live fully
    • recipes
    • celebrations
    • travels
    • happiness project
Written by GBK Gwyneth23 July, 2011

Roadtrip: Life on the Road

Camping . Tips Article

seat down - 1 jun 2011

Earlier this summer, Rob, the girls and I spent five and a half weeks living on the road. The trip was so long, the post office refused to hold our mail — mail can only be held for thirty days. “Is there an address that we can forward your mail to?” Um, no, there isn’t.

Of those thirty seven nights on the road, we spent two nights at my parents house, two nights in a KOA Kamping Kabin (when your car is also your tent and it breaks down, you have few choices), three nights in a friends’ vacation house in Red Lodge, MT, and two nights in motels as we headed home. The rest of the nights? We slept in our VW poptop, Evie (she’s a EuroVan, EV, get it?), at campgrounds and RV parks.

How does a family of four travel, sleep and live out of a van for that long? Pretty comfortably, in fact.

downsizing:
Early on, I decided we needed smaller pillows and smaller camp chairs. We headed out to REI and found nice pots and pans to replace the camping pots we had received from our wedding registry. I bought these great Stowaway Folding Chairs; they fold up small and work great as beach chairs too. We bought Thermarest pillows … pretty comfortable.

packing:
We packed by function rather than by person. I came up with this system when we first traveled in Evie and was frustrated with the way the girls would dig through the bags looking for pjs or swimsuits. So we used mostly canvas bags: one for swimming gear, one for winter gear (long underwear, scarves, hats), one for raingear, one for pjs, one for underthings and socks, one for shoes, one for games and chargers and so on. We each had a backpack for our books, electronics and other forms of “personal” entertainment. We had a bag of “cooking essentials”, like plates and matches and jetboils. For twoels, we took thin beach towels that did double-duty. Overall, this packing system seems to work fairly well for our needs.

Breakfast at KOA - 26 may 2011

food:
I tried to keep food simple. We ate out less than once a day. Often, we ate out in order to take advantage of fre wi-fi or for the novelty of eating in an interesting place. Otherwise, we went to the grocery store and bought food that was easy to cook. Our cooler ran of the battery (and then battery and electricity). We had a big brown bag of staples like peanut butter and crackers. For meals, we had pasta, veggie sausages, veggie burgers, soup and sandwiches. I’d love to get new ideas on camping meals…

in evie - 28 jun 2011

wi-fi/electronics:
I had the mistaken impression that “Free Wi-Fi” at KOAs and other RV parks would be similar to hotel wi-fi. WRONG! Some places only allowed us to connect one computer (we had five computers/iPads with us). Many places the wi-fi was often down; others the wi-fi was extremely low bandwidth. In the end, we tried to find local coffee shops to hang out in for an hour or two in the morning; the girls grew bored, but we were able to get work done and blogs updated. Otherwise, we might find a Starbucks or McDonalds with an open wi-fi that we could use.

As for electronics, we bought car chargers for just about everything, including the computers, iPads, iPhones, DSes and more. This way we could try to keep everything fully charged, in case our campsite had no power.

homeschooling:
Yes, we did actually homeschool on the road (carschooling? worldschooling?). Neither girl has finished with all their subjects for the year. I had each girl pack the homeschooling that we be most compact and easiest to do while on the road. For Chloe, we ripped apart her books, punched holes in the pages and made a nice binder of work. Very nice. I also had the girls write journals, though they got bored of doing that fairly quickly. They also lost interest in writing postcards after the first week or two.

Tags: evie, pack, roadtrip

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *


GBK Gwyneth
Mid-life metamorphosis. Math PhD. Red Cross volunteer. Gurobian. Part-time Cape Codder. ex-IBMer. Shutterbug. ArabiaMt wannabe. Aspiring Data Scientist. (It's complicated.)
  • Bluesky
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Instagram

instagramming

Collections. - 12 Jul 2024 Collections. - 12 Jul 2024
Coffee anyone? - 11 jul 2024 Coffee anyone? - 11 jul 2024
Hostas - 10 Jul 2024 Hostas - 10 Jul 2024
Beachy. 9 Jul 2024 Beachy. 9 Jul 2024
Summer. - 8 Jul 2024 Summer. - 8 Jul 2024
Visitors. - 7 Jul 2024 Visitors. - 7 Jul 2024
Lavender - 6 Jul 2024 Lavender - 6 Jul 2024
Phizzy - 5 Jul 2024 Phizzy - 5 Jul 2024
Homemade ice cream with RWB jimmies 🎉- 4 Jul 20 Homemade ice cream with RWB jimmies 🎉- 4 Jul 2024
Dinner. - 3 Jul 2024 #EatBeansDay Dinner. - 3 Jul 2024 #EatBeansDay
Prickly pear. - 2 Jul 2024 Prickly pear. - 2 Jul 2024
Surprise visitor. Surprise visitor.

2023 photos

img-230309-09 img-230101-01 img-230309-14 img-230105-01 img-230703-01 img-230125-01 img-230316-04 img-230307-06 img-230309-13 img-230610-01 img-230102-01 img-230513-02

categorizing

archiving

reading

The Republic
Wollstonecraft
10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works
The Magician's Land
One Evening in Paris: A Novel
Ireland


GBK Gwyneth's favorite books »

2022 photos

img-221222-01 img-221108-19 img-221224-01 img-221203-01 img-220406-01 img-221108-33 img-220130-18 img-221112-09 img-221108-32 img-220319-01

2021 photos

img-210104-02 img-210126-02 img-210823-01 img-210405-01 img-210117-01 img-210112-01 img-210102-02 img-210126-07 img-210831-01 img-210101-02 img-210202-02 img-210915-01

Copyright gobbledy goon 2025 | Theme by ThemeinProgress | Proudly powered by WordPress