It really snuck up on me, but tomorrow I will be departing on my road trip. I should be on the road by 6am and I’m starting without breakfast so that I can maximize a stop at Buc-ees AKA the best thing about Texas. This week has been a whirlwind of last minute planning, grocery shopping and trips to Target. I can give a broad overview of gear and food that I’m bringing, but the nice thing about car camping is that I can bring way too much so I won’t go into too much detail.

The most important piece of gear is of course the Adventure Prius. My big project on Wednesday (besides finishing my last day of work and making sure all my grades were in) was getting the car ready. Step 1: a trip to Jiffy Lube. The Maintenance Required light just came on at the beginning of the week which is actually perfect because she’s now starting the road trip with a tune up and filled tires. Step 2: Replace passenger side headlight. Step 3: Deal with skid plate. I’m starting by zip tying it up so that it doesn’t scrape and pick up debris, but if that doesn’t work I’m bringing heavy duty scissors to operate if necessary. Step 4: Clean out all the crap to replace with camping crap. Step 5: Install webbing handle on trunk to deal with the issue of the handle not working. And by “install” I mean gorilla glue and duct tape.

On my target trip I picked up plastic bins to better organize everything in the car. Last summer everything was just kind of scattered around so this should be a big improvement. I have a kitchen box, a toiletries box, a hiking accessories box, a nonperishable food box and then I’ll have a big box for camping stuff and a canvas bucket thing for clothing. My passenger seat will have water, entertainment and snacks.

Entertainment is a key factor when travelling alone. On Wednesday I got an audible free trial. Since I have a 2005 Prius with a broken cd player I have to get creative. I have a cassette with an audio jack extension for my iPhone, and then I also have my CD player/walkman from middle school so that I can attach it to the cassette and play CDs. I have a charger that hooks up to the car and I also have a solar charger that connects to a USB cord. I have a hard drive full of movies and TV shows, most importantly including the full extended Lord of the Rings Trilogy which my lovely roommates won’t let me watch all the way through again. To play them I have my tablet which I will be able to charge both through the car port and the solar panel, and I have a travel battery as well. I’ll also be bringing a plethora of books, notebooks, sketchbooks, pencils, pens, charcoal, pastels and possibly some knitting. Maybe I’ll bring cards in case I make friends.

I’ll be buying vegetables and some nonperishables today for food. I bought all of my meat on Tuesday and I prechopped it and froze it. For the chicken and shrimp I froze it in the marinade so that it will contribute to the temperature of the cooler and last longer. The cooler itself I improved dramatically from last year. Last year I just had the food on the ice, which of course melted, and then I had food swimming around in gross ice water. All I had to do to correct the problem was purchase some cookie cooling racks which fit perfectly in the cooler.

So I have some last minute errands to run today, mostly picking up food, I’ll pack the car completely this afternoon so if I think of anything I forgot I have the evening to grab that. Then I am off in the morning to Buc-ees and then to Wilson State Park in Kansas! A word on Buc-ees. Buc-ees is more than a rest stop. They have an amazing kitchen, more snacks than you could possibly want, Texas souvenirs, reasonably priced gas, and the cleanest bathrooms literally in the country. It is only in Texas, it’s in between every major city and it’s magical. I’ll update with pictures when I get my breakfast. We’ll see how I do with posting while I’m on the road trip. At the very least I’ll keep the instagram updated.

Update: The promised pictures from Buc-ees