PicoBlog

If you’ve followed me on Instagram for a while, you probably know that my husband Jake and I drive long distances pretty often. Mostly, this is a practical choice based on the fact that our families both live far away (but not so far that we can’t drive there in a day), we work remotely, and we have a dog. In other words, it often made more sense to drive down with the dog and stay in Florida for two or three weeks during the holidays than it did to board Winnie and fly down. Of course, we live further north now, and my parents live in South Carolina while Jake’s parents are still in Florida, so things are slightly more complicated than they were when we were in Philly. But we’ve already made the drive from here to Charleston to Orlando and back once this year, and we’ll do it again over the holidays. In other words, we are no strangers to a 10, 12, 14, or even 16-hour road trip. We’ve spent hundreds of hours in the car together, listening to podcasts and killing time and making it work.

If I’m being honest, I think I’m finally at the point where I’m losing my patience for doing this kind of trip more than once a year, but I still find it less stressful than flying (this might be a flying anxiety thing, though). I love being able to throw everything in the car, stop whenever I want, and generally feel like I have more control of what’s going on (not to mention, it’s nice to have access to your own car when visiting family). And, of course, I love that Winnie can join us. I often get questions about these long road trips — how we do them, what podcasts we listen to, what snacks we bring, how Winnie handles it, etc. so I thought I’d break it down once a for all, with the caveat being, of course, that we don’t have kids. That, as you can imagine, is sort of the first thing that makes this sort of trip even remotely doable. But let’s get into it.

My favorite type of podcast to listen to on a long drive is a long-form investigative podcast. It makes the hours fly by, often feels more engaging than an audiobook (to me), and gives Jake and I something to discuss along the way. Usually, these tend to be focused on true crime, but I’ve listened to a little bit of everything over the years. Here are the ones that really stuck with me. I bolded my favorites, and I’ll talk through a brief outline of what these are about in the audio version of this post, if you’re interested.

Truthfully Jake does most of the driving on road trips (by choice), so I usually DJ and try to pick stuff that we’d both want to listen to. These are the podcasts that we both consistently enjoy listening to on road trips together.

It takes me a bit to get into audiobooks, which I think makes it hard to choose them for road trips (especially when there’s more than one person in the car listening), but there are two audiobooks I always recommend for roadtrips for virtually anyone.

Obviously I’m a huge fan of Project Hail Mary, but both of these books make very, very entertaining audiobooks. If you’re into nonfiction, I would also suggest I’m Glad My Mom Died by Janette McCurdy, which I found incredibly engaging on audio, though there are quite a few trigger warnings to check out there before hit play on that one.

Look, I like fast food as much as the next one — especially if I’m on hour seven of a 14-hour drive and bored out of my mind, but stopping for fast food and coffee adds an hour or more onto your trip every time. Once I realized this, I couldn’t keep doing it. Now, we pack and eat our own food and drinks 99% of the time, and on the off chance we do stop for food, I almost always regret it because of how much time it adds (I also have a very weird revulsion to the food smelling like fast food… but that’s a whole other thing). Here are some more specific food and drink tips:

• Make coffee at home.

  • Set up your drip coffee the night before, set out your insulated cups, and pour two large cups in the morning. It’s tempting to stop at Starbucks or a gas station, I know, but being able to immediately get on the road helps so much, especially if you leave very early (we’ll get to that in a bit).

• Pack food you actually want to eat.

  • I’m the queen of having some health-focused meal plan for myself while driving, but if I pack food that isn’t actually enjoyable, I won’t eat it during the drive, and I’ll be that much more likely to stop. I try to pack a snack we both like, like pretzels, as well as apples, bananas, cheese, or other more snacks with more fiber, protein, etc. to keep things balanced.

• Make sliders.

  • The easiest and best food to make for road trips food is, in my opinion, Hawaiian Roll sliders. There’s no real recipe, but the key is taking a bread knife to all of them at once and slicing them in half, then layering the condiments, meat, and cheese in between, putting the other half of the bread back on top, and then cutting the individual sliders. It takes less than 10 minutes and makes a ton of sliders, depending on how much bread you use. I usually do mayo, swiss, and ham, but you can add whatever you want. I like to keep mine simple, though, because I find that I enjoy eating them more at any type of day. We both have a couple for breakfast, a couple for lunch, and then some for snacks throughout the day. They’re satisfying, filling, easy to eat on-the-go, and (again) take 5 minutes to make.

• If you want a “treat,” get it when you stop at a gas station.

  • I usually treat myself to a fountain Diet Coke when we stop for gas toward the end of the road trip. You’re going to have to stop for gas and to use the restroom anyway, so at least this way you’re not adding another restaurant or fast food lane to your schedule and making your trip even longer. I usually save this treat for the point in the road trip where I’m feeling the most “I never want to be in this car ever again,” and it always helps.

• Pack lots of water.

  • Fill up some reusable water bottles (look, I know you have 100 of them in a cabinet somewhere, too) for your trip and make sure they’re easily accessible. I don’t know what it is, but I simply will not drink water at all on a road trip unless I pack it. So I make sure it’s there, and it always help me feel a bit better.

In terms of general tips and tricks, there are a few other things we’ve learned over the years that have helped trips go more smoothly.

• Use state rest stops.

  • Generally speaking, state rest stops are cleaner, better, and quicker than going to a random gas station. If you have to go (and you don’t need gas, too), then use these. They’re just a more pleasant experience all around.

• Pack hand sanitizer.

  • Wherever you stop to use the restroom, trust me when I say that you’re going to want to sanitize and re-sanitize your hands directly after said stop, so make sure you have some high quality sanitizer in your car. This is also great for after pumping gas, etc.

• Pack paper towels.

  • Honestly, wouldn’t all of our lives be easier if we just went and threw a handful of paper towels (or microfiber towels) into our car’s glove compartment now for when something inevitably spills? I always forget this and regret it at some point on a road trip, so take my advice!!

• Wear sunscreen.

  • As someone who gets burned after almost every single long road trip, take this as a reminder to wear sunscreen in the car! It’s a lot of UV exposure for a very extended period of time, even if we don’t always think about it that way.

• Re-frame driving.

  • I was very, very uncomfortable with driving in the city so I avoided it altogether for a long time. Now, I drive all the time and love it, including on long road trips. I’ve grown to really love it for one reason: I can’t look at my phone when I’m driving. If you’re someone who finds themselves scrolling a lot more often than you’d like, look at driving as a way to take a break from your phone. It’s a little weird, but this really helped me reframe the experience of driving and actually really appreciate the time I spend driving.

Although Winnie certainly has her quirks (not good with other dogs! not great with kids!), she is generally (surprisingly!) great in the car. In fact, I think she actually kind of likes it. Having said that, I can’t give much advice on motion sickness or other issues. Generally, though, as long as she gets a walk around the gas station every 3-4 hours and she has her bed, she’s happy. We just use her regular bed in the backseat, but we also use this Kululu dog hammock, which helps with keeping her secure and keeping the car clean. It’s held up incredibly well and we love it!

While I don’t claim to have the answers to every road trip question, I hope this answers some of the FAQs I’ve received on Instagram about Jake and I’s long drives. If you and your partner have a long drive coming up, the most important thing is to, of course, be safe. Don’t text and drive. Don’t hesitate to take a break if you’re feeling tired. Don’t feel bad about taking your time or waiting to travel if you’re hesitant about bad weather or anything else. Safety is more important than anything else. So if you’re unsure or uncomfortable, don’t push yourself!

That’s it for this week. I’m in England next week for my second group Trova trip and I am so, so, so excited. I can’t wait to meet everyone, explore, and have the chance to do a tiny bit of solo traveling as well. If you’re curious about future group trips, or have other questions, head over to my mini podcast this week! More on that below.

On this week’s mini podcast for paid subscribers (this usually comes out 1-3 business days after my free Substack post goes live), I’ll be doing a Q&A, answering and expanding on some of the questions I received recently, including:

• If I’ll be doing anymore group trips in the future.

• If it’s hard making friends in a rural area.

• Specific, nitty gritty updates — what big project is next (and why I keep changing my mind).

• If this is our “forever home.”

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