And as a trip we hadn’t exactly budgeted for, I’d also need to keep expenses to a minimum. So that meant two things: I’d have to be very efficient in my travel days, and I’d basically need to use my vehicle like an RV.

I have done a number of fly-and-camp trips before, but for this trip, I wouldn’t be camping as much as living in my vehicle. Being able to sleep in Sam the Subie instead of having to set up a tent would give me the most flexibility in where I stayed each night. That was an important cost-saver, as it allowed me to avoid hotels and campground fees and either disperse camp on public lands, stay in a friend’s driveway, or even catch some sleep in a rest area or parking lot. And since I wasn’t sure how the weather would turn out, it’d also ensure that I had a warm place to sleep for the night—one where I could avoid the unrelenting wind I encountered the entire trip.

The video below will show you the main items I brought and where I kept them in the vehicle. Since I was driving my own vehicle, I could bring a few optional items I normally wouldn’t bring on a fly-and-camp trip—most notably, a large foam mattress topper and a full-sized cooler. I also brought a hefty amount of food and snacks, as evidenced by the huge black tote bin.

The setup I used here worked great on my trip. While the video explains quite a bit, I’ll go into more detail below on some additional topics.

What to bring and where to put it

When I’m traveling on a road trip like this, I prefer to keep my setup as simple and organized as possible throughout the trip. That means thinking about where everything goes before I hit the road, making sure that the things I’ll need to access—either while I’m traveling or when I’m in bed—are easily accessible. That’s why I try to keep everything in a container. So food and snacks go into one bin, and the cooking stuff goes into another. That makes it much easier to stay organized. The main exception to this is my clothes. I prefer to have clothes stored in batches so that it’s easier to pick out what I need without having to struggle to extract an entire duffel bag.

Keeping it simple and organized also means bringing a bit less and fewer “maybe I’ll need this” sort of items.. The fewer items you bring, the fewer things you’ll have to manage during your trip. In this case, I brought two things that I definitely didn’t end up needing: my backpacking chair and my multi-use camping bucket. Both items were small and didn’t clutter things up, so I tossed them in even though I wasn’t sure if I’d use them. And, like just about every time, I was right. Because I didn’t spend any time at an actual campsite, I never made a campfire—and therefore, I never needed the chair. When I ate, I simply sat in the backseat or at a picnic table. And I assumed that the bucket would come in handy for things like washing up and doing dishes. I really didn’t need to do much of those tasks either, given the more frequent showers I snagged and how few dishes I dirtied.

Food and cooking

In order to save money, I planned on snacking for breakfast and lunch, and then cooking a simple dinner like soup, chili, or a grilled cheese sandwich. I also assumed that I’d occasionally get some cheap fast food, especially if I was tired and still had a long drive before bed. And I also hoped that I’d try a handful of breweries along the way when time permitted.

As it turned out, I spent quite a bit more time hanging out with friends during the trip than I had anticipated, including joining them for some home-cooked meals. And since I managed to add in a number of additional destinations, I would often arrive to my intended campsite pretty late, opting to snack instead of cook in what were often some rather fierce winds.

In the end, I managed to stay within budget, even though I cooked far less than I originally intended. And I also managed to sneak in stops at nine craft breweries, too.

The not-cooking strategy

But just because my plan this trip was to cook doesn’t mean yours has to be. While one of the biggest benefits of camping is saving money on hotels and eating out, that doesn’t mean that you have to cook every time you camp on a road trip. In fact, sometimes you camp just so that you can afford that fun night out on the town, as I did when I brewery-hopped around Boise halfway through my trip. And you can still save a lot of money by sleeping in your car while eating most of your meals out. Indeed, that reduces quite a bit of the gear you need to bring—though I still recommend bringing a cooler for cold beverages and plenty of snacks for the road.

Finding places to camp

Aside from one night at a friend’s house, I didn’t preplan where I’d sleep each night. But because most of my primary destinations were BLM Conservation Lands areas, I knew that I’d have quite a few dispersed camping opportunities. I also knew that there were a number of developed campgrounds around that would likely have space if I needed them. And because I was sleeping in my car, I could also get some shut-eye at a rest area, truck stop, or even a Wal-Mart parking lot if I absolutely needed to.

The first night I ended up stopping at a rest area right along the Pony Express Trail in northern Nevada to use the restroom. Since I kinda wanted to check out the trail the next morning and was already tired, I decided that I might as well sleep there. But boy, for being such a remote place, it sure was a busy rest area—and given the layout of the parking lot, it was hard to block out all of the rest area lights and approaching headlights.

After about an hour, I decided to find another spot. I hopped on Google Maps, turned on satellite view, and took a look around the area. It took just a handful of seconds to find a better spot about a quarter mile away, and probably about 90 seconds to drive there. It’s a whole lot easier to move your campsite to a better location when you don’t have to pack up a tent. Once I relocated, I slept great under the dark and quiet sky. When you’re traveling in the West, there’s often a good campsite not too far away—especially during the shoulder season.

There are a number of apps and websites you can use to locate possible places to camp. When looking for dispersed camping sites, I usually start by scouring a state atlas or gazetteer, then when I’ve narrowed down my target area, I switch to Google Maps satellite view and zoom in to identify specific sites that might work. In addition, I also regularly consult FreeCampsites.net, Campendium, Boondocking.org, and the iOverlander app for sites that others have already identified. When I’m looking for developed campgrounds, I check recreation.gov, Reserve America, or just google “campgrounds in my area,” though those search results tend to include RV parks. Allstays is a highly rated app you might also want to check out.

Driving versus sleeping mode

While most of my stuff stays in the same spot throughout my trip, I do move a few items when I shift to sleep mode. When I’m driving, I like having the passenger seat free for things like maps, a snack I’ve pulled out of my food bin, or any other items I might need quick access to. But when I get to my destination for the night, I move any items that had occupied the rear seat (usually my food bin and my computer backpack) up to the passenger seat. This gives me a completely empty rear seat right next to my bed.

An empty rear seat

Having this rear seat available is great. Once I get the car set up for the night, this tends to be where I spend my time before I lay down to sleep. I can easily change clothes, watch a movie on my tablet, put on my shoes, snack or eat dinner, work on my laptop, scour maps while I revise the next day’s itinerary, and so forth—all while escaping the elements and not drawing any attention to the vehicle. Importantly, it’s also the easiest way to get in and out of bed, something you’ll want to consider if your vehicle doesn’t have an easy way to open the rear gate from the interior. I just climb up onto the bed and swing my legs around. When I’m sleeping, the seat conveniently converts into a handy bedside table where I place my glasses, headlamp, and phone for quick retrieval in the middle of the night.

Parking for the night

When I park for the night, the first thing I do is decide on how I want to position the vehicle. The primary considerations here are blocking any annoying lights, and pointing into the wind. If there’s any annoying light, I try to point the car towards it so that the sunshade I put in my front window blocks it from shining into the rest of the car. If it’s windy, I often position the car into the wind, which cuts down on the vehicle shaking or the windows whistling.

Once I have the vehicle pointed the right direction, I put on the emergency brake to limit any rocking when I’m moving around in the vehicle. I transfer the items from the rear seat to the front seat and get my bed ready.

I then put on the mesh window coverings, always covering both of the rear windows. These are the perfect solution to keeping annoying bugs out, but they also help shield bright lights and even light rain. If it’s hot out or I’m worried about it raining, I’ll add them to the front windows too. I then roll down the windows to the desired level. If it’s cold out, that might just be an inch or two for both of the rear windows. If it’s hot and I want a lot more airflow, then I’ll roll all four windows all the way down. This is something you can play around with, but you’ll want to keep at least one window cracked during the night.

I usually keep the car keys easily accessible on my center console and lock the doors when I’m ready for bed. I like to keep the drivers seat completely clear so I can quickly hop in and move the car quickly if I need to. When I’m camping in my own car, I always bring a full size pillow and also a cheap fleece blanket to cover my face in the night if the breeze is cold or to block out any unexpected light, like a bright moon moving across the night sky.

The entire process of shifting from driving to sleeping mode takes less than two minutes—much quicker than setting up a tent. When I wake up in the morning, I get dressed and shift it back before hitting the road again.

Toilets and showers

Probably the most popular question I get about these types of road trips is how and/or where I use the restroom and shower. For the most part, the answer is pretty easy. Except in some pretty remote areas, there’s nearly always a restroom available somewhere—whether at a rest area, gas station, fast food restaurant, or even a campground or wilderness trailhead. In the event that’s not the case, I have a trowel and toilet paper. If you want something a bit more convenient, there are a number of other options, including luggable loo and other portable toilets, female urination devices, and so forth—though none of these really works inside the vehicle.

As for showers, I knew that I’d be staying with a friend about halfway through the trip, so I was guaranteed at least one shower. Beyond that, I knew I could either pop into a truck stop or developed campground and pay for one, so I came prepared with my normal public shower kit (sandals, quick dry towels, shampoo/body soap, and a plastic bag to keep my stuff dry). But in a pinch, I could also rig up something shower-like on top of my car if it was warm enough out, or make sure to get to the hot springs on my itinerary, or just make due with a “backpackers shower,” also known as a wet wipes bath. I could have brought my camp shower, but it just didn’t seem like I’d need it. There are a lot of other showering solutions available out there, but I’ll wait to tackle those in a future post.

In the end, I got a bit lucky on the trip and ended up having access to a shower at each place where I visited an online friend. And because we ended up having a meal together, I also ended up cooking far less than I had expected. It’s great when things like this happen—but on trips like these, I always try to be self-contained as possible.

Sleeping in a rental car

Not taking your own vehicle on a road trip? Don’t worry, you can pull off much of this in a rental car, too. Because not all vehicles have seats that fold flat, however, you’ll have to manage to snag a vehicle that does. I’ve had the best luck with full size SUVs and minivans with stow-and-go seating. Either way, don’t drive off the lot until you have one that will work for you.

Here’s a video of what I brought when I camped in a rental car a few years back. The video quality isn’t great, but it’s still useful in understanding what items I brought with me.

You should also check out my extensive post on travel camping, which outlines which camping items I bring when I “fly-and-camp.”

Some other tips

• You don’t need a mattress set up as stupidly comfy as mine. Most of the time I sleep in my vehicle, I just use a simple backpacking sleeping pad.
• Not all Wal-Marts allow overnight parking. Here’s a listing of recent reports.
• Passing by a national park unit on your trip? Remember that many of the visitor center restrooms stay open all night.
• I use a pool noodle slice to cover up the hook that the rear seat attaches to. Trust me, this is preferable to bashing your hip against it when you shift in your sleep.

• Headlamps fit great on the back of headrests.
• If you don’t want to wake up at sunrise, consider where the sun will be rising. I use the Peak Finder app to determine this, but you can also just make an educated guess. Same with a full moon, which can seem incredibly bright when you’re trying to sleep.
• Have a membership to a national gym chain? Well, that’s a great place to grab a shower while traveling.
• Too hot? Too cold? You can always turn on the vehicle for awhile to cool off or warm up.
• I like bringing a small pack towel in with me when I stop at public restrooms so I can dry off after rinsing my face when there are just hand dryers available.
• Not a great sleeper? Bring some ear plugs to help drown out weird noises. You can also bring a sleep mask to help shield bright lights from other campsites, vehicles, or lampposts.
• If you want to add some additional privacy or black-out those weirdly shaped rear windows, try using some reflectix and trim it to fit. If you’re planning on stealth camping, spray mount some black fabric to one or both of the sides. These also work great for insulting the vehicle and you can store them flat under your mattress when not in use.
• These headrest hooks are quite handy. I use these frequently throughout the day when I’m on the road, and later at night, I hang a water bottle from one attached to the drivers headrest so I can easily find it when I’m in bed.
• Don’t forget these important tips on making ice last longer in your cooler.

The post How I camp in my car during road trips appeared first on rscottjones.

But there are a few lessons I wish I had known before I started. Here are six of them.

Be clear on what the quest entails

When I first started my national parks quest, my goal wasn’t to visit every national park unit, as it is now. When the idea first occurred to me, I limited it to just the so-called “named” National Parks. That is, the ones that end in the iconic words “National Park.” Well, I quickly realized that this is an arbitrary delineation. There are some astounding places that happen to be named “national monuments” or something else, often simply due to the happenstance of history. Indeed, many of the named national parks were first protected as national monuments. So the designation—especially after its been watered down with recent additions such as Gateway Arch—carries much less importance than commonly understood.

As a result, I ended up extending the quest to include national monuments. And then a year later, I extended it to all of the national park units. Well, all of them except national recreation areas, actually. I’m not a big fan of dammed rivers, so it seemed like national recreation areas shouldn’t be part of my quest. And, as a result, I swifted bypassed those areas, failing to stop even when I was driving right by them.

I finally came to my senses and decided I might as well hit all of the National Park units, no matter what their designation. After all, by law, the National Park Service must treat them all equally, and they’re all considered “national parks” even if their official names don’t end in the words “National Parks.” Unfortunately, that meant that I needed to do things like travel back to Montana to hit the lone park unit (a national recreation area) that I had skipped because I wasn’t clear on what the places were included in the quest.

Don’t make this same mistake—decide early on what the quest actually entails.

Think ahead and don’t “orphan” any units

The park unit in Montana that I had bypassed was named Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area. And it’s a 17 hour and 48 minute drive from my home in Phoenix. That’s a long drive for a park unit I should have marked off thirteen years earlier when I drove right past it. And so, of course, I eventually had to drive that entire way just to mark off this one lonely park.

My advice is to avoid ending up with a Bighorn Canyon of your own—an orphaned unit far away that you can’t easily complete with other units as part of a larger trip.

That means when you’re planning your national park trips, you should strategize about how you’ll mark off the other units in the area you’re traveling to. Sometimes you’ll realize that it makes sense to alter the trip to favor a further-flung park unit over a closer one, simply because it will be easier to get it done now than to orphan it later. Some of this is guesswork, and your plans may change in the future, but it’s important to have a strategy nonetheless.

Leave enough time to be amazed

Sometimes, you won’t expect much from a park unit, but after arriving, you just fall in love with it. Sometimes, it’s the unit itself—an incredibly moving visitor center, for instance. Other times, it might be an unexpected wildlife encounter. Or maybe even some weather, like a low cloud that poured into the battlefield, totally changing the character of your experience.

If you’re on a quest, you’ll likely be traveling fast. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan some flexibility into the trip to allow you to enjoy these pleasant surprises. I tend to purposefully overestimate how long I’ll need for smaller sites, which means that I’m routinely “ahead of schedule” during my trips. This helps offer a bit of a buffer for those times when I end up spending much more time at a place than I had anticipated.

Start a tradition—or several

One of the most fun aspects of a large quest is having a tradition. Or rather, several traditions. It’s particularly gratifying when you’re far into your quest and you have a consistent collection of photos or souvenirs from each of your destinations.

One of my favorite traditions is holding up a number indicating how many parks I’ve been to at each new park unit I visit. Unfortunately, I didn’t consider doing this until I had already been to 267 of them. So while I’m nearly up to unit 400 by now, I’m still missing 2/3rds of the shots I would have had—had I simply considered what type of traditions I should create when I first started the quest. Now maybe the idea wouldn’t have come to me at the time, but I really wish I had at least spent 10 minutes proactively thinking about it before I got started.

Here are some common national park traditions:

• Photo of the park entrance sign
• Getting a park passport stamp
• Watching the park movie
• Completing a Junior Ranger program
• Photo of a park’s Mather plaque
• Attending a ranger program
• Photo of a traveling “tchotchke”
• Taking a selfie with a park ranger
• Mailing themselves a postcard from the park

Collect something from each park

Similar to creating special park traditions, many park questers begin collecting certain items from each park. Maybe it’s a magnet, or a pin, or a patch. Or maybe it’s a postcard with a park passport stamp on the back. Others might pick out a book, or a little trinket. And just about everyone takes home an iconic “unigrid” park brochure.

These can make for great displays memorializing your adventures in the parks. But again, my advice is to think carefully about what you want to collect before you start off on your national parks quest. When I first started out, I thought it’d be great to collect patches. And so I collected scores upon scores of them. Until, that is, I realized that it was going to be hard to ever display them in a useful way. Was I going to spend $5 on a parks patch, and do so hundreds of times over, just to have them sit in a shoebox? Because I have more than hundred that have been just sitting there ever since. Had I thought it through a bit more, I likely would have opted for something else to collect. In the end, I switched over to pins, which I have in two large display cases on my hallway wall.

I shouldn’t have to say this, but your collection shouldn’t include any park resources—leave those at the park. Yes, that includes things like pine cones, small rocks, or any other items you didn’t buy at the park bookstore or receive from a park ranger.

Keep track of the personal stories, not the park facts

Lastly, I’d recommend that if you do end up documenting your national park adventures—whether that’s in a journal entry, a blog post, or even a video—that you don’t just focus on park facts. A decade into your quest, you won’t care about that stuff, which is just a quick google search away if you need it. You probably don’t need to transcribe what type of sandstone that arch is made of. You don’t need to remember how old John F. Kennedy was when he moved away from his childhood home. The number of Japanese Americans interned at Manzanar NHS isn’t what you’ll wish you recorded in your journal, or had committed to memory.

Instead, focus on how you felt while you were in the park. What had you been most excited about before arriving, and what surprised you about the place once you got there? Did something you learn change the way you think about something else? What was it like to emerge from that dense forest onto the shore of that backcountry lake? How did it feel to stare at John Muir’s personal desk? What did you imagine when you read the stories of immigrants at Ellis Island? Who did you wish was with you to experience that sunrise on Cadillac Mountain? What memory did the smell of the creosote in Saguaro National Park immediately conjure up? How did you feel when you arrived home after the trip?

Those are the types of items to journal or blog about when you reflect on your latest national park visit. Trust me—those are the details that you’ll most appreciate looking back on decades from now.

Don’t have a travel quest yet?

You should. You’ll love it. And I promise you that it’ll be worthwhile. Read my guide to questing to get started.

If you love quests, or are thinking of getting started, check out #GoQuesting.

The post What I wish I knew before starting my national parks quest appeared first on rscottjones.

There are dozens of ways to keep track of your hikes, from relying on your gps track history to simply writing it down in a trusty notebook. Each method has its own benefits and downsides.

I used to keep track of my hikes by writing the date and the names of my hiking companions at the bottom of the page in whichever hiking guidebook I was using. It worked well enough back in the 1990s, when guidebooks and magazines were the primary sources of trail information. But now that trail databases have migrated to the internet, that old system is only occasionally applicable. I’ve also run out of room on the pages of my favorite local trails that I hike frequently, or upgraded to newer editions and abandoned my old notes.

I now keep track of my hikes by creating a simple Google Form that I’ve bookmarked on my phone. It’s free, easy to set up, and you can customize it to track whatever information you want. Best of all, it’s always right there in your pocket when you need it, and the data is easy to use and store well into the future.

Why keep track of your hikes

If you’re just a casual just-once-in-a-blue-moon hiker, then it probably doesn’t matter if you track your hikes or not. But if you hike more regularly than that, I’d recommend you start doing it. This is especially true if you have a personal hiking goal like the #52HikeChallenge. It’s a quick little habit to start that you might really appreciate having access to later.

In addition to keeping track of your personal goals, a hiking log can make it easier to figure out which trails you’ve already hiked and with whom, including any special or noteworthy details that you won’t find in guidebooks or online trail descriptions. I particularly like keeping notes on memorable things that happened during the hike, such as stumbling across some pottery sherds, or an interesting animal encounter, or what day the wildflowers started to bloom that year. Since you customize exactly what you keep track of it, you can also include whatever tidbits you don’t want to forget.

Hiking logs also serve as a helpful historical record of your hiking accomplishments. They can be used to calculate and analyze statistics such as how many miles you’ve hiked this year, how many times your pooch joined you on the trail, or how much faster you hike that local quad-burning trail now that you’ve gotten into better shape.

Tracking hikes for the #52HikeChallenge

The 52 Hike Challenge is a great idea, but their tracking spreadsheet isn’t the easiest to use on a phone. As a fellow challenge hiker, I find that a simple Google Form makes entering my hike each week much, much easier. Even better, I get to capture more than what the 52 Hike Challenge tracking spreadsheet does, which makes the log that much more useful to me.

Benefits of using Google Forms

There are a variety of mobile apps out there that you could use to track your hikes—many of which include useful features like GPS tracks and trail maps. But as new apps are released, feature sets shift, or subscription fees change, many hikers find themselves switching between apps or using them for only a subset of the trails they hike. For instance, I’ll rarely fire up Gaia GPS for a local hike in the nearby Phoenix Mountains Preserve, as I know exactly where I am at all times. On the flipside, I probably won’t use a GPS app on my phone to track a long day hike in the Superstition Wilderness due to concerns about my phone’s battery life. Another problem lies in trying to export your data from many of these apps; it’s not always an easy task.

The end result is a mishmash of hiking data siloed in multiple apps, or missing entirely. But with your own custom Google Form, you can solve many of these issues by simply logging your data in the form after each hike, no matter which GPS app you might use to track your route. Or, if you didn’t use one but know the basic details of the hike you completed (such as the distance and elevation gain), it’s easy to enter that data later—something that’s impossible to do with many of the leading hiking apps. Sometimes, simple is just plain better.

Best of all, it’s free and all you need to get started is a browser and a google account. And since it dumps the data into a basic spreadsheet, it’s rather easy to analyze the data. That allows you to do things like quickly total up your cumulative hiking miles for the year, figure out how many feet of elevation you climbed, or total up how many different trails you hiked during the year. And depending on which fields you include, you could also analyze all sorts of other interesting tidbits, as well. Since it’s all contained in a simple spreadsheet, that data is easily transportable too, so you don’t have to worry about future software incompatibility.

Which fields to include

You have a lot of options here, so spend a few minutes to decide what items you’d like to keep track of. If you’re on the fence about something, my recommendation is to include it on the form and make sure it’s not a required answer. If you later decide to stop logging data for that item, you can simply ignore or delete that field when you review the spreadsheet later.

Here are some possible options of data to collect—you’ll need to decide for yourself which ones to include.

• Date of your hike
• Name of the trail(s) you used
• Mileage hiked
• Elevation gain
• Duration (how long did it take you to hike?)
• With whom did you hike?
  • Was this an organized group hike? (you can even use a drop-down menu for your common hiking groups)
  • Did you lead this hike?
  • Did your dog(s) join you?
• Did you record a GPS track?
  • Link to the GPS track
• Your personal rating of the hike (use the linear scale field type; keep in mind that you can create multiple rating questions, each on a different aspect of the hike, if you’d like to get detailed)
• How tired you were hiking the trail (or maybe how many times you had to stop to take a breather)
• Links to photos
• Links to blog post
• Wildlife encountered
• Type of trail (e.g., out-and-back, loop, lollipop, etc)
• Location type (such as national park, wilderness area, state park, or city preserve)
• Where to find hike details (guidebook, link to website, etc)
• Rating on the “Fun Scale“
• Notes (capture any other details in this section)

How to use it on your phone

As I mentioned in the screencast, I strongly recommend that you add the form as a shortcut to your phone’s home screen. A hiking log is only as good as the data you enter, so you want it easily accessible so you can get to it whenever you remember to log your hike.

The first step is to get the link to your phone’s browser. There are a number of ways to do this, such emailing it to yourself, typing into your mobile browser manually, or using a universal clipboard. Once you have the link on your phone, it’s a breeze to add the shortcut.

Keep track of other types of adventures

You don’t have to use this solely for tracking your hikes—you can create forms to track any of your other adventures or outings, too. It wouldn’t be hard to create separate forms to track things like how many nights you camped, what trails you mountain biked, or what lakes or rivers you paddled. I’ve even used google forms to get track of hikes I want to do, or at least to add to my adventure map.

Get started!

Be sure to check out the screencast above to learn how to design your hiking log. Then hop on over to forms.google.com to get started, and let us know in the comments if you have any other suggested uses or fields that others might want to copy.

The post How to keep track of your hikes using Google Forms appeared first on rscottjones.

Whoa.

It wasn’t the most extraordinary experience one could have in the outdoors. It was simply an interesting little pebble I had found during a leisurely, 90 minute lunch break during my hike. But it was still cool, worthy of a few moments of my attention for the smile it put on my face.

There’s something to be said for maximizing your travel time, hyper-efficiently filling every available moment with new places to experience. Seeing as much as you can during the limited time you’re free to explore. I love doing that—it’s how I’ve managed to explore so much of the country, after all.

But it’s also hard to compete with the slow, methodically-immersive experience you get while backpacking. Not ultralight backpacking, or fastpacking, or ultra trail running, or whatever the current craze to cover as much trail as humanly possible is being called.

No, I mean the simple and timeless endeavor of walking—slowly—through the wilderness. Of roaming, exploring, investigating. Of making progress towards camp, but not always in a straight path or as the guidebook presumes. Of being attuned to the subtle shift of the wind, the first cricket chirp of coming night, or how that long shadow lays gently across the cliff face.

No tracking one’s time. No calculating one’s average mileage per hour. No worrying about whether you’ll make your next split. Just being present, capturing the moments we have in the wild, far from the daily routines our mostly urban lives entail. Just enjoying the journey, no matter how far or how short it takes you.

Many of my outdoor friends spend their days training to either lower their summit time or to extend their daily mileage. I get it, there’s a certain human competitiveness that pushes us to challenge our physical capabilities…to affirm that we’re still alive, that we’re strong, that we’re an impressive specimen of the species. Or simply that we can achieve something astounding.

Instead, I’m more interested these days in training myself to slow down when I’m outdoors. To strive to experience more—not because I cover more ground, but because I notice more and miss less. The way that bee drunkenly surveys the flower bush. The warmth of the rock as it radiates back the afternoon sun. The way the creek ripples around those rocks.

Call it a walking meditation. Call it an interrogation of the landscape. Or call it an esoteric interest in the wonder of our protected lands. Either way, it can be an incredible way of enjoying the outdoors.

Seeing the Grand Canyon—as fast as possible

The big hike many Arizonans strive to complete is the veritable rim-to-rim trek across the Grand Canyon, often abbreviated as R2R. Most people take a couple of days to do the trip, camping overnight at the bottom before heading back up the following morning. Once you graduate from that, the goal often becomes doing those 21 miles in a single day, something the National Park Service recommends against. Remarkably, the current R2R record holder did it in less than 160 minutes, which is a few minutes longer than Star Wars Episode I, but likely less grueling.

But R2R in a day isn’t enough anymore; many now seek to complete rim-to-rim-to-rim (R2R2R, or R^3). It’s an impressive feat, one that involves more trail running than hiking. The current record stands at an astonishing 5 hours, 55 minutes, 20 seconds, which is absolutely mind blowing when you consider that it involves covering 42 miles and 22,600 ft of elevation change.

While these are fastest known time records by committed athletes and not indicative of the times most people achieve, keep in mind that many, many people are both attempting and completing these types of trips. So many, in fact, that it’s become a problem for the park managers. It’s also a vastly different experience than the more traditional two-day trip.

How I saw the Grand Canyon on my own R2R trip

Several years ago, I decided to finally do R2R—the quintessential Arizona backpacking trip I had never quite gotten around to doing. But my itinerary looked remarkably different than what others were doing, especially the trail runners that I shared the R2R shuttle bus with. Here’s the kind of trip I planned instead:

• Day 1:  drive to the South Rim, drop off car, take shuttle to North Rim, camp.
• Day 2:  hike North Kaibab Trail to Cottonwood Campground
• Day 3:  hike from Cottonwood Campground to Bright Angel Campground
• Day 4:  free day for exploring
• Day 5:  hike from Bright Angel to Indian Garden Campground
• Day 6:  hike from Indian Garden to South Rim, shower, drive home

Yep, I took 6 days to drive 4 hours to the Grand Canyon, hike 21 miles across it, and drive home.

And let me tell you, it was AWESOME. I got to spend almost a week enjoying one of the most iconic landscapes on Earth.

I got to lounge in my tent and watch the morning light pierce the horizon. I took time to just gaze into the distance, pondering those existential questions that often spring forth when you’re surrounded by something so much bigger and timeless than humanity. I scanned ancient rock layer after rock layer while listening to the babbling of the creek that’s slowly eating through them. I spun slowly in awe of the 360° view at Plateau Point and rinsed my face in gorgeous Ribbon Falls. I stared skyward long after dinner, not worried about a scheduled bedtime, to catch shooting stars amid an impossibly crowded night sky. I got to watch the sunset from a different place in the Canyon for five straight days. As I hiked, I stopped regularly to marvel at the majesty surrounding me—not just a quick glance up from the dusty trail like most of the hikers with a deadline to meet. I stopped regularly to take any photo I fancied, without regard for how it affected my pace. I dipped my feet into the chilly Colorado River, waved to arriving rafts from Black Bridge, and enjoyed a beer while people-watching at the Phantom Ranch cantina. I spent far too long giving encouraging high-fives to those wearily approaching 3-Mile Resthouse. I did many other fun and enjoyable things, of course—too many to detail here.

Mind you, I could have completed the trek in a day or two. But why would I want to miss out on the opportunity to savor more time in the backcountry of the world’s greatest canyon? Even six days didn’t seem like enough.

There’s a joke about golf being the only sport in which the goal is to play as little of it as possible. This post is not a condemnation of the trail runners or others who see a backcountry experience as, at least sometimes, an athletic contest against a clock. But I also can’t help but point out that they are celebrated for spending as little time as humanly possible enjoying that same amazing landscape.

What’s my point here?

I want to be clear on a few points. I’m not arguing that you can’t have a legitimate wilderness experience without hiking slowly and taking it all in. Nor am I advocating that you should take more time for your hike. Hike your own hike.

But since so much of the outdoor media I see seems to focus on being faster, setting new records, tackling increasingly insane distances, and generally pushing the human body further than ever before, I wanted to remind you that you can, indeed, hike your own hike.

In short, don’t compare your outdoor adventures to what you see reflected in the outdoor industry or on social media. We all enjoy the outdoors for different reasons, and we all value different things in those experiences. Sometimes we want to go fast and feel like we’ve conquered an intimidating physical challenge. Other times we want to disconnect from modern life or spend some time reflecting in the wilderness. Or we want to experience something new, something intriguing, maybe something that changes us a little bit—or maybe a lot. Or hell, maybe we just want a gym with a view. What experience do you want to have? What drives you to spend time in our public lands? What will be personally rewarding for you? Plan your trip around the answers to those sorts of questions.

It’s cool that someone can run the John Muir Trail in less than three days. And it’s also cool to spend waaaaay more time enjoying the John Muir Trail.

As long as you’re not ruining the experience for others, there’s space on the trail for both of those approaches. Above all, enjoy your public lands.

The post Backcountry badassery, or an immersive experience? appeared first on rscottjones.

To be honest, it didn’t look very promising, at least not yet.

“Yep, it’s up ahead a few more miles,” I responded, in a tone that likely overstated my own confidence.

We had already driven an hour from Phoenix to Gila Bend, then another hour west along Interstate 8, then turned off at an exit to seemingly nowhere, jogged back east a mile along the access road, then turned north on an unremarkable dirt road impossibly named Avenue 76½ E. Along this rough-at-times road, we had passed two desert squatter communities, an out-of-place boat shipwrecked on the top of a small hill, and miles of seemingly barren desert.

Some skepticism was probably to be expected. After all, I hadn’t exactly explained where we were going; I had just said that we’d find some rock art when we got there.

As it turns out, we were indeed on the correct road. A few miles further ahead was the Sears Point petroglyph site, an array of prehistoric and historic petroglyphs carved into a basalt ridge overlooking the floodplain of the once mighty Gila River. This is BLM land, a site well known by those who hunt rock art, but not a destination where you’ll find many tourists.

Finally, the road crested a small ridge, dipped towards the dry riverbed in the distance, and we could see our destination ahead. Ribbons of sandy driving routes spiderwebbed around tamarisk and mesquite clumps that dotted the lowland. I was glad to have my Subaru as we sloshed through deep pockets of sand and gravel, maintaining enough speed around the corners to avoid getting stuck. And just like that, we arrived at a patch of dirt sporting two informational kiosks and some carsonite signs indicating the road’s end. We parked, stepped out of the subie, and immediately scanned the butte for the first sign of rock art.

“There’s some over there,” I said, nearly in code, and pointed towards a prominent panel gazing down upon us.

We grabbed some cold water from the cooler, donned our daypacks, and scrambled up towards the first panel with cameras in hand. And so began our rather impromptu visit to Sears Point.

The Sears Point petroglyph site

Archaeologists consider Sears Point to be one of the most significant rock art sites in the Southwest. In addition to more than 2,000 rock art panels incorporating nearly 10,000 petroglyph elements, the area contains a number of geoglyphs and other archaeological and historical features.

Simply put, there’s a lot to see out here. And you’ll need to do some exploring to see it.

Sears Point is just one of several other similar sites along the Gila River, including Quail Point, Hummingbird Point, and Oatman Point just a bit upstream. The only site signed from the interstate is Painted Rock, a now-defunct state park that’s since reverted to BLM management. I won’t get into what you’ll find at each of these sites, how to get to them, or what makes them special, but a quick google search will answer most questions one would have.

It’s important to note that while Sears Point is a named archaeological district, and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is managed as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern by BLM, sadly none of these adds sufficient protection for this site or its neighboring ones.

The campaign to protect the Great Bend of the Gila

As a result, several organizations—led by Archaeology Southwest and the National Trust for Historic Preservation—have been campaigning to protect Sears Point and other important archaeological and historical sites upstream as the Great Bend of the Gila National Monument. It’s a good idea and the cultural resources here are definitely worthy of such a designation.

The short video below explains a bit more about the cultural heritage this campaign seeks to protect.

Some tips if you plan on visiting

• You’ll want an AWD or 4WD vehicle to drive to the parking area, though don’t attempt it if it’s rained recently. You could probably make the drive with a 2WD high clearance vehicle if you stopped short of the deepest sand, which starts around here, roughly a mile from the main petroglyph panels. Either way, be prepared to extricate yourself if you get stuck no matter what you’re driving.
• Don’t go in the summer heat, and be prepared with water and shade. You’ll spend your entire visit scrambling over rocks while the sun beats relentlessly down on you, so please act accordingly. If it’s warm out, you might want to consider gloves to protect your hands from hot rocks.
• If you don’t have much time, check out the rock art panels near the top of the butte to the right. The largest panels and most easily accessible glyphs are found in that area, which will require some scrambling to get up to the faint trail that connects them. If you can, spend some time exploring the entire area, including the tops of the basalt mesas—there are thousands of petroglyphs, geoglyphs, rock alignments, and other artifacts in walking distance of your car. Stay alert to your surroundings and bring a gps to help you find your way back.
• Photographing sometimes faint petroglyphs on shiny basalt in the glaring sun can be a challenge, so keep this in mind as you plan your arrival and departure times. A circular polarizing filter can also be helpful in reducing shine and helping the rock art stand out better. An umbrella can both help keep you cool and shade smaller glyphs for better photographs. I wish I had considered these things before my visit.
• Practice Leave No Trace principles, and don’t touch the petroglyphs or do anything else that might impact the site. Once damaged, we can never get these resources back.
• Want to learn more about lesser-known archaeological sites the public hasn’t ever heard of? Here’s the very best way to do that.
• Do some research before you go, especially on other nearby sites, if you’d like to make a longer day out of it. There are many accessible places to explore in the surrounding area and within the Great Bend of the Gila proposal area.

How to get there

From Gila Bend, Arizona, drive west on I-8 towards Yuma for roughly 30 mins to exit 78, Spot Road. At the end of the off ramp, turn north and then right on the frontage road. Head back east for about 1 mile to Avenue 76½E, then go north along the dirt road for about 7 miles. When you hit the sandy wash, stay on the most used route and aim for the low buttes to the west. You’ll find a small dirt parking area and two kiosks; park here and explore the area on foot.

The post Exploring the Sears Point petroglyph site appeared first on rscottjones.

The cheapest way to travel

One of the best ways to save money while traveling is to camp instead of staying in a hotel. Some people might think that this strategy is limited to destinations you can drive to. But it’s not. With a little bit of planning, you can save big on your trip by flying your trusty camping gear and picking up a few items along the way. I call this fly-and-camp strategy travel camping.

Here’s what you need to know to give it a try.

But, wait…

“I don’t want to waste money on things I’m barely going to use.”

That’s often the first response I get when someone first hears about travel camping. Yes, you will likely buy some things on the trip that you won’t use all of, or that you’ll only use a few times before discarding. For budget travelers, it can feel especially weird to pick out a cooler that you only intend on using for a week or so. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t make financial sense.

After all, substituting just a single night of camping in place of a hotel stay will undoubtedly save far more cash than you’ll spend on any items you’ll have to discard later. When you add together several nights—and especially if you include cooking some meals at camp—then you’re suddenly saving hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Don’t take my word for it; after reading this post, do some sample math for your next trip and see how much you’d save by travel camping. We could all use some more travel money, right?

To be fair, travel camping isn’t always the best choice for your trip. For instance, if you’re heading to the Sonoran Desert in the summer, I’d recommend staying in a hotel with air conditioning instead of sweltering in a tent (a free tip from this Arizona native). Similarly, I’d much rather pay for a hotel room than camp in a Minnesota winter.

And if your primary destination is a major metropolis, your camping options might be pretty limited or less convenient—though sometimes you can be surprised. For instance, there are camping options just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, campgrounds within a 10-minute drive of the major Scottsdale resorts, and plenty of “this-will-do-for-the-night” private campgrounds and rv parks at the edge of most large cities.

Your gear bag

The first thing you’ll need to get started with travel camping is some sort of gear bag to carry everything you’re bringing with you. I happen to use a large rolling duffel bag for this, but you have quite a few options here. The key is to use something that meets your airline’s baggage limits so you don’t have to pay any oversized baggage fees (typically triggered by anything that exceeds 62 inches when you add together the bag’s length, width, and height).

Similarly, you’ll want to make sure that this bag doesn’t get too heavy to avoid overweight charges, usually bags weighing more than 50 lbs. Depending on what you’re bringing, that might mean strategically carrying some heavier items in your carry-on to help better distribute the weight. Likewise, some items might simply fit better in a standard carry-on suitcase than a large duffel bag, so keep that in mind when you’re packing too.

I usually try to check a single gear bag of camping gear and stashing my usual carry-on suitcase in the overhead bin. I also carry a daypack as my so-called personal item (be sure that this meets your airline’s size limits, which seem to be getting smaller and smaller). If you plan on travel camping often, you might want to consider buying a large rolling duffel for your gear bag; it’s the easiest to carry around the airport and to your rental car. I’ve gone years without one but recently upgraded and it was worth the expense.

What’s allowed in checked vs. carry-on luggage

Not sure what items you’re allowed to fly with? Below is a list of camping-related items and whether or not they’re allowed in checked or carry-on luggage. Please note that these rules can change regularly, so please double-check the TSA list before your trip. Also keep in mind the liquids rule for carry-on baggage when you’re packing.

What camping gear can you bring on the plane?

Some items are allowed only in your checked luggage while others can only be in carry-on baggage; a few items aren’t allowed in either checked or carry-on luggage. For more details on each type of item, check out the links I’ve provided.

• fuel canisters – neither
• camp stoves – both, as long as they are cleaned and no residue fuel or odor remains
• sharp blades (knives, leatherman/multi-tools, etc) – checked only
• scissors – depends on blade length
• disposable & zippo lighters – carry-on only (unless empty)
• torch-style lighters – neither
• strike anywhere matches – neither
• safety matches – carry-on only
• tent stakes – checked only
• lighter fluid – neither
• firestarter – neither
• hand warmers – both
• hiking poles/walking sticks – checked only
• corkscrews with a blade – checked only
• corkscrews without a blade – both
• bear spray – neither
• snowshoes – both
• crampons/snow cleats – checked only
• coolers (empty) – both
• hatchets and axes/ice axes – checked only
• hammers/mallets – checked only
• sunscreen sprays or bug repellent – both (following liquids rule)
• flashlights – depends on size
• utensils – both (but no sharp/pointed knives in carry-on)
• tripods/monopods – both
• wet wipes – both
• emergency beacons – check with airline
• solid candles – both

Sleeping arrangements

The first thing to decide when planning your trip is your sleeping situation. Will you bring a tent? Will you rent an SUV or a minivan that you can sleep in the back of? Are you a hammock sleeper? You’ll also want to consider where you’ll be sleeping. For instance, will you be staying in developed campgrounds, dispersed camping on public lands, or stealth camping in a city?

The answers to these questions will help determine what gear you’ll need. For instance, if you’ll be sleeping in a vehicle, then you don’t need to bring your tent. And if you’re staying in a developed campground, then you’ll likely have a picnic table that you can use for both cooking and sitting at. Consider what items are important for you to have given the circumstances you’ll likely find yourself in.

Will you be cooking?

The next big question you’ll want to answer is whether or not you will be cooking any meals. Cooking your own meals usually saves you a ton of money while traveling, but it also requires additional gear and takes time away from other activities.

Not cooking

Even if you decide to eat out for all of your meals, you’ll still save hundreds of dollars by camping. Just be sure that you’ll be near appropriate restaurants during your expected mealtimes—especially if you have any dietary restrictions. You don’t want to find yourself hungry and in a remote area after hours with no place to eat.

You might want to consider how you could supplement your meals with snacks or beverages to save additional cash. For instance, even if I’m not planning on bringing a stove and cooking during a trip, I might still grab some food and drinks to have with me. I sometimes pick up some sort of small cooler (even if it’s a cheap “keep-groceries-cold-on-the-drive-home” style) and toss in some sodas, water, beer, and few snacks—just so I have some options if I get hungry or for when stopping for food isn’t convenient.

Cooking

Being prepared to cook at least some meals provides you with the most flexibility on your trip. After all, you can always grab a bite at a restaurant if you’re feeling lazy or if you run across a place that’s too good to pass up. You’ll want to do some pre-planning before you hop on the plane, though. First, you’ll likely need a few basic items: a stove, a cooler, pots/pans, plates/bowls, and utensils. Depending on your trip and what you already own, you could bring all of these, buy them all at your destination, or a combination of the two. I tend to pack gear I already own that’s easy to bring on the plane, and then buy the remainder when I arrive.

What to bring and what to buy there

While I own plenty of compact and lightweight backpacking gear, I usually bring slightly bulkier car camping gear when I do these sorts of trips. For instance, I prefer to bring my Coleman single burner stove that uses one of those ubiquitous green 1 lb propane canisters over my much smaller backpacking stove that uses a harder-to-find isobutane canister. While the larger stove is a bit bigger to pack, its fuel canisters can be found at just about any grocery store, gas station, or Walmart. It also cooks a bit more evenly and is more stable while holding a heavy pot. The same goes for my cookware; it’s usually my weekend car camping set, not my lightweight titanium backpacking pot. Keep in mind that this is just personal preference, so choose the gear that works best for you and your trip. [Update: we’ve recently bought this stove, which we paired with a converter so it can use the 1lb propane canisters—this is now our preferred travel camping system].

Plates, bowls, and utensils are items that you can either decide to buy there—you can usually pick up disposable items for relatively cheap—or to bring with you, depending on space considerations. Remember that if you’re cooking, you’ll also need to consider how you’ll be doing dishes, too (this is where disposable items are especially useful). You can often find free condiment packets, salt & pepper packets, napkins, and plastic cutlery at most big gas stations, grocery store deli counters, or fast food restaurants. I often snag some of these instead of buying large quantities I’ll never use up during a trip. However, I do bring some smaller and less common items (like a particular seasoning I like on my sandwiches) along with me so I don’t have to buy a large container of something I’ll use just a bit of.

You can’t bring stove fuel on the plane, so plan on buying a canister when you arrive. You’ll also need ice and a cooler, too. You can usually pick up a cheap plastic cooler for about $15-20 or so; I usually grab either a 28 qt or 48 qt size, depending on how much food and beverages I plan on having at any one time. I also pick up a cheap plastic bin to keep my food dry inside the cooler. My general preference is to buy just a few days’ worth of food at a time instead of plotting out every meal for the trip in advance; I always seem to end up with quite a bit extra food/drinks when I try to buy it all at the start. Also don’t forget to grab a gallon or two of water. You can usually refill these at campgrounds when you run low.

The cheaper (and less enviro-friendly) styrofoam coolers are also an option may people consider, though they come with quite a few downsides. First, you’ll need a lot more ice to keep your food cold, as the lid doesn’t close very well. They can also be a bit top-heavy, so you’ll want to brace them in the vehicle so they don’t tip over. Unfortunately, they also squeak quite a bit (especially when braced in), which quickly drives everyone in the vehicle nuts. No matter which route you choose, check out my post on how to make ice last longer in your cooler for some useful tips.

I do my best to buy only simple, easy-to-prepare meals that don’t require many a long list of ingredients to make. Items that can do double-duty in more than one meal are great too. For instance, sliced cheddar cheese works great in both grilled cheese sandwiches and as a snack when paired with pepperoni and crackers. Items that don’t need to be kept especially cold—like the aforementioned cheddar cheese and pepperoni—make it a bit easier to manage while you’re on the road. I generally recommend sticking to foods and meals that you’re already used to making and that you enjoy eating. It’s never fun when dinner isn’t as appetizing as you imagined it’d be, or worse when doesn’t quite agree with you and you’re stuck running repeatedly to the campground toilet.

Here’s exactly what gear I’ve brought on trips

Every trip is a bit different with its own unique gear needs. In the collapsible sections below, I’ve listed the gear I packed for three very different travel camping trips. The first was a road trip through the Pacific Northwest where we brought quite a few luxury items. That’s much different than our trip to Hawaii, which featured just the basics for sleeping at a campsite. The last trip—a solo, fast-paced but frugal road trip through the South—sat somewhat in the middle of the other two. I’ve listed these to provide a bit of context into the various pieces of gear you might bring for each kind of trip. Keep in mind that your own travel or camping style may require a much different packing list than what I brought.

Roadtripping the Pacific Northwest

This trip featured a combination of hotel stays (3 nights in Seattle early in the trip, and then a night in Bend in the middle) along with 7 camping nights scattered across Washington. We had opted for a cheap economy rental car, so we would be sleeping in our tent. Our schedule was rather variable—some places we’d just be quickly crashing for the night, while others we’d stay for three nights and spend a lot more time at the campsite. We were also a bit worried about possible rain, wanted to ensure that we could shower at camp, and expected to spend several nights enjoying an evening campfire. As a result, we brought quite a few “luxury” items that I normally don’t bring on travel camping trips. Because of the crowds expected for the impending solar eclipse, we also reserved sites in developed campgrounds for each night we weren’t in a hotel. Each of them had flush toilets, but only one listed shower facilities.

The main video above provides some additional context and reasoning for the items we brought. Here’s the list:

• 3 person tent
• sleeping pads [mine, Jen’s]
• sleeping bags [mine, Jen’s]
• fleece throw blankets
• camp/travel pillows
• camp lanterns
• headlamps
• camp towels
• backpacking chairs [mine, Jen’s]
• cheap ikea doormats
• camp fire poker
• tarps
• paracord
• bungee cords
• extra tent stakes
• ziploc baggies
• all purpose camp knife
• single burner propane stove
• nesting pot/pan set
• sponge/soap/scraper dishwashing kit
• plastic plates & bowls
• plastic cutlery
• spatula
• kitchen knife
• thin plastic cutting board
• bottle opener/corkscrew
• spices/seasoning
• tervis-style insulated cups
• folding sink
• camp shower

Island-hopping around Hawaii

This trip was evenly split between hotel nights and camping, which saved us well over a thousand dollars due to Hawaii’s expensive hotel rates. We decided to skip cooking and eat out every meal on this trip for two main reasons. First, we were bringing all of our snorkeling gear, so we weren’t sure it’d all fit in our normal gear bag and didn’t want to pay for an additional checked bag. We had several inter-island flights, so not only would we have to pay for that extra bag on each flight segment, but we’d also have to continually buy additional supplies (like a cooler and stove fuel) between flights. This just seemed like too much of hassle.

Because the climate in Hawaii is so mild, we skipped warm sleeping bags and instead brought a $23 lightweight full/queen comforter from Ikea to share. It was tightly rolled in plastic, so it was easy to pack for the flight there. But we weren’t sure if we’d be able to get it packed again once we used it, so we were willing to donate it instead of bringing it home. With some compression straps, however, we managed to make it fit and we’ve used it on several other road trips since then. Sometimes, picking up some additional gear is worth ensuring you have a great experience.

As you can see from our gear list, you really don’t need much to pull off a few nights of camping—especially if you aren’t going to be cooking.

• 3 person tent
• sleeping pads [mine, Jen’s]
• comforter
• camp/travel pillows
• camp lantern
• headlamps
• camp towels
• sandals
• corkscrew/bottle opener
• silicon bottle topper (in case we didn’t finish a bottle of wine in one sitting)

Quick note about where we camped

During this trip, we primarily camped at Camp Olowalu on Maui. They have recently renovated their campground and installed some very nice outdoor showers and toilets. We loved the place—we even had our own private beach that we could snorkel off! Best of all, it cost $20 a night instead of the $280 we would have paid in the city. To be honest, we actually enjoyed the campsite more than any of the hotels we stayed in and should have booked several additional nights there. Did I mention that we hung out with some sea turtles right off the campsite?

A frugal road trip around the Deep South

Last spring I did a 9-day multi-state road trip around the Deep South to mark off a handful of national park units and other attractions I hadn’t yet visited. With an expensive trip to the US Virgin Islands & Puerto Rico coming up just two weeks later, I really needed to pull this trip off as cheaply as possible. I was able to pick up my flights using airline miles and had one free hotels.com night stay to use, so I’d need to camp the rest of the time to make my budget.

Because this would be a solo trip and I had an aggressive itinerary of destinations to visit, I knew that it’d be go-go-go the entire trip. I also didn’t have a set itinerary planned out in advance, so I’d need to look for a campsite on the fly. I usually prefer to save my longer drives for after sunset in order to maximize what I can see during the day, so it seemed likely that I’d be arriving in camp late each night after driving several hours from my last destination.

So while I brought several items intended to comfortably pass the evening hours at camp—the hammock, tent, and backpacking chair, for instance—I fully expected that I’d be arriving late and leaving early. On this trip, camping was primarily just a way to save money on hotels. Because I got a great deal on a large SUV for the trip, I mostly planned on sleeping in the back of the vehicle. This would allow me to avoid setting up and tearing down camp every day, saving me both time and hassle—especially since the forecast called for rain for much of my trip.

I kept my meals simple and ate out about half the time. That usually meant bagels with cream cheese and a yogurt for breakfast, random snacks during the day (sometimes making a sandwich or heating up some soup or chili), and often grabbing a quick sub or some fast food for dinner before hitting a local brewery to sample their offerings. I ate cheaply in part so I could enjoy these brewery stops, which also gave me a great opportunity to research possible spots to camp each night. It also provided a bit of social time with locals (solo travel can get a bit lonely at times). If I was hungry later, I’d just heat up some soup or snack on something when I finally arrived at camp.

Here’s a quick (and poorly-shot) video on what I brought with me for this trip. I’ve also included the list below.

• single person tent
• sleeping bag
• sleeping pad
• hammock and straps
• headlamp
• one-burner propane stove
• medium cook pot with frying pan lid & handle
• some snacks & drink mix
• mayo packets
• seasoning for sandwiches
• disposable bowls & plates
• tervis-style insulated cups
• plastic bin for cooler
• utensils
• bottle opener
• kitchen scissors
• kitchen knife
• koozie
• plastic camp cup
• ziploc baggies (variety of quart & gallon sizes)
• small daypack
• sandals
• hiking boots
• swimsuit
• backpacking chair
• nalgene bottle
• carabiners
• camp towels
• 2 reusable shopping bags
• power inverter (to charge my laptop)
• binder clips (I use these as “chip clips”)

Other items you don’t want to forget

• Headlamp
• Towel(s) for showering
• Camp/shower shoes
• Ziploc bags (especially useful for repacking snack foods)
• Can opener (though I try to only buy cans with pop-tops)
• Bottle opener/corkscrew
• Paracord

What to do with items that you can’t bring home

If you purchase items like a cooler or other food you don’t use, consider how you can best donate it at the end of your trip. If I’m staying at a developed campground, I’ll often donate my half-full propane canister and other camping supplies to the camp host to use or redistribute to underprepared campers. Another option is to look up a charity like Goodwill where you can donate items like a cooler; I usually look for one that’s on the way to the airport. With leftover food or beverages (and sometimes coolers), I usually donate them to panhandlers before I fly home.

Some recommendations for first-timers

If you’re not a seasoned camper, you can still have an excellent travel camping experience. I recommend easing yourself in on the first trip or two so you can get the hang of it. That means:

• splitting your time between camping and staying in hotels
• reserving every campground you’ll need in advance
• choosing campgrounds that provide both flush toilets and showers
• being ok with eating most meals out (in case you need or want to)
• scheduling a more leisurely itinerary
• bringing or buying some snacks so you always have something to eat

The goal here is to give yourself the best shot at enjoying the experience, even if you end up making some mistakes along the way. Once you get a trip or two under your belt, you’ll have a better idea of what works best for you and your own preferences and can modify from there.

More on what I bring for my “personal item”

Have a good travel camping story?

Tell me in the comments!

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The post Travel Camping: how to fly and camp in a rental car appeared first on rscottjones.

Virtually everyone I know that travels frequently for pleasure is pursuing at least one personal travel quest. But that doesn’t mean that their travel is always focused on those quests. Quests just tend to inspire you get out and adventure more.

So if you want to travel more, try adopting a travel quest of your own. Here’s everything you need to know to get started.

The two types of quests

Personal quests are divided into two main types: ones that “count down” and ones that “count up.” Some quests work better for counting down while others are better for counting up.

Quests that count down

Quests that count down usually take the form of “Visit all of the ________.” As in, visit all 50 states, visit every National Park unit, or visit every craft brewery in the state. There are a finite number of stops baked into the goal, and you’re usually trying to visit all of them. So you’re counting down how many you have left. Now, that doesn’t mean that the quest number stays static—it may not. For instance, when I started my National Parks quest, there were 379 units, whereas today, there are 417. But while the number may change, my personal goal really does stay the same: to visit all of the National Park units (however many that may be right now).

These types of quests are my favorite, but they’re a bit harder, as you don’t have any flexibility of which places are included. That’s a big part of the challenge, and often requires a little strategy and foreplanning to pull off so that you don’t “orphan” something off by itself that would require an additional trip.

Quests that count up

Quests that count up (e.g., “visit 100 countries before I turn 50”) are still focused on a goal, but usually involve just a subset of the available destinations. For instance, visiting 100 countries is a big task, but it’s quite a bit easier than visiting every country. These quests usually have a more specific deadline than “visit them all” style quests, often related to one’s age. In addition, this type of quest is regularly expanded once the initial goal is reached. To continue the example, if you successfully visit 100 countries, you might extend the goal to 150 countries—or possibly even shift to a “counting down” quest and try for all the countries.

What about bucket lists?

I don’t consider bucket lists, at least as they’re traditionally defined, to be travel quests. Bucket lists are usually a rather random collection of destinations to visit, activities to complete, experiences to have, and accomplishments to achieve. They’re a personal list of things to do before you die, where the items have no direct relationship to one another. Bungee-jumping, visiting the Taj Mahal, and earning a master’s degree are too different of things to be considered a quest. Don’t get me wrong, I think a bucket list is a worthwhile goal to pursue. It’s just something different than a travel quest, so I won’t cover them in this post.

Do challenges count?

Similarly, I usually don’t consider personal challenges—like the popular 52 Hike Challenge—as quests, mostly because they tend not to be tied to specific destinations. Depending on the details of the challenge, however, they might be closely related and therefore share some of the traits I mention below. I’ll address these personal challenges in a future post.

Travel quests help you travel more

Several qualities of travel quests help inspire travel. Here are some of the ways that quests have helped to inspire me to travel or adventure more often.

Quests ensure that you experience new places

It’s easy to go back to the same ol’ places when you travel. You know what to expect. You know how to get there. You know, generally, how the trip will go. It’s comfortable and easy. It doesn’t need as much planning, or require new gear purchases, or create any anxiety or angst. It’s safe and familiar.

But it also doesn’t expand your horizons, or teach you anything new, or provide you with an exciting new experience. In some ways, you lose out on quite a few of the inherent benefits of travel. Quests, on the other hand, help inspire you to visit different places, attempt new activities, adopt new perspectives, and expand both your skills and your comfort zone. That, in turn, helps expand your confidence to travel to even more places. The more you travel, the easier it gets.

Quests force you to go to places you might not otherwise go

A related benefit of quests is that they force you to go to places you might not otherwise visit. Not everyone would see that as a benefit, but you might be pleasantly surprised with places you had no intention of visiting. For instance, I had zero interest in visiting Topeka, Kansas—zero—but had to visit Brown vs Board of Education National Historic Site for my national parks quest. As a white male, I had never really understood what racism felt like, nor had I really sought out any experiences to learn. However, that visitor center had an amazing video display in a hallway that made you feel like you were one of the Little Rock Nine. It was one of the most enlightening experiences of my life. That’s just one of several examples I could point to.

Quests impose some structure to your travels

Another benefit of quests is that you always have something on your “To Visit” list. It’s easier to plan trips because you always have something on the agenda. Some people end up not traveling as often as they’d like simply because it’s hard to narrow down the glut of available options—a sort of paradox of choice. Quests, however, can help impose some sidebars to your travels. You know that you want to make progress on your quest, so you’ve already limited available destination options to a more manageable number.

Quests serve as a goal

Quests provide an inherent incentive to travel more—a motivation to complete the quest by the deadline. As a result, you’re more likely to pursue travel when opportunities arise. Let’s face it, there are always plenty of barriers to travel; staying home is far easier than planning and completing a trip. Having a running goal helps ensure that there’s a bit more impetus for making that trip idea come to fruition.

In a similar fashion, quests tend to inspire you to add more to your trip itinerary. “Hmm, what else could I mark off while I’m in the area?” is a common thought to someone with a quest. When you develop that attitude, you tend to bypass the barriers to travel that keep others at home.

Quests often contain some social pressure

Once you start to make some progress on your quest, especially if you do so publicly on a blog or on social media, you begin to generate a bit of public pressure to continue. This social reinforcement helps keep you on track and making progress. The more “public” your quest, the more reinforcement you get. Once friends and acquaintances learn of your quest, you’ll likely get future inquiries on your recent progress—which helps to motivate you to keep marking off destinations.

Quests make unfun travel “worth it”

If you’ve done any amount of travel, you know that it’s not all fun. Sometimes, it can be an absolute slog. The weather doesn’t cooperate, you get stuck in traffic during your drive, you have to endure extended flight delays, and so forth. These delays and annoyances are a bit more tolerable if your trip involves making progress on a quest; after all, you’re still completing something important to you.

Conversely, having a subpar experience while marking off a quest objective also makes you better appreciate the places that were great experiences.

Quests inspire more quests

Just as travel tends to inspire more travel, adopting travel quests tends to lead to even more quests. It’s an interesting phenomenon—the more success you have completing your own personal quest, the more interested you get in adopting new quests or expanding your current quests. Travel inspires travel. The more places you check off your list, the more you add back onto it.

Quests make you feel accomplished

Completing one’s goals usually leads to feelings of personal satisfaction. And finishing a big travel quest? Well, “feeling accomplished” might be an understatement. Now, it’s a great feeling to finally complete a quest, even if it’s not the most challenging one on your list. But it’s absolutely true that the harder the quest, the greater the satisfaction. Either way, you’ll routinely smile with pride whenever you recount the accomplishment in the future.

In addition, I tend to get regular praise from both friends and acquaintances, who often introduce me to others as “the guy I told you about that’s trying to visit all the national parks.” Sure, some people will occasionally be jealous, but most come away impressed and supportive. As an excellent side bonus, those that hear your goals will be encouraged to travel more. Truth be told, it’s one of the main things that drives me to publish this site—I love the feeling of inspiring others to just get out more!

How to choose a travel quest

What’s your hobby?

Do you love old cathedrals? Maybe you should go see a bunch of them. Maybe you feel most alive when you’ve conquered a tall mountain peak? Sounds like you need to do some peak bagging. Do you enjoy eating at windowless Chinese restaurants located in sketchy Phoenix neighborhoods? Ehh, on second thought, maybe you should skip that one—that would be a ridiculous quest, right? Anyway, the point here is to choose whatever sounds like it could be fun for you.

Or you can simply be open to the idea when you accidentally stumbled onto something interesting, as I often have. Sure, my early national park road trips quickly evolved into a broader quest to visit them all, and I’ve purposefully selected other quests for a specific reason. But my High Points of Otherwise Flat States quest arose from a friend’s simple tongue-in-cheek comment that I should climb Mount Sunflower while I was driving through Kansas. I thought to myself, “Sure, why not?” and proceeded to have a good chuckle when I made it to the so-called summit. And a quest was born.

Similarly, I thought it’d be funny to visit the World’s Largest Ball of Twine in Cawker City, Kansas on that same trip. I had a blast, and even ended up going to door-to-door in the town to find some twine so I could add to the ball. When I learned that two other twine balls also considered themselves to be the “World’s Largest?” Well, I obviously had to go and judge for myself. Bam! Another quest.

Sharing a quest with someone

Sharing a travel quest with a close friend or significant other is an excellent bonding experience. It’s fun to travel with people you enjoy spending time with, especially when you’re chasing the same goal. Sharing expenses, driving duties, and trip planning often makes it all a bit easier, too. But, just like sharing a popular tv show like Game of Thrones with someone, it’s also fraught with some potential downsides. Two people means that there can be twice as many barriers to travel, for instance—be it schedule conflicts, money woes, or a lack of motivation. It can be frustrating when you’re excited to mark off the next items on your quest only to have your friend bail due to last minute work demands. Are you even allowed to mark off a destination without the other person? And if your quest was a “special thing” in your relationship that just ended in heartbreaking fashion, well…do you keep pursuing it? Spending a few minutes thinking these things over before you commit to a joint quest is probably a good idea.

Can you have more than one quest?

Of course! I have quite a few quests I’m currently working on. Some of them are long-term and difficult to complete, such as visiting 50 countries before I’m 50, or visiting all 419 National Parks units. Others, like visiting all of Arizona’s State Parks, are far easier and can be accomplished on the weekends over the course of a year. I even have some “back burner” quests that I’ve adopted but aren’t actively pursuing at the moment (primarily because of other, higher priority quests).

Micro-adventuring using mini quests

Not all quests need to be difficult or require substantial travel to complete. Some can be local and easy to accomplish, like picnicking in every public park in your town. These type of mini quests can help lead to small, everyday adventures that can be surprisingly fun.

For instance, my friend Wayne and I actually did complete that local quest to visit every sketchy Chinese restaurant in downtown Phoenix, complete with our own hybrid rating system. It wasn’t hard to schedule several lunch visits over the course of a few months, but we had an absolute blast doing it. We even ran across a couple of legitimate gems…though the majority were definitely places to avoid. Our friends found the whole thing hilarious, so they’d often send us tips on possible restaurants to add to our quest list or check in to see when our next lunch was. The point here is that, no matter where you live, there are quests to be pursued.

Setting some rules

Exactly what is included in the list?

The first thing you’ll need to decide is what exactly is on the list you’re trying to complete. On the surface, this sounds rather elementary, but it can be more complicated than you might think. Let’s use the example of a quest to visit every brewery in your state. First, which breweries count? Is it only locally-owned craft breweries, or are chain breweries included too? What about places that white label their brews, or ones that brew off-site? And keep in mind that these numbers might change as new breweries open and others close. Do you lose your “completed” status if another one opens the week after you finish them all? Or is your quest only focusing on the breweries that were in existence when you started the quest? A bit of thought will help sort this all out before you get started.

Exactly what counts as a visit?

Another important rule you’ll need to decide on is “what counts as a visit.” For instance, does a country visit count if you simply pass through its borders on a train and never deboard? Does it count if you drive across town to visit a craft brewery but they’ve inexplicably run out of their own beer? Are you allowed to count visits that occurred before you started the quest? These questions are best decided before you begin your quest—and trust me, they’re bound to come up along the way.

Here’s an important thing to remember: it’s entirely up to you to decide what rules you follow. If you want to count airport layovers as visiting a particular state, then by all means go right ahead. Your quest = your rules. Quests are for you, after all, not for anyone else.

Starting a tradition

I think traditions are particularly important components of quests. Some people dance, while others collect passport stamps, or repeat the same selfie in front of an entrance sign. Some bring a trinket or figurine that they photograph at each destination. It doesn’t matter exactly what you decide to do, but I’d recommend adopting at least one tradition for your quest. I tend to have several traditions for each quest I undertake. Some demonstrate my quest progress, such as holding up a sign of what park number I’m on. Others, like a selfie of me in front of the park sign, will be part of a fun slideshow when I’m finally done. Whatever you decide to do, the earlier you start these traditions the better.

Generating some evidence

Most travelers end up with some form of evidence of their various quest visits. For some, it’s a photograph of themselves at a famous landmark, or it might be a passport cancellation, or a national park passport stamp. Whatever tradition(s) you adopt, make sure that at least one of them produces some tangible evidence of your visit. While quests are for your own benefit—not for others—you’ll still appreciate this evidence by the time you approach your quest goal. Just trust me on this.

Keeping track of your progress

Bust out the spreadsheet

You’ll definitely want to keep track of your quest progress, and spreadsheets tend to be the easiest way to do that. If you don’t own a copy of Excel or Numbers, there are free online versions such as Google Sheets or Excel Online. Spreadsheets are great for keeping track of more than just which destinations you’ve visited and which ones you have remaining. You can also keep track of a wide variety of other useful information, such as the date of your visit, links to any photos or videos you posted from the visit, or other details that’ll inform a future visit. Believe me, it’s a whole lot easier to create and use a system to keep track of your progress than having to go back and researching it each time.

Note: if you’re adopted a quest to visit all of the national parks, I’ve made a spreadsheet counting tool available at rscottjones.com/countparks. Download a copy or add it your Google Drive to edit it.

Know your number

You’ll always want to know what your current “number” is, meaning how far along your quest you are. When someone asks you for an update, you should be able to easily answer (“I’ve been to 88 countries, just 12 more to complete my quest!”). And when you mention your quest to someone, expect their first question to be how close you are to finishing. Also, by keeping track of where you stand on your quest, you’ll help stay motivated to continue increasing that number.

Establish and celebrate milestones

If you’ve adopted a long quest that’ll take a number of years (or even decades) to complete, then it’s worthwhile to add some intervening milestones to shoot for. I like attaching some deadline goals for some of these to help ensure that you remain on track for completing the larger quest. Be sure to celebrate completing each of these milestones, too—you deserve it.

Visualizing your progress

Visualizing your progress is an especially fun part of quests. If you’ve adopted a common quest, like visiting all of the national parks, visiting all 50 states, or marking off countries, you’ll have quite a few options at your disposal. There are a variety of products, from cork-backed wall maps to scratch off wall maps, and cork globes to image-generating apps—and quite a few other options, too. You can personalize your own paper map by taking a highlighter to the places you’ve been, or photoshopping a digital map, or by simply hanging postcards on the wall.

No matter which approach you choose, I recommend doing something to show the progress you’ve made. Not only is it a great reminder and motivator to keep at it, but it’s also a celebration of your efforts to date.

Documenting your journey

Depending on how you go about doing it, documenting your quest travels can seem nearly as time consuming as actually doing it. But that’s a big part of the experience, too. Most everyone takes photos and/or videos of their travels, and you should too. However, don’t rely solely on capturing everything via social media—and especially not in nondurable formats that disappear after 24 hours. These are memories you want to keep, after all.

I also strongly recommend blogging or journaling about your quest, too. Don’t worry if you’re not especially disciplined in doing it, or if you end up with big gaps. Something is better than nothing. Just the act of reflecting on your trip can make it more meaningful and tease out some unexpected insights. You may also come to appreciate the time you took to record a bit about your trips in subsequent years. Failing to do a better job of that and relying on memory recall alone is a common regret among longtime travelers.

Examples of popular quests

Probably the most popular quest of Americans is to visit all 50 states. Quite a few are also counting countries or national parks. Others are trying to catch a game in every MLB ballpark or NFL stadium. There really are a countless number of quests that you could adopt. I’ve included some sample ideas in the sections below to get your imagination primed.

Have you adopted a quest?

If so, let me know what you quest is in the comments below—and be sure to tell me how far along you are.

The post Why you should adopt a personal travel quest appeared first on rscottjones.

I responded with a knowing nod. I understood why she felt that way. For many people, a vacation is all about slowing down, about relaxing. It means sleeping in, having nowhere to be, and taking one’s time.

The concept of slow travel is generally revered among travelers. Countless books and blog posts extol the virtues of slowing down so as to “authentically” and intimately experience a specific place. And there’s a lot to be said for that. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this approach; immersive travel is an amazing way to experience new places.

But it’s not always the best approach for everyone. In fact, the push for slow travel as the single “best” or “right” way to travel seems a bit disingenuous. Like most people, I don’t have gobs of time available to devote to a single destination. I simply have too many restraints on my travel opportunities—and faaaaar too many places I want to visit—for slow travel to be a viable strategy for each of my destinations.

In practice, many people don’t spend the extra time they might devote to a destination to truly getting to know that place, anyway. Instead, they might spend much of it cooking a more elaborate meal at the campground, drinking for hours by the campfire, or just reading a random novel in a hammock. Each of these can be a fun way to spend your weekend, but they’re often totally devoid of place. After all, you could be doing them just about anywhere, and they add nothing to further experiencing a specific locality. In effect, those travelers have traded time they could have spent seeing something they’ve traveled great distances to experience for the opportunity to cook bacon and eggs and lounge around camp in the morning.

To me, fast-paced travel is about seeing and experiencing more of the places you do visit, or visiting more places than you otherwise might. It’s about considering the opportunity costs at play and deciding in favor of seeing more of the unique places you can’t easily otherwise see, rather than spending that time doing something that’s routine or commonplace. It’s about maximizing your opportunities to experience places, not shortchanging them (as it’s often portrayed). What motivates me is that, by traveling fast and efficiently, I can sometimes even add bonus stops to my itinerary, or have extra time for spontaneous or unexpected activities.

“You can’t see Yellowstone in a day and a half,” she denounced. “Wouldn’t you rather just go when you could visit for a whole week instead?”

“No, you certainly can’t see it all. But you can sure see a lot of it, and that’s vastly better than seeing nothing,” I responded. That’s always been my philosophy, at least.

After all, waiting for the ideal trip is often a fool’s errand. You may never have such an opportunity. They say there’s no “right” time to have a baby. Similarly, there is unlikely to be a perfect time for a specific trip. Perpetually postponing travel for a mythical ideal opportunity in the future usually means that the trip in question simply never happens. Instead of focusing on what you can’t accomplish during a short visit, consider what experiences you can have. You’ll be surprised at the good time you can have just popping into a national park along your route for an hour or two. At the very least, it might be enjoyable enough to inspire you to prioritize a return visit.

So just go and see what you can, when you can, even if it’s not exactly the absolute perfect visit.

What I’m not arguing

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be strategic when scheduling or planning trips. If you can legitimately postpone a visit until a substantially better time—one that’s actually likely to happen—then it probably makes sense to do so. I’d much rather visit Death Valley National Park for four days in February than for a single day in July—but only if that February trip was actually something that was likely to happen. After all, an abbreviated trip to the scorching hot park—even in the dead of summer—is better than never getting there at all.

Similarly, if I have three things I absolutely want to see in the Philippines and I’m unlikely to get back there anytime soon, then making sure that I schedule enough time to visit those three things during my trip is entirely appropriate.

I’m also not arguing that you should ensure that your trips feel overly rushed. That’s not the point, either. The goal here to increase your travel efficiency so that you can maximize the amount of time you spend seeing stuff you want to see—not simply so you can rush through every possible experience.

That said, I often do employ the 80/20 rule when it comes to my travel activities. That is, the things that bring me 80% of my joy during a trip tend to come from about 20% of the time I spend in various activities. As it becomes more obvious what activities that 20% includes, I strive to do those things more frequently. For instance, if I’m touring yet another historical house from the early 1900s, I might move more quickly through interpretative displays (of concepts I’m already familiar with) in order to spend more time learning about the specific historical figures that lived there. For me, the 80/20 rule helps ensure that I’m spending my time wisely.

Benefits of traveling fast

You get to see more places

This one is the most obvious benefit—and probably the most important one, too. It’s pretty simple, really. By not wasting time on inconsequential things, you get to spend more of your time visiting other places. I’ll gladly forgo a sit-down meal in favor of a quick sandwich if it means I can add a stop at that petroglyph panel that’s not far off our planned route.

You get to see more of each place

Traveling fast isn’t just about getting to stop at additional destinations. It’s also about making more time for the destinations you’re already at. By ensuring that you prioritize the time you spend actively experiencing places, you’ll naturally get to spend more more time enjoying each destination.

You’ll be better informed for future trips

Even if you don’t get to spend as much time as you’d like at a destination, a short visit can often help better inform a return trip. You’ll have a better sense of the place, usually have access to additional materials (like maps and brochures) and can often inquire for some recommendations. Quick drop-ins to help scout a destination can really help you plan a better, more complete return trip.

A few tips on how to travel faster

There are a variety of strategies for getting the most out of your trips. Here are some of the ones I most often employ; while many of these are roadtrip-centric, the underlying strategy can be applied to other types of trips, too. Pick and choose which ones might be the most effective for your own travel.

Prepare an itinerary

One of the best reasons to prepare a rough itinerary is so that you don’t waste time researching what to do after you’ve already arrived. Knowing what you’re interested in doing before you get there is a great way to save time. Now, that doesn’t mean that you can’t be spontaneous. Indeed, having prepared a rough itinerary can actually aid in being flexible, as you already know what you’ll be giving up or how to reconfigure your trip to allow for this new activity. Best of all, you won’t end up standing in a visitor center negotiating with your travel partner what you should do first.

My trip itineraries often include what I like to think of as “bonus” items—destinations or activities that aren’t part of my planned itinerary but can be added (or substituted) when appropriate. That allows me to quickly add an additional stop if I’m running ahead of schedule, or to easily shift to a better activity if bad weather thwarts my original plans. Since I try to overestimate how much time I’ll need at various destinations, I often find myself adding several additional stops during road trips. It’s a great feeling to have extra time to add even more fun stuff than you had originally planned. Keeping track of these places using a custom google map makes the whole process even easier.

Keep things simple

Keeping it simple is often good advice no matter how you’re traveling. But it’s especially useful when you’re trying to reduce wasted time during a trip. You can apply this strategy in a variety of ways. For me, I tend to focus in on food and gear. That means choosing meals that are relatively easy to prepare and require fewer ingredients and cookware. That way, I’m not spending excessive time preparing complex recipes and washing countless dirty dishes.

For me, it also means only bringing gear that I’m actually likely to use, so I don’t have to spend extra time managing stuff I never end up using. That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be prepared for possible weather conditions, or that you can’t bring a luxury item that you might not get a chance to use but really want anyway. But if you’ve brought your GoPro on your last five trips and never gotten around to powering it up, maybe it’s time to leave it (and its countless accessories) at home.

Prep what you can before the trip

As much as possible, I try to prep food and other gear before I leave my house. For instance, I’ll often get future meals prepped ahead of time by chopping any vegetables I’ll need, measuring out ingredients, and putting everything together in a ziplock bag. That makes cooking both quick and easy while also limiting the number of dishes I have to clean, too. Similarly, packing your daypack ahead of time for that first hike will save you from pulling apart the car to assemble what you need when you get to the trailhead. Putting together activity-based kits, such as a grab-and-go bag of everything you need to shower at a campground, is also a simple way to prep for your trip. Best of all, once you get these things organized once, it’s easy to keep them ready-to-go for future adventures, too.

Stay organized

This item probably goes without saying. The more organized you are, the easier it is to travel quickly. For me, being organized is all about having systems that work for how I travel. It’s one of the reasons I love having a camping bin, why I try to pack my vehicle the same way each time, and why I create detailed trip docs with all of the relevant trip information listed on one master google doc. Each of these helps keep me organized, which means I waste less time managing my stuff or figuring out trip logistics while I’m on the trip.

Consider the trade-offs

The most important tip in this post is to consider the trade-offs you unconsciously make during a trip, then to choose the option that lets you maximize the unique experiences you can have while traveling.

For instance, I recently had only 1.5 days available to spend in Yellowstone National Park during a road trip. Even though my buddy and I had brought plenty of food to cook and were trying to travel cheaply, we opted to eat dinner at the park. By doing so, we were able to spend three additional hours in the park instead of heading back to camp to cook when we got hungry. Having three more hours to visit the geyser basins was worth the extra $9 we spent on food that day. Similarly, instead of spending an hour cooking and eating breakfast and then cleaning up afterwards, we opted to grab a quick fast food breakfast sandwich on the drive instead. Sure, it was less enjoyable of a meal, but we were more than willing to trade that subpar breakfast for some extra time enjoying the geothermal wonders of a park we so rarely get to visit.

Now, the point here isn’t to inspire you to order more crappy fast food, but it’s to think about what trade-offs you’re making and what’s most important for you. In our estimation, eating a quick $5 burger and getting an extra hour in the national park easily outweighed enjoying the breakfast we would have cooked for ourselves. Your mileage may vary, of course, but consciously considering these trade-offs is the important thing.

Arrive late, leave early

I’m referring to your accommodations here, not your intended destination. Arriving too early at your campsite or to your hotel room means you’ve left some valuable time unused. Since I try to soak up every ounce of daylight seeing things that matter to me, campsites or hotels are mainly just places to sleep and shower before I’m off on the next day’s adventures. For instance, I couldn’t tell you the last time I turned on a hotel room television. Why would I? I arrive well after dark and head to bed quickly, then depart as soon as I’m ready in the morning. I can watch tv any time I want at home, but I can’t spend that time enjoying a distant national park.

Set up camp in the dark

I regularly hear people say that, above all, it’s important that they set up camp “before it gets dark.” I wholeheartedly disagree. Unless you’re searching for dispersed camping, setting up camp in the dark is no big deal. Indeed, in nearly every developed campground you’ll find, it’s a virtually identical endeavor as setting up in the daylight. The only difference is that you’ve traded precious daylight you could have used adventuring for time spent in what’s likely just a run-of-the-mill campground. Today’s tents are incredibly easy to set up; you’ll do just fine using a headlamp. Spend 10 minutes trying it out at home first and you’ll be all set.

Skip time-fillers that you can do anywhere

While I’m traveling, I try to reduce the number of activities I could otherwise do anywhere else, like watching tv or reading a book. If it’s not something that is adding a new experience—especially one that I can only have at my destination—then I do my best to skip it. Now, that’s not saying that you shouldn’t brush your teeth in the morning, or take a shower unless you’re doing it under a backcountry waterfall. But if the choice is between watching another Law & Order rerun in your hotel room versus staying out an extra hour to hear the Yellowstone wolves howl, well…I’d choose the latter.

Drive at night

Whenever possible, I schedule the long drives between major destinations for after the sun has set. That way, I’m not wasting daylight in the car just staring down the highway when I could otherwise use it to enjoy a canyon vista or watch some elk graze in the meadow. There are sometimes additional considerations here, especially for areas with high deer populations or for those who struggle with night driving, but the general strategy here is to minimize the amount of useful sightseeing time you spend stuck in a moving car. Obviously, if your intended destination is a scenic drive, well then, schedule accordingly.

Make good use of time in the car

Most trips require substantial time in either the car or in a plane, train or bus. While it’s easy to see this solely as “lost” time, there are a variety of ways to help pass the time while improving your trip. You can do this by researching what activities to prioritize at the next stop, researching other nearby destinations you might want to add to your itinerary if time allows, creating shopping or other task lists for your next stop, deciding where you might want to eat dinner, or revising other trip logistics. It’s also a great time to complete any tasks that might otherwise subtract from your available time or attention at future destinations, whether that’s posting to social media, providing updates to family members, or catching up on critical work emails. It’s also a great time to journal or think about what you’ve seen during the day.

“This all sounds exhausting”

I know, I hear you. And truth be told, sometimes traveling fast is.

Sometimes that’s just the trade-off I’ll happily make to see and experience as much as I can during a trip—a trip that’s rarely as long as I’d like it to be. Traveling fast is all about maximizing the amount of time you have available for seeing new places (or returning to your old favorites) during the limited time most of us have available for travel.

I’m not here to convince you that this is the only way you should travel. It’s not even the only way I myself travel. I’m simply arguing that it’s a viable approach for many, and one that provides some great experiences that can’t easily be duplicated. Even if you’re still a bit skeptical about parts of this, I hope you can glean a few tidbits that will enhance your next trip.

Have some additional tips to share? Want to chat about this? Contact me.

The post In defense of traveling fast appeared first on rscottjones.

Below are the seven major Leave No Trace principles, along with some bullet-point examples of what each one looks like in practice. Click on any principle title for an even more detailed explanation and additional resources. Want to learn even more? Complete the online awareness course or attend one in-person.

It is our responsibility as users of our public lands to ensure that our recreational activities don’t impair these places. Please, do your part.

The Leave No Trace Seven Principles

Plan Ahead and Prepare

• Know the regulations and special concerns for the area you’ll visit.
• Prepare for extreme weather, hazards, and emergencies.
• Schedule your trip to avoid times of high use.
• Visit in small groups when possible. Consider splitting larger groups into smaller groups.
• Repackage food to minimize waste.
• Use a map and compass to eliminate the use of marking paint, rock cairns or flagging.

Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces

• Durable surfaces include established trails and campsites, rock, gravel, dry grasses or snow.
• Protect riparian areas by camping at least 200 feet from lakes and streams.
• Good campsites are found, not made. Altering a site is not necessary.
  • In popular areas:
    • Concentrate use on existing trails and campsites.
    • Walk single file in the middle of the trail, even when wet or muddy.
    • Keep campsites small. Focus activity in areas where vegetation is absent.
  • In pristine areas:
    • Disperse use to prevent the creation of campsites and trails.
    • Avoid places where impacts are just beginning.

Dispose of Waste Properly

• Pack it in, pack it out. Inspect your campsite and rest areas for trash or spilled foods. Pack out all trash, leftover food and litter.
• Deposit solid human waste in catholes dug 6 to 8 inches deep, at least 200 feet from water, camp and trails. Cover and disguise the cathole when finished.
• Pack out toilet paper and hygiene products.
• To wash yourself or your dishes, carry water 200 feet away from streams or lakes and use small amounts of biodegradable soap. Scatter strained dishwater.

Leave What You Find

• Preserve the past: examine, but do not touch cultural or historic structures and artifacts.
• Leave rocks, plants and other natural objects as you find them.
• Avoid introducing or transporting non-native species.
• Do not build structures, furniture, or dig trenches.

Minimize Campfire Impacts

• Campfires can cause lasting impacts to the backcountry. Use a lightweight stove for cooking and enjoy a candle lantern for light.
• Where fires are permitted, use established fire rings, fire pans, or mound fires.
• Keep fires small. Only use sticks from the ground that can be broken by hand.
• Burn all wood and coals to ash, put out campfires completely, then scatter cool ashes.

Respect Wildlife

• Observe wildlife from a distance. Do not follow or approach them.
• Never feed animals. Feeding wildlife damages their health, alters natural behaviors, and exposes them to predators and other dangers.
• Protect wildlife and your food by storing rations and trash securely.
• Control pets at all times, or leave them at home.
• Avoid wildlife during sensitive times: mating, nesting, raising young, or winter.

Be Considerate of Other Visitors

• Respect other visitors and protect the quality of their experience.
• Be courteous. Yield to other users on the trail.
• Step to the downhill side of the trail when encountering pack stock.
• Take breaks and camp away from trails and other visitors.
• Let nature’s sounds prevail. Avoid loud voices and noises.

These Seven Principles are © 1999 by the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics: www.LNT.org.

The post How to ‘Leave No Trace’ appeared first on rscottjones.

Following on social media

Relying on social media to catch everyone’s latest posts is a hit-or-miss proposition. Social media companies are increasingly using complex and ever-changing algorithms to determine which posts users see and don’t see. That means that just following me on facebook, twitter, and instagram doesn’t mean you’ll actually see the latest posts.

Turn on notifications

But you can increase your chances by turning on notifications. On facebook, go to “Posts from rscottjones.com – formerly Just Get Out More” and the hover over the “Following” button, then select “See First.” On instagram, go to @rscottjones, click the three dots for the menu, then select “Turn On Post Notifications.” And on twitter, go to @rscottjones_com, click the alarm bell icon, then select “All Tweets.” You’ll now get a little ping whenever there’s a new post.

Subscribers get exclusive content

Notifications on social media are great, but joining my email list is even better. That’s because I’ll be sharing some things exclusively via email—photos from my trips, links to useful articles I come across, and some “insider” tips that won’t make it onto the blog.

I’ll send these occasionally—maybe more often if there’s good reason, or less frequently if I don’t have much to share. You won’t get a new email for each new post; instead I’ll send a digest of sorts.

What you won’t get

Spam. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

The post Why you should join my email list appeared first on rscottjones.