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Can You Travel in a Car For a Month? Rita did it. · Her Journey Her Way

• Rita: I've spent over fifty nights in my car and it's all because of the first one. It was five below zero in the weirdest place I have ever parked. You'll never guess where, but I'll tell you this, once I made it through that night, I knew I could sleep anywhere. Rita Gardner: I have some of the coolest friends on the planet. They left the comfort of their home, got out on the road, took the trips most people only talk about. Rita and this is Her Journey Her Way, a She Travel Simple podcast. I've spent most of my adult life traveling. Here's what I learned. The places are beautiful, the people are better. Every one of my friends has a story, and every one of them knows something you're gonna want to know. That's what this is: their stories, their lessons, their way. My friend Terry had a dream of going and visiting Banff. So back in February she waited on hold for about an hour, I would say, and she got reservations for a campground in Banff for the middle of July. So being the friend that I am, I said, Sure, I'll go with you. To be honest, I wasn't entirely sure where Banff was. I wasn't sure what it entailed. I wasn't sure of anything there. But, you know, she is one of these adventurous women. So if she says, I got us reservations in Banff, I go to Banff. That's just the way it is. And The next thing you know, she said, I also got us tickets for the Calgary Stampede right before we go to Banff. So I thought, gee, I better figure out where I'm actually going, 'cause I had no idea where Calgary was either. So I pull it all up on a map. I'm in New Jersey and Banff It's halfway to Alaska. Now I dream of going to Alaska, but I know that It is not a trip I want to take for a week. I wanna spend some considerable time there, which means taking up a lot of my summer. Banff is over twenty five hundred miles away. And I start doing some math in my head. if I traveled 500 miles a day, it'll be five days of driving. Now I'm fortunate enough that I have a van and I can sleep in the van, I boondock. So to find a place to stay is not a problem. Then when I start looking at my route, I realize I've got a lot of friends either on route or slightly off route. Either way, I'm thinking, okay, let's make this a week to two week journey to get out to Calgary to the start of the trip. where where we had our first set of reservations. Anyway, the next thing you know, I realize this is going to be about two months because you don't really want to drive twenty five hundred miles and not make the best of it. I realize i in my mind, I always say my clock is ticking. I don't know how many summers I have to drive and or or to travel. And y you know when you go to a place like Banff it's not open all year round. So I have to make sure that I'm going at the right time, which is the summertime, and that I incorporate, you know, life in it. I have kids graduating. I have other things in my life, other places I wanna go to, which again are only available to visit during the summertime. So Here I am trying to pack a lot of stuff in this two month time period. I realize I can visit certain friends, I can go to other places. In the same breath, Terry's also making reservations and has ideas of where we can go and see people. But then I think about this trip 2,500 miles in a van, and I think about this time I drove back from Florida. I drove 900 miles in one day. I had a great trip, but when I got out, my left leg felt twice the size of my right leg. So I said to myself, Gee, you better start remembering this kind of situation and and take more breaks and and make sure you're feeling better. And then I thought, Gosh, that is so much driving and I have to do it out and back. And then before I knew it, as summer was approaching, because remember these reservations were done in February. And I've had several months to think about it. But as May approached and then June, I realized other things were coming into my life and I had to either leave later due to certain things and I needed to arrive back because of other things that were coming up, commitments I wanted to to to take on, and there were just things I didn't want to miss back home. And then I made that fateful mistake of doing the math of how much it was gonna cost me in fuel. Now, right before my trip, fuel started to skyrocket. It started to skyrocket so much that I began to have reservations about going at all. Especially since life was starting to happen and I realized all the things I was gonna have to miss back at home and well, if I chose to go to Banff. the things I would miss. So I was like, no. Are we getting to the point where I may just cancel this trip? But then I sat down, I had a long thought about it, and I and I just said, no, I'm still gonna go. I'm gonna go on this trip, regardless. Because just as things were coming to light at home of things I was gonna want to do and things I was gonna miss, the same thing was happening on road. People were starting to decide they were going to meet up with us on the road. Other people had said, well if you come here during this time, we can do this. And so just like when summertime approaches, all of a sudden all of these activities and things you want to do come to light, right? So this is happening on both ends on my trip and back home. So I try to make the best of both worlds and I say, okay, I'm gonna go, but instead of going for eight weeks, now I'm only gonna go for about five weeks and I'm gonna get home to do a fair amount of things, which meant my driving out there was gonna be Long days of driving, I thought about my circumstances, I was going to be staying at people's houses. So I was going to be moochdocking, you know, staying in their driveway for free. I knew I had access to their showers, to their bathrooms. I had water. I even had a way to put food in the refrigerator or make ice bottles. So then I thought, okay, that's one thing I can do where I can not bring the van, but actually bring the car. And then I thought about if I'm gonna be doing long days of driving, it w certainly would be much better to go in the car. And one of the things I decided to do was rather than visit friends along the route for say two or three days, I decided to only visit for one night. And I made it very clear I was like, listen, life's happening. I can stop by and visit you. I really want to visit you. But it's not going to be for a week. It's not gonna be for four nights. I'm not gonna work on the I had I had planned to w actually work on the road, take a few depositions through Zoom here and there. But even then it got to be a really hectic schedule and I decided, nope, I ha if I'm gonna go on this trip, I'm going to enjoy this trip. So it was gonna be five weeks, no work. So I didn't need to stay at these people's houses and set up shops so that I could take these depositions. So anyway, I warned everybody, I'm not staying there for a week, I'm staying there for two days, I'm not staying here for four nights, I'm only gonna stay for one night. And everybody was okay about it. And my first thing that I wanna let you know is that's what's so great about the community, about my friends. That's this this is what makes them so amazing. They understand. They're not upset, they're They're thinking, I'm home and if I can have some visitors of my nomad friends, the friends I've traveled with, the friends I visited with in at festivals, then they're happy with that. And truth be told, I think they were a little bit relieved because they didn't feel like they had to entertain me or they had to stop their lives to because they had company. Even though all of us who travel, we were like, we get it. we get it. Y y y you can't be entertaining everybody all the time. People like to just sit in their rigs and and decompress and and, you know, get their energy back. 'Cause it is quite taxing, energy wise. So that's the one thing about this the community and my group of friends and everybody I know, they're really pretty amenable to to changes. They understand it. And I say that 'cause that's that is a slight difference I've known between people who don't travel, people who sit at home, they have a schedule, and then when they get company, they feel like they've got to take a day off of work that they have to entertain. And so I just wanted to point that out. That is a slight difference with people who travel and people who don't travel, at least the way that I I'm traveling, you know, getting in the car and just driving and stopping to see places. So another thing that piqued my interest about going from the van to the car. like I said, so I was staying at people's houses. We we had campsites that had water and electric hookups. There were bathhouses. So I realized I don't think I needed as many things. Like I didn't have to bring as much as I would on s on other trips where I'm boondocking and I and I have to figure out how to shower. I need to pack water with me. I need to have a refrigerator and a power bank. These were this was a completely different animal and a completely different way of traveling than I had done in the past. And I was excited for that challenge. I mean, I'm gonna be in a car. Like I've never gone car camping except for one time. And I'm just gonna touch on that real quick. So in February is groundhogs day and I live about four to five hours from Punksitaani. And in my small town, there's a man who Al who goes every year to Punx Tawani and he's been doing it for twenty five years. So we I said, I wanna go to Punxitawny and I wanna go with you. Now when I say that he has his hotel room and he is gonna drive out on his own and does his own thing, but what I meant is I'm gonna go to Punx Tawani and I wanna meet up with you so you can tell me what to do and And show me how to do whatever I need to do because I never been there. Anyway, he took me under his wing, he showed me what tickets to buy, told me what to do, this, that, and the other thing. Well, the morning I was leaving, something happened in my van. I got about a half an hour in my trip and it started to make noise. The van did. And I got a warning signal that I had never seen before. And I was like, Uh-oh, what do I do? Because the last thing I wanted to do was get stranded in this van. Why? Because this year was the year it was gonna be the coldest ever in Punxatani and I was nervous about breaking down. so before that I had slept in my van and it had been at twenty degrees, twenty-five degrees at night, and I knew I could stay warm with the comforter I had. with the way that I I use a hot water bottle. And so I was like, I'm good with that. But as the event got closer, it got c it the the forecast was getting colder and cl colder to where they said it could be a low of negative five. And I called Al and I said, Listen, I could have done it to twenty. I can't do it at negative five. There are no campgrounds open. I need power. And he's really wanted me to come out there. He I He had bought tickets for me and he wasn't gonna take no for an answer. So he said, Hang on. And he called me back and he said, I have power for you. It's in a parking lot. you you'll be safe and it's right near the center of town. It's all good. So I said, Okay, fine. but so then as my van started to act up, I decided, you know what, I'm gonna turn around, I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna transfer whatever I need to from the van. to the car and and then head back out. So I called Al and I said, Listen, I had issues. I I'll be there but I'll be two hours later. So I go and I get my stuff out of the van and I realize I can sleep in the car. There were so many activities going on. I didn't need to worry about having to spend like a whole entire day in my car because I knew I wasn't gonna be in my car except to sleep and to travel from place to place. So it was all good. And I had power and all I had to do was make sure I could get an extension cord from inside my car outside because I wanted to run a little heater inside my car to to stay warm. I wasn't gonna run it all night, but it was at least to take the I wanted to get from negative five to positive five before spending the night in the car. Anyway, so I get to the ad he texted me the address and I get to the place where I was supposed to spend the night with the power. I get to the building. Sure enough, there's the door, The only issue is which I thought it was hysterical 'cause he never told me, it was to a funeral home. A funeral home. So I joked, I said, Well, if I freeze to death in the middle of the night, I'll be right there by the door where they bring the bodies in, So I had spent two nights in my car and it was so comfortable. The car was roomy enough. I made out so well in the car and I said to myself, Jeez, I should really consider car camping. Now when I bought my car, I made sure that the seats would lay flat. I had like a yoga mat down to kinda smooth out the little ruffle and I have a four inch mattress that's five and a half feet by thirty inches and I'm telling you it's like sleeping on a cloud. I had these mattresses by Tachda when I built out my shuttle bus and I have since gotten rid of this shuttle bus but I kept the mattresses and I use them all the time and I would have paid I think back in the day they were almost $300 a piece. And I gladly would have paid $1,000 for them. So anyway, so now I am looking at this trip where I'm going to spend over a month in my car. I'm gonna see friends. I'm gonna be in people's driveways. I'm not spending more than Four or five nights, in one place, and that was in Banff, where we had power, we had electric, and we were next to a bathhouse. So I thought, well, let's give this a shot because I knew the car was gonna get better gas mileage. I knew it was gonna be more comfortable to drive, and with all of that driving, I wanted to do a lot of listening to podcasts, books on tape. And obviously it has a much better sound system than the van, which the van is an O five and it was a prison van. It's not like a luxury van by any means, but it does rattle and it doesn't have Bluetooth and so I was thinking I thought about all these things, how to make the difference between the car and the van. And And so I really wanted to tell you about my trip to Banff, but mainly because I wanted to tell you about the difference between traveling in the van and the car and how I made the car work. Well, the car has USB ports, the van does not, and it has seats, it has room, and so the first thing I did was try to upgrade my sleeping a little bit. I have fatigue mats that I had used to make window coverings for my bus and I had a lot of it left over. Now this fatigue mat is I think three quarters of an inch and it's it's like a yoga mat on steroids, you know. If you've ever stood on a fatigue mat, you'll see they they bend but they don't bend easy and so that is what I put underneath my four inch mattress to keep me from eventually feeling the the gap between the back the third row seat that went down and second seat that went down. So I should tell you I have a Buick Enclave. It's a 2021 so that's the kind of car that I have. So you can picture. So I wasn't driving in like a huge SUV, but I'm also not in a compact car or a sedan. this was three seats. the back seat I put down and actually because I only had a thirty inch wide mattress, all I had to do was put one of the second row seats down. Now, the other thing that I had to consider was that when I met up with my friends, they were gonna be in buses and vans. And so if we were gonna drive here and there, at these meeting places, I was likely gonna be the one driving because I had the car. So imagine you're in the second row seat, right? The one seat's down, one seat's up. What I did is I started to roll my mattress and the fatigue mat as I put up the second seat. So the second row of seating, which was two like captain's chairs, they were in the up position. And what it did is it held the mattress and the feet for the fatigue mat slightly rolled. So I had seating for four people comfortably. I had a midsize cooler in the front that Basically I use to not keep things cold but to keep things from getting to a hundred and twenty degrees. So if I had grapes or tomatoes or even chocolate, right? I I kept it in that cooler with a frozen bottle of ice that I just kept refreezing. I had I had a couple of them. So I would just keep refreezing them as I stopped at these places. my friends in vans when they were hooked up, I could put a bottle in there and just keep replacing or keep switching out the bottles of ice. So I didn't use it to have refrigerated food. I used it to just keep everything from melting, pretty much. So that was like a a wonderful thing to have this bed rolled up and it gave me plenty of room. So as that seat is up, I hung a I call it a beauty bag. It's it I I just hung it on the back of my driver's seat it it lays and and I have access to all like three or four compartments. So I could have like makeup in one, I could have s lotion in another, medicine and vitamins in another, things like that. So I had access to med basically my medicine cabinet. On the other side, behind the passenger seat, I had a Thetford T-H-E-T F-O-R-D camp toilet. Now, if you look up Thetford, you'll see they have regular toilet size like they have big sizes and they have a compact. I personally love the Thetford I mean people will pee in a bucket, people will pee in a big gulp cup, What else do they they do? Anyway, there's all different things. I actually have a blog that I wrote about this and I will link that in the show notes and that's on my website, she travels simple dot com. So you can go there and look at all the different ways to do whatever you need to do bathroom wise in your rig, your bus, your car, your tent. And so my preference is the Thetford toilet. there's no smell, there it's comfortable and it's easy to dispose of and I've got lots of hacks and it's my favorite. I also knew too I wasn't gonna be using it very often, but you know, in the middle of the night. You need to y go. And I did not want to go out of my car and put shoes on and try to walk to a bathhouse or go inside someone's house to go. So I wanted to have that accessibility there. So anyway, so behind the passenger seat, believe it or not, this that for toilet fits perfectly on the floor and I had plenty of room to sit up. even the pockets behind the passenger seat held the baby wipes and I have a spray bottle that every so often I'll spray just to confirm I don't get any any scent. so so that all worked out. I had screens that I would put over my windows and so I'm moving on now. So I was able to put screens that are it's like a net so I could put that over my windows. Because remember, I'm not sleeping necessarily in a Walmart parking lot or Cracker barrel. Where I was going, I actually felt pretty safe. Like I didn't need to be hidden. I didn't need to lock my doors, anything like that. one of my biggest fears was having the screens that I would put up in my windows for privacy, having them float around the car. Because I've noticed in the past that taking them off of the windows to drive and rolling them up or packing them away was kind of a pain. So one thing I did is I bought window film, the kind that people put in bathroom windows. Sometimes they are like opaque. You can't see in, but light can come in. So what I did is I bought a very dark gray window film and you definitely can't see in it. And it doesn't look like you have the the silver reflectix. One thing I kinda try to avoid is being able to see the reflectix. So if you walk past a car and you see reflectics, you think, yeah, there's somebody sleeping in there or camping in there. So what I did is I bought this window film and I put it on four out of the seven windows. I have seven w windows in my car. And I was able to put this window film on four of the windows. And the reason I did that was so if I wanted to pull into a spot or pull into the campsite, that was four less pieces of window treatments I had to put up, So I strategically put them on windows that I would not use while I'm driving. So it was the back seat behind the driver. And then there are these two windows that are in the third row, I put them in. And then in the very back on the hatch, I put in two pieces and I left a strip in the middle that I was able to see like if I looked in my rear view mirror, I could see if there was a car behind me. I didn't need to see everything because I had side view mirrors that I use and then if I were to be backing up somewhere I had a backup camera. so I had all of those done and all I needed then were four more wait, so I must have had five. One, two, three, four. Something's not mathing. Anyway, I had a roll up thing for my windshield. I had two that would go in the driver's side, the passenger side, and the back passenger. that's it. I did make a fourth one that went into another window that already had the the treatment on because I wasn't sure if I was going to need to block out light completely because I know up in Banff, which by the way is in Canada, really, really up there near Alaska. I say it's near Alaska. It's still two thousand miles from Alaska, but I knew we were up there where the light like it's light all the time. but I've actually gotten used to just sleeping in the light because if I'm at a Walmart, never fails. They've got so much lighting, which is kind of what I want. I know they have lights and they have cameras going, so that actually is kinda creepy at first, but then I realize I have nothing to hide. All you're seeing is my car. And because it's so lit and there's a lot of cameras, I did feel slightly safer. not that I would have slept there if I didn't feel safe, which I could tell you, if you pull into a spot and those hairs on the back of your neck go up, do not push them back down and go to bed. Just just turn your car back on and move on, which is another tip I have. If if you're doing long drives, don't go until you're about ready to pass out. I like to stop an hour before I pass out because if I stop somewhere and I get the heebie jeebies, something says this is not right, something is is off or I have the slightest bit of angst, I will Get back in my car and continue on another half hour, hour. And you wanna be able to have that energy to be okay to move down and not be like, Well, I don't really have a choice. I'm gonna stay here where I feel unsafe because I'm so tired. so you could do that. You know, another thing too, I remember going to this campsite to this not campsite, area. So I went to this rest area only to find out that it was like on the side of a cliff and d and everywhere I could have parked, it was really on an angle and I'm thinking, I can't sleep like this. It wasn't it wasn't even remotely level. So I ha I had to move on. And if I had gone in there with being fully tired, I don't know that I could have continued on. So give yourself a little bit of a relief and just be ready to move on if you need to. So that's how I handled window treatments and keeping myself hidden throughout the the night. One of the other things that was nice that I worked into my my master plan, my plan with sleeping, is that when I got to people's houses, some of the places I knew where I was staying and some were gonna be new to me. So when I went to see a friend I would pull into the driveway in a way that I had all of the existing window treatments where I wanted them. and sometimes I would pull in and I wouldn't have to put up any window treatments. The way that I slept was my head was all the way in the trunk in the hatch part of the vehicle. This worked out because I had enough room back there and My feet were basically hanging off of the middle seats area and if my friends were to come out and peek in the car to see if I was up, all that they would see is my feet if they were outside of the covers. Another little trick hack I do is I spent a fair amount of money on a down comforter and I splurged and got the linen duvet cover for the down comforter. I have literally slept under this down comforter and nobody would know I was in there because it's so big that it just looks like a big comforter on a bed. You don't really see anybody. you'd have to look really hard, let's put it that way, to even identify that there's somebody in the car. And I did that because sometimes when I'm sleeping and I don't want to put up a window covering 'cause I'm just too lazy or too tired. I know that if they were to look in, they may not even see anybody there and I would be covered up. And the comforter that I have is actually for winter and summer. So it I use it all year round and I have not regretted it at all. The screens that I put in my windows are a kind I bought on Amazon and they look like a big mesh stretchy piece of fabric. I open my car door and I place it over. It's almost like a giant pillowcase, if you can imagine that. And I roll my window down, I put it over the car and then I shut the door. it keeps bugs out, but it allows for airflow. And the nice thing about this is I would be strategic in that sometimes I would put both window coverings on one side. Sometimes I would put on the back on the second the back passenger windows and sometimes I would put on the other side. So I only had two. they squish up to nothing and I put them in the door pockets and very easy to install and they do block out some light and if you're like driving by you can't see in the car because they are dark. They're actually black. And so that works out that way. Again. This is a trip that I was going to be with friends. I was going to be in people's houses. I was going to be in my own campsite. in this instance it worked, and it worked out with the car. So let me get back to another reason for bringing the car we have fuel mileage, it was gonna be comfortable to sit in and I was going to be able to drive farther more comfortably. What I did not expect is driving eight hours and when I got to a friend's house, I would say get there at four or five or six o'clock at night, I actually got out of the car feeling better. I remember driving places with the van and I would get out of the van and I would feel like I needed a nap. I knew that the ride would be more comfortable. I just didn't expect to come out feeling like I had only driven a couple hours rather than eight hours. So that was a definite bonus. Bringing the car made me really think about what was important and I loved that challenge. Now, believe it or not, right before I was ready to leave, there were some items that I was gonna bring that were what I call just in case items. So I had a winter coat, I had cowboy boots, and I kept thinking just in case I find a place to go line dancing. Just in case it's really cold, I had a heater. I had that little heater that I brought to Punk Sitaani just in case it was going to be a really cold night. I didn't catch on until I went to take a look at my spare tire just to confirm that there was one there, just to confirm that there wasn't that there was a jack, things like that. I pull up the floor part of my hatch only to find that in the newer cars, because this car is pretty new to me. I'd only had it like six months, unbeknownst to me, there is not a spare tire, but an actual trunk. I felt like I just found a walk-in closet and I was ecstatic. Now I could bring a frying pan, now I can bring just just some oddball things that were just in case items. And I could just keep them under there. I was gonna be sleeping on top of it. And I had access I had easy access to it if I needed it. I even was able to bring a little rug. I was able to stuff my yoga mat in there. I often put my yoga mat below my mattress just because it's easy to to store there and Well, it's just a yoga mat stored there. I doubt I can tell any difference when I'm sleeping, but it's a place to store it. Now I traveled with my friend Terry, but I wasn't meeting up with her at first. She had actually started her trip several weeks earlier. She was leaving from Georgia. She met up with some people. She stopped in Tennessee. She stopped in Kentucky. She went to Indiana and Illinois. And I was going to meet up with her in Wisconsin. My trip was gonna leave several weeks later. I was gonna go to Ohio to meet up with a friend. and then I was gonna go to Wisconsin to meet up with another group of friends and then meet up with her in northern Wisconsin. And we were gonna go into Upper Peninsula of Michigan and then back to Wisconsin and North Dakota, Minnesota, and all these things on our way to Montana, which is where we had decided to go into Canada. There. although we had a few spots laid out, there were still some places we need to figure out where to stay. if I had a van and she had a van and we were to get a camp spot, sometimes you're not allowed to have two vans. You are allowed to have say a truck and a camper or a van and a car and we were concerned that we may not find spots big enough and we wanted to share a camping spot for expenses and just so that we were right next to each other. by bringing the car, it made it more feasible, right? So that if we found a campsite and it was only thirty feet long, we could fit both the car and the van in there. So that was another bonus for bringing the car. Also, because of the miles that I was traveling, I knew I was gonna have to get a oil change and I figured if I was gonna have to get an oil change from someone other than my trusted mechanic that I always go to, it could end up being quite costly in the van compared to the car. So I thought another reason to take the car. So if you haven't gone car camping or if you only have a car. Just know that it can be done. I did it. I did it for a month and I am not sorry that I did it at all. Now, I didn't really get into the trip itself, all of the amazing things I did and some of the absolutely crazy pivots that happened in it, which I realize now this podcast would go on for two hours if I were to tell you about all of that. But rest assured there's a podcast coming where I'm gonna tell you about all the fun things and not so fun things that happened on that trip. I wanna share it with you. I want you to Listen to what I went through. I want you to learn the lessons that I learned without having to do it yourself. There's a phrase I heard a long time ago, which was learn from other people's mistakes because you don't have enough time in your life to make them all your yourself. And I always think about that. And that's why I love the idea of this podcast. This is why I share my journey, the way that I did things, and other women's journeys as well. And It won't always be women, 'cause there are men who go out and do these fantastic things and who do these dumb things and I want to tell you about them. I want you to in the comfort of your own home, in the comfort of your car in the middle of your drive, listen to this and learn these mistakes, learn these tips, figure out how to do it without having to go through it all yourself. So I hope this was helpful for you. If you have any questions, you can always go to she travels simple.com. There's also She Travels Simple Facebook group. Search for that. I have a She Travels Simple Instagram and Facebook page. You can always reach out to me there if you have any questions or any topics you want me to cover. And I'll be more than happy to address them. I enjoy letting you know everything that I know. So until next time, stay safe.