How to pack for a epic road trip!
I find that as the summer comes to a close people are getting in those last minute road based adventures in. As a Los Angeles based mobile barbershop I’m no stranger to packing for those extended adventures. Here is three tips to make the most of your packing experience!
Make sure you check your perspective. It’s a weird place to start I know but trust me when I say viewing the packing portion of a trip through a different lens makes the whole experience feel totally different! I found that when viewing the packing portions of a adventure as a chore made me rush and often forget necessities that would later affect the overall experience of the trip in a significant way. Simply shifting the mindset of the packing process to something that will allow me to have the maximum amount of fun doing the things I love without the stress of missing items really made the whole experience that much easier!
Use online resources to make it simple! If you have a activity in mind I assure you aren’t the first one to tackle the struggle of packing for said activity. Likely someone on the internet has compiled a checklist of items and posted it on a blog or forum. Make sure you print this list and keep a marker handy so you can check off the completed items. This makes the packing process so much faster and easier and also removes the stress of the thought process. I’ve found that using this method actually simplifies the process in another interesting way when it comes to overpacking. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve brought items with me thinking they would come in handy only to not use them and feel some type of way about the unnecessary item taking up the valuable space in my trusty road companion on wheels. Another important factor in this category is making sure when packing these checklist items that you’re packing specific bags and cases dedicated to the activity. That way it’s simple as pulling out the case for that activity and not digging through the rig trying to figure out where the checklist items are.
That leads me into the next point. It’s fun to have every item for every type of adventure handy but space when traveling in a vehicle is a serious issue. I can’t tell you how many times I packed for every single activity only to find that I was limited from doing these activities for the simple fact that I had overpacked and didn’t feel like digging out the case containing the items needed for the adventure. Pick your top activities that you know you have to do and create your trip around those to minimize the amount of potential rearranging of the vehicles contents. Nothing is worse then getting to the prime hiking spot only to realize you have to pull out and put back bags and cases just to get out on the trail. I’ve actually pulled up to prime locations in the past and just driven away because I didn’t feel like dealing with this in the past.
