We have taken a lot of road trips over the years and have great tips for how to plan a  road trip, including how to save money on a road trip (especially with high gas prices!), how to maximize time so you can see all the attractions and sights along the way, and keep yourself snacking and entertained while in the car.

Use this as your ultimate guide to having the best road trip ever! Road trips are so in right now and so is exploring your own backyard. Since COVID is preventing international travel, many people are adjusting to loading up the car and seeing what the country has to offer. In this episode we give you all our tried and true advice for epic road trips and share some of our favorite and funny moments from the many Travel Squad road trips we have taken over the years.

 In this travel podcast episode we cover:

• Road trip tips
• How to plan a road trip
• How to pass the time in the car
• What to pack for your road trip
• Road trip ideas

How to Plan a Road Trip – Episode Transcript

4 (55s):
Welcome to this week’s episode of the Travel Squad podcast. Today, we’re going to discuss our best Road trip tips for you guys to take the most epic road trip journey ever.

1 (1m 7s):
Road trips are all the rage right now, pretty much because that’s all we can do. We can’t really leave the country, but lucky for us here in America, we have so much stuff to see right here in our own country.

2 (1m 19s):
Yeah. And Road trips can be a really great low budget way to see the country and get to experience parts of it that you would never see. Otherwise, Jamal and I have been planning so many different road trips and they’re Road trips that I never had on my register before. And I’m super excited to take them.

3 (1m 35s):
Yes. So get ready to have loads of fun on this episode, but make sure that you buckle up and do not drink and drive.

4 (1m 43s):
Very good tips on that. One’s it. You always want safety first when you’re behind the wheel on those road trips. Yes.

2 (1m 49s):
So as always, we’re going to start the episode off with some road trip, travel tips to kick off the episode.

4 (1m 55s):
Brittany, you always have one thing that you always do on a trip, regardless of if it’s a Road trip or any other one, but this definitely does fit the Road trip theme. So why don’t you tell us about it?

2 (2m 5s):
Yeah. So I always on every trip I download offline maps for the area that I’ll be in. And it’s because you never know when your cell phone service is going to cut out. So it’s better to be prepared and have the offline maps, then be stuck and not have a way to get to where you’re going to net.

3 (2m 23s):
Yes, because we did one time drive through the Southern Eastern portion of Oklahoma. And I know you think that there would be a lot of cell service out there, but there was not,

4 (2m 36s):
He, it threw me for a whole loop cause I was expecting tons of service out in the middle of Southeastern Oklahoma. But no, that’s a very good tip. You always have to have it, especially if you’re going to be in the mountain areas, it’s always collected to have that. So you don’t get lost.

3 (2m 51s):
Yes. And you also want to make sure that you clean your car before you go, because there’s people like Kim and I who are sitting in the, and if you have junk back there, granted, we always rent our cars, but still make sure that it is clean.

1 (3m 7s):
And if you’re OCD like me, clean it up as you go, when you take those stops at gas stations and convenience stores and unload all the crap,

2 (3m 14s):
You know, Kevin, I’m gonna call you out from our last road trip because you left your Starbucks in the back of my car. And I was like, what the fuck him?

1 (3m 21s):
Oh, that’s cause we went to my house instead of a gas station.

4 (3m 25s):
So you don’t take the trash in your own home, but

1 (3m 28s):
You time.

3 (3m 30s):
So when you get home from your Road trip, leave all your shit in your

2 (3m 35s):
Yeah. Another tip that we have is to make sure that you check your triple a coverage and you never know when you’re going to be in the situation where you’re, you might pop a tire or your car breaks down. So it’s important to know how many miles you can be towed. And I actually recently upgraded because I do a lot of driving just in my general life for work. And so we felt like it was really important to upgrade our AAA coverage so that if we were in this situation, it would cover us anyways.

4 (4m 5s):
Yeah. And for a Road trip, it makes so much sense to do that. Because again, you could be out in the middle of nowhere. It doesn’t matter if it’s the desert, the mountains, it could be easily 50 to a hundred miles to the next town and most towing coverages that you have, whether it be through AAA or even your own insurance for that matter, it gives you very limited range. So if you’re going to be taken an epic road trip, always look into doing that upgrade. Even if it’s for the month that you do go just to have that extra protection.

3 (4m 36s):
Yeah. Shout out to AAA because I once ran out of gas and they came and they saved me, but it wasn’t that much.

1 (4m 43s):
That happened to me too.

4 (4m 45s):
So you could even run out of gas on your road trip.

3 (4m 48s):
AAA has got your back.

2 (4m 49s):
And that’s Jamal said, you know, we might be going to remote places. And so it’s really important for you to carry cash because some of these smaller towns or remote places might not take card or might charge a fee to use their card. So always carrying cash as a backup is a good way to be prepared.

1 (5m 5s):
You also want to get a larger car if you’re flying somewhere and you’re renting it and you have that option, you’re going to have a ton of luggage that you kind of just want to have the room to store away. And then if you want to take a nap in the backseat, you want to have room for that too.

2 (5m 19s):
We used to go cheap. And obviously the smaller cars are more affordable, but just splurging a little bit to get the SUV, to get that space is so luxurious.

1 (5m 29s):
Oh yeah. I can attest to it.

4 (5m 31s):
You know, it’s luxurious. Cause I have my high elevation as being the driver of the group. But when I see you ladies sleeping in the back more specifically Zayna and Kim, I often do get a little bit jealous and think to myself, why are we spoiling these ladies with such luxury? And the back

2 (5m 47s):
You talking about when we went to Hawaii, you insisted that we needed a four wheel

1 (5m 51s):
And we weren’t there for that one. No

2 (5m 54s):
It wasn’t. We went to Kauai. You remember? He said, we’re gonna be doing a lot of off-roading.

1 (5m 58s):
Oh yeah. It was like Jurassic park out there.

4 (6m 1s):
We were in the jungle on a volcano. Yeah. I want an SUV, but other places, you know, you don’t necessarily need to full-size but definitely at least a midsize SUV. The extra luxury is nice. But again, that is, if you are renting a car flying somewhere, starting to Road trip from there, if you don’t have an SUV at home and you’re actually leaving from home, maybe depending on where you’re going, consider renting a car.

1 (6m 27s):
Yeah. We actually rented a car once and we should have looked more at what we wanted to do and what we wanted to see because there was a height that we wanted to do that we couldn’t get to because we had a car and not a more rugged vehicle. So there’s a tip for you too.

4 (6m 42s):
And another good tip when you’re driving is opt to make your stops at truck stops over rest areas. Why sometimes rest areas they’re not necessarily as clean and you would think, oh, truck stop. And I’d hate to play on stereotypes, but you might think that it’s not necessarily clean. But I find when we go to truck stops, plenty of gas pumps. So I’m never really having to wait. Bathrooms are usually relatively clean, always have good food options, whether it be fast food or some sort of mom and pop diner. So I do find them to be better than actual rest stops. So do make them there versus the rest stop.

1 (7m 18s):
Sometimes they have weird or interesting things to buy or look at too. So that makes it fun.

2 (7m 23s):
Yeah. Yeah. Recently there was a truck stop with a whole bunch of cowboy hats that we went,

1 (7m 29s):
Yamaha

2 (7m 30s):
Tried them on.

4 (7m 32s):
I always find in the Truckstop bathrooms too. They have some sort of machine that you can pay. It used to be like 50 cents nowadays with inflation. I guess it’s a dollar, but you pay with the coins and it’s always some sort of like weigh scale thing to like weigh yourself or get like a little souvenir out of there. And I always find them to have weird little trinkets in the bathroom themselves that you can buy. So it’s always fun in that sense.

2 (7m 55s):
Another tip that we have is to pack toilet paper. You never know when there is not going to be a rest stop or a bathroom, especially in the day and age of COVID a lot of restaurants and cafes don’t have their bathrooms available. So if there’s nowhere to pee, you can pack your TP and pee on the side of the road.

3 (8m 14s):
I mean, even if we weren’t in the age of COVID, it’s always nice to pee on the side of the road.

2 (8m 19s):
Sometimes it’s better than the bathroom

1 (8m 21s):
Brings me a lot of joy to drop travel on the side of a road.

4 (8m 26s):
It’s a lot more enjoyable when you have TP with it too, isn’t it?

3 (8m 30s):
Or baby wipes or something like

1 (8m 32s):
That. It’s just luxury.

4 (8m 34s):
But if you do be mindful, pick up your litter,

3 (8m 37s):
We do, we do. So like when we pee on the side of the road, it’s usually, you know, we go to the passenger side and he opened up the passenger side in the front and the passenger side and the back. And then you just pee between the two doors and someone looks out,

2 (8m 52s):
That’s how we do

4 (8m 53s):
It. I mean, so we do have a technique, but obviously only use the side of the road. If we are far from a restroom, for example, we don’t just decide, Hey, let’s go on the side of the road. But again, depending on the road trip and where you’re going, you may be an extreme isolation

1 (9m 10s):
Watch out for those bears.

4 (9m 11s):
Yeah.

3 (9m 12s):
And finally go cheap on hotels since you weren’t going to be staying there long anyways. And always, always, always try to find a hotel with breakfast options,

1 (9m 23s):
Breakfast poo phase.

2 (9m 24s):
I miss them so

1 (9m 25s):
More a bag lunch that works too.

4 (9m 28s):
I missed the breakfast buffets. And ideally when COVID is behind us, we can get back to having those at the hotels. But when we say go cheap, we’re not saying stay in a place. That’s a dingy. But realistically, if you are doing a road trip, you’re really going to be stopping for the night. Or if you are staying there a little bit longer, ideally you’re going to be out seeing things, usually national parks, especially that’s a lot of the things that are open with COVID these days. So you’re really not going to be spending a lot of time in the room. So do get something that’s decent on the cheaper end of things. But definitely don’t get yourself a rundown Fleabag motel. I would never stay in one,

3 (10m 7s):
Not recommend fleas. We do not recommend roaches bedbugs. Like that’s not what we’re talking about. Cheap.

2 (10m 14s):
What would you say the least amount we’ve ever stayed in a hotel overnight was

1 (10m 18s):
Probably in the forties or sixties. Definitely the sixties, maybe the forties.

2 (10m 22s):
And then what about amount of time that we’ve stayed in a hotel? Like

1 (10m 25s):
The lowest amount of time? Oh God, probably three, four hours.

2 (10m 30s):
And

1 (10m 30s):
That was a nice one too. That one in grand canyon and that we were like, so bummed. We couldn’t use the pool being in a nice hotel. It makes you want to stay in the hotel and that’s not what a Road trip is about.

4 (10m 39s):
Yeah. I was going to say the grand canyon trip that we drove through the night we got there barely had any time, I would say like about four hours and then the other one was Las Vegas. When we were using that as a hub, we flew in to go to Bryce. We were barely in there just as well. So yeah,

1 (10m 54s):
It was a nice one too. We were like, what? Wasn’t nice, nice. But we had a lot of space. They gave us

2 (10m 59s):
Rooms.

3 (11m 1s):
How about the one where we were driving in the worst winter storm ever. And we were hydroplaning on the road and Brittany had to call because we were going to get there so late, not on purpose, but we were going to get there so late. So they put the key under the mat like that. I

4 (11m 15s):
Forget exactly what or not big sir. Road trip,

3 (11m 19s):
Sir. There you go. Yeah.

2 (11m 20s):
Yeah. So how do we do it guys? How do we plan the best Road trip ever

1 (11m 25s):
First? You got to pick your squad. It’s kind of a given our first pick is going to be this squad here, but sometimes we do take road trips with other people, but see who you’re going to go with. And

2 (11m 34s):
Then I went to Charlotte,

1 (11m 35s):
Charlotte filled in as an honorary squad member for Zayna and then kind of, you could start picking your place. So do you want to do it somewhere you can drive from your house or do you want to fly somewhere and take a road trip from there? See a whole new region.

2 (11m 48s):
Yeah. And a lot of times people think, oh, if I’m taking a road trip, I have to start from home. You do not have to start from home. A really great example is earlier this year, Kim, myself, Jamal and Charlotte, we all flew into salt lake city and we drove to grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks. And we had a road trip out in the Wyoming and Montana area. And then we ended our road trip back in salt lake city and flew home. And it was amazing. So you can Road trip from another part of the country. You just have to fly in and rent a car.

3 (12m 19s):
And you know, we save us all the time and we’re going to say it again and go online and see where the cheapest destination in the United States is. You know, maybe you’re not thinking that that’s someplace that you want to go, but if the price is right, why not?

4 (12m 31s):
Yeah, definitely let the airline prices dictate where you go. Sometimes, sometimes those are the funnest trips that I feel like I’ve taken and we’ve taken us. The squad is places that I’ve least suspected to have like an exceptional time. Not that I thought it wasn’t going to be fun, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised with places that haven’t been high on my radar that we’ve just gone because it’s been really affordable. So do keep that in mind and a road trip, wherever you go will always be epic. Yeah.

3 (12m 57s):
Yes. And then also just a preference. We’re not encouraging you to fly into the epicenter of wherever COVID is happening. So be mindful of that.

2 (13m 6s):
So some other things to keep in mind, as you plan your trip, you have to kind of consider how many days it will take you. I love to kind of lay out an itinerary plan out the days and put in what you think you need to do. So it kind of helps determine how many days do you actually need. And while you’re planning the trip also take into consideration, what is the most efficient route of your road trip? And a really good example of that is Jamal has already said, we’ve gone to some remote places. And one of the times we were routed to go through the middle of the nowhere. And we were like, should we go this way? Or should we drive 10 minutes longer and go through a major city because they will have bathroom options, the lunch options place to stop and have things for our convenience rather than going into the unknown.

1 (13m 52s):
I think another thing when planning the most efficient route, once you’ve decided to go on your road trip and you’ve picked like your main attraction or attractions of what you want to see, like Brittany was saying for rest stops and for food options. But if there’s other cool things along the way that you can divert 10 minutes to catch or save 10 minutes to get to this other place faster, like add on things along the way too. So it’s not just your destination. And then back you’re hitting cool things along the way that’s part of the Road trip is it’s not just the destination, but the journey along the way.

4 (14m 25s):
Yeah. And a good, a good reference to what you just said. Kim is our Southwest road trip that we did. Obviously we knew we wanted to go to grand canyon, antelope canyon and not to say that we didn’t want to go to horseshoe Ben. It is in that region, but I don’t think it was like directly along the way, but it’s something that we added on because it’s in the region, but you have to make that trip in the most efficient route. And so I think that was a really good point that

1 (14m 52s):
Time and seeing the most that you can.

4 (14m 55s):
Absolutely. Yeah.

3 (14m 56s):
Like, did you guys know that if you’re driving to Vegas, you can see the world’s largest thermometer. I mean, look it up.

1 (15m 3s):
I didn’t even

3 (15m 3s):
Know that. Well,

1 (15m 6s):
How have I never seen this?

3 (15m 8s):
It’s a huge ask their mom at

4 (15m 11s):
The last big city in California before you get to Vegas has a giant ass thermometer. It’s the largest Baker

1 (15m 18s):
Is baker. The one that also has that train truck stop or is that Barstow

4 (15m 23s):
Barstow baker week. We’ve been to baker when we did our desert road trip and went to death valley and we went to PIR romp and had some really bombed. We came through baker and we ate at that. Well it’s right. It was there.

3 (15m 41s):
I didn’t know that you haven’t been in there. Otherwise I would have said something been there.

2 (15m 46s):
She just hasn’t Road

1 (15m 47s):
Trip to baker. Anyway,

4 (15m 49s):
I’m just a mom that are coming up

2 (15m 51s):
As we’re getting back on efficiency. I just want to mention too, as you plan your trip, I like to plan things like either north to south or south to north, depending on what route you’re taking. And also if you’re going on an island, Jamal and I went to big island recently in Hawaii, we started in one city and we basically just took a big circle around the island and just made sure we hit all of the big stops in each of those areas along the way and made sure not to backtrack and planned our day as really efficiently that way.

3 (16m 22s):
And squad tip don’t feel like you have to stick to the exact plan. You know, you don’t want your schedule to be so rigid that you can’t change it. Or if you get disappointed with something comes up like the world’s biggest thermometer that causes you to divert your plans. Or even when we were in the Southern Eastern portion of, I keep wanting to say Kentucky, but it was Oklahoma. We passed gas. Squatch

4 (16m 45s):
Right. I remember. Yeah. I remember gas Squatch it

3 (16m 48s):
Was like Sasquatch

4 (16m 49s):
Gas

1 (16m 51s):
If you’d like to be seen. Yeah.

4 (16m 52s):
That was the only thing that we came across in the south east corner of Oklahoma. That was exciting.

2 (16m 58s):
Yes. Watch

1 (16m 59s):
Thrilling out there guys. It was a

4 (17m 1s):
Big Sasquatch out in the middle of nowhere, but again, gas watch.

3 (17m 7s):
So make the time to have fun and don’t feel again rigid on your plans.

2 (17m 12s):
So obviously with Road trips, you’re going to be spending a lot of time in the car. So let’s talk about some ways to pass time while we’re in the car.

4 (17m 20s):
I’m just going to say it right off the bat. My favorite thing to do in the car is trivia. I love it when yeah. I love it. When the ladies give me trivia questions or anything and we’ll play apps on our phone with them, where

3 (17m 34s):
Else? Capitals. Capitals. Yeah.

1 (17m 36s):
You’re really great at geography and history and politics.

4 (17m 41s):
You give me those trivia questions. I’ll blow anybody.

1 (17m 44s):
We have to challenge you on the next trip with like some pop culture or I know

4 (17m 50s):
I know enough. It’s not my forte, but I still think I can do quite well. Kim.

1 (17m 55s):
I tell Jamal all the time he needs to do the jeopardy.

2 (17m 58s):
Yes, he’d be really good at,

4 (17m 59s):
I always wanted to be on who wants to be a millionaire? Not because it’s a millionaire, but I think that’s better suited for me. Even when I watched jeopardy now I find it to be quite hard.

3 (18m 10s):
My favorite trivia was when Kim and I were in the back of the car and Brittany was in the front and we were asking Jamal to name the states that touch Canada from west to east and Kim and I were looking at a map to make sure that Jamal got it right. And at one point Kim and I were like, Nope, Nope, Nope. And Jamal’s like, what are you talking about? No, check the map. And we check the map and he was right. He was schooling. The girls would come out

4 (18m 34s):
In your face.

2 (18m 35s):
So I know Jamal’s favorite thing is trivia, but I think Kim and Zayna his favorite thing is sleeping in the backseat of the car.

1 (18m 43s):
I love me some nap.

3 (18m 44s):
There is something so calming. Like I wish I could fall asleep as fast as I do in the backseat of a car. Especially after you’ve had some alcohol,

1 (18m 54s):
I can’t get in the car and stay awake.

3 (18m 56s):
It’s impossible. So,

2 (18m 59s):
And my favorite thing is to do a photo shoot of you guys sleeping in the back seat.

1 (19m 5s):
It’s actually hilarious when we’re on trips, because we’ll sense that Brittany is up to something and we’ll like wake up in the middle of her, taking a picture like arm stretched out kinked neck, like trying to get all of us in it because we’re sleeping back there. And then sometimes we don’t notice that she’s doing something she’s gotten very sly. These days,

2 (19m 24s):
Jamal held like a banana. And While I was taking a picture of the lab,

1 (19m 29s):
We will definitely see them. The second we wake up,

3 (19m 33s):
There are some times that I put a blanket or like a sweater over my face because I just don’t want to deal with it. Or there also have been times where I could hear like little giggled Googles, cause Kim might not be asleep. And so like the squad is trying to get a picture of all three of them with me. And I’m so tired that I just physically cannot lift my eyeballs to open up and care. And I’m thinking to myself, you’re going to care when you wake up. But right now, just fuck it. Let them get the 3g.

1 (20m 0s):
My pictures always ended up with my mouth open. Like what, what am I doing?

3 (20m 6s):
We have one with Kim falling asleep on the seatbelt, leaning forward.

2 (20m 13s):
So some other things that we do to pass time in the car as the squad, sometimes we work on outlining future episodes or

1 (20m 19s):
Planning, cool stuff to bring you on the podcast.

2 (20m 22s):
Yeah. And sometimes Kim actually does work on her computer in the backseat of the car. You know, we can also make a music playlist and download that to your phone because if you lose cell service, you won’t have that. So again, that’s really important to make a playlist and download it to your phone. And I love to clean out my phone as well. While we’re on a road trip, get rid of old photos, get rid of old notes, just clean up my phone, whatnot.

4 (20m 48s):
I mean, I wish I could clean out my phone, but again, I’m always the one driving, but I do want to reference what you said, Brittany, because that is a really good tip. And we actually mentioned this on a previous episode of ours, episode 13, how to survive a long haul flight on how to kill time. And it is the same thing. When you are on a road trip, just as well do clean out the photos on your phone or any other documents that you may have downloaded the lead. It it’s really good downtime to do those little miscellaneous things. And it does kill a lot of time.

1 (21m 18s):
Another thing you should download before taking off on your trip are the Travel Squad Podcast episode. So you can listen to them when you have service or if you don’t.

2 (21m 28s):
That is a great tip. Kim

1 (21m 30s):
Amazing tip,

3 (21m 30s):
Always guaranteed to keep you laughing.

1 (21m 32s):
Also going back to our tip about picking your crew. We have so many good conversations in the car about everything from current events in the world to dreams and aspirations, to jokes and names, and like our quality conversation in our road trips is on point.

2 (21m 49s):
Absolutely.

3 (21m 50s):
I get sad when we get to the destination,

1 (21m 53s):
That’s probably why you always take pictures. You’re like, wake up guys. I miss you. Yeah.

2 (21m 59s):
And we can’t go on a trip and not start planning another trip. Like at some point on a trip, we’re always like, okay, where are we going next? What are we going to do next? What can I book now? Oh, have you looked at the flights? Let’s let’s look at the flights. How much is the hotel? And we start planning future trips right in the backseat of the car while we’re on a trip

1 (22m 16s):
That has happened many times. All right. So you’re planned, you’re prepped. What do you pack in your car? That’s important too.

4 (22m 24s):
Well, we mentioned this on the tips and we’ll just bring it up again because this is how important it is. And you know, the Travel Squad can’t really get through an episode without having been on the bathroom subject. And I will say it again, TP very vital and important on the Road trip. Have that TP

3 (22m 41s):
Upgrade tip baby wipes,

1 (22m 44s):
Upgrade, upgrade, tip hand sanitizer.

3 (22m 48s):
We’re talking about like items that are spare stirring. COVID right now

4 (22m 53s):
That’s very true, but they are essential. Nonetheless,

2 (22m 55s):
Other things to pack our snacks, snacks are so important on a road trip. You never know when you’re going to get the munchies and you’re gonna be craving some snacks.

3 (23m 4s):
Yes. So some of our favorites are big shout out to Jamal and Brittany for introducing me to it. The peanut butter monster mix from target.

4 (23m 14s):
It’s one of my favorite trail mixes. Is it really necessarily the best in terms of health? Cause sometimes when you think of trail mix, you might want it to be a little bit more healthy. Not really, but this one is always hitting the spot real fricking nice for me. The peanut butter monster. I love it. Can’t go on a road trip without it.

2 (23m 32s):
It’s also good to always have some granola bars or fig bars just to have just in case and fruit. Some fruit. Yes, absolutely. And Kim, you love to travel with beef. Jerky.

1 (23m 43s):
Love my beef.

4 (23m 46s):
You always loved those long sticks of beef in your mouth, on

1 (23m 49s):
Your long lens,

4 (23m 50s):
Extra long.

3 (23m 51s):
I really like so much about like, I don’t care how long the sausage is. I care more about the girth of the

1 (23m 56s):
Sausage thickness.

4 (23m 59s):
Nice big bite. Huh?

3 (24m 3s):
Still my entire mouth with it.

4 (24m 4s):
One of my favorites is believe it or not squirt and Chile Lamone Lay’s chips. So bomb. I used to have that all the time when I went on road trips when I was younger. Yeah. But I used to have that all the time. When I went on road trips with my guy friends, when we still lived up in Woodland before we had the Travel Squad crew. So I very rarely, these days get the score and Chile, the mom. But when I do, it’s very nostalgic and I recommend to anybody try that combination mix. You’re going to love it. Who doesn’t love a little bit of squirt. I love a lot of squirt

2 (24m 39s):
Jamal. You’re missing Gordito on the show now.

4 (24m 42s):
No. Yeah. They’re not on here for a specific reason. I was on a road trip one time and got sick after having Gordo’s was it the gorditos that did it to me? Absolutely not. I had an inflamed appendix and I had to fly home from my destination. There’s a long story. We’ll save it for another time, but let me tell you, I can’t eat Gordos on a road trip anymore. It definitely affects me mentally.

1 (25m 5s):
I loved her.

4 (25m 7s):
I love him too. I love the ride trips with the mustard flavor that they have on it, but I definitely can’t have them anymore on a road trip, Brittany way to bring that up and rub that salt in the wound.

3 (25m 17s):
You know what Jamal, I used to love gorditos but I only loved it because I would wash it down with diet Coke. I don’t drink diet Coke anymore. So I don’t eat Gordos anymore

4 (25m 27s):
For me. Another good snack to have, I don’t know if it’s really a snack, but do have a red bull, especially if you’re the driver, you want to have a little bit of energy. If monster is your thing or whatever energy drink, but they are nice to have. And we are going over snacks because they’re so important because truly, sometimes you don’t know when the next little bit of civilization is going to be where you can get something out of gas station or even go into a grocery store in town and pick up something fresh like fruit. Like Kim mentioned, those are always clutched to have. So you do want to have them on you. And you never know when you’re going to be in a pinch and need that food.

3 (26m 1s):
Gum is also really helpful to have, especially to pop your ears. If you’re going through the river in the woods. And then also candy is better than chocolate because you never know when chocolate may melt.

2 (26m 12s):
Unless of course you bring an ice chest on your road trip, which you should definitely do, and you can put the chocolate in the ice chest. So it doesn’t matter.

1 (26m 20s):
You can also meal prep sandwiches or breakfast burritos or like actual food. So you don’t have to always eat fast food.

4 (26m 27s):
So the ice chest is really clutch. I mean, if you are flying somewhere and starting your road trip from there, it’s going to be really hard to have the ice chest. But if you are leaving from home, it’s just so great to have that meal prep stuff for sandwiches or any other type food, definitely saves money along the way that you don’t have to spend in the restaurant. So really clutch, but the ice chest.

2 (26m 50s):
And you never want to forget to bring a phone charger for the car because you are going to be in the car for a very long time between taking pictures of the girls in the back seat and mapping to the next destination and working from your phone, phone charger is clutch. And I actually just recently bought one that holds more than one USB. It holds two. So it can charge two phones at one,

4 (27m 11s):
Look at you all fancy Brittany,

3 (27m 13s):
And then upgrade. Also you can bring a portable charger. And what would this episode be? If we didn’t remind you to bring a change of underwear?

4 (27m 24s):
All right, seriously, who put it on the show notes this time? There’s always the running joke who put it on.

3 (27m 29s):
I mean, I feel like I would have, but I don’t remember actually putting it on because I remember doing something else when we were outlining this,

4 (27m 35s):
My vote’s on Kim.

3 (27m 39s):
I don’t know. Maybe it was Brit.

2 (27m 41s):
It wasn’t me. I would remember. Well, we all think that you should bring a change of underwear. So bring a change of underwear, but bring

1 (27m 48s):
To

4 (27m 49s):
Well enough to shit yourself. Five times a day, right? Kevin. That’s why she put it on there. That’s her line.

2 (27m 55s):
I personally love bringing a blankets on road trips because the car can vary temperatures. It can be really hot on the outside, but we’re having the AC on the inside and all of the air just blasting on you. Or

1 (28m 6s):
If you’re sitting in the front and then the people in the back, aren’t getting the air, but you’re getting blasted out.

2 (28m 11s):
Yeah,

3 (28m 13s):
Put it up and hide the sun because I don’t know why, but anytime Kim and I are in the backseat, I feel like I always get the side of the sun. And yet Kim also feels like she always gets this side.

1 (28m 24s):
And if you’re going on long road trips, we’re going to be traveling at night at all, bring a pillow, bring the blanket, bring earplugs, bring your face mask. Like totally tune out. Make that backseat. You were hotel room.

4 (28m 35s):
I love how you say it. Like if you’re driving at night, when that’s like your norm in the middle of the day,

1 (28m 42s):
Some people are a little nocturnal like that. You never know.

3 (28m 46s):
We were driving through the night to get to the grand canyon.

2 (28m 50s):
That’s a really good point in saying that that brings us to, let’s talk about a few of our memorable memories on road trips and on our way to the grand canyon was a memorable one. And tell us what happened.

4 (29m 3s):
Well, I think what you’re referencing is the time that I almost totaled our recently paid off vehicle. Am I correct? Is that what we’re talking about? Yeah. So the squad decided one night, Hey, we’re just going to leave on a Friday after work. I think by the time we all got off work and met together with each other, it was 5:00 PM.

3 (29m 24s):
And don’t forget picking up the Costco pizza.

4 (29m 26s):
If we picked up a Costco pizza two for the road. So we got off to a little bit later of a start, very good point, Zena. And this was in December. So the sunsets definitely early into the evening. And so most of the drive was at night and we get into Arizona finally. And when you get into Arizona, we lost an hour just as well. So it made it to be a little bit later at night, but we were getting real close to our hotel. I mean, we were really like three to four miles away from our hotel driving through forested areas like right before we got to the grand canyon, which totally threw me off because when you see photos of the grand canyon, you really think it’s just barren, but there is a forest up there.

4 (30m 7s):
Let me tell you that if he didn’t know and have never been. And so to my surprise, not knowing that there was a forest up there, literally few miles from the hotel out of nowhere, a big giant moose or elk just darts out into the middle of the road. And I had to slam on the brakes and I literally almost hit that thing. And let me tell you something, it would have totaled our vehicle. You don’t really realize how big those animals are until you’re really up close. And I remember,

1 (30m 38s):
Oh yeah.

4 (30m 40s):
Oh yeah. And obviously I wouldn’t want to have anybody in the car get injured, let alone and your wildlife. But I remember thinking to myself, oh, thank God. I didn’t hit that because Brittany and I had just finished paying off that car like a month beforehand testified totally

3 (30m 56s):
Kim and I were asleep in the back seat. So you slammed on the brakes so hard that we woke up. So luckily you saw that. And I just remember waking up and hearing Jamal say, oh, if I hit that elk, I would’ve been so pissed, Brittany and I just paid off this car.

2 (31m 11s):
Another good memorable memory is when we actually recently went to grand Teton national park. We were driving to Yellowstone national park and we saw two juvenile grizzly bears that were just on the side of the road. Literally, probably no more than 20 feet away from us, even closer at times. And we just saw them digging for Berry isn’t critters on the side of the road. And it was amazing.

4 (31m 35s):
That was really epic scene. The grizzly bears, I’ve seen a black bear in person before, but this was my first time seeing Grizzlies in nature. And it was so, so exciting. And that’s a really cool part about road trips. Especially if you’re going up into the mountains or national parks, you really will see a lot of wildlife. And I just can’t describe how exciting that is. It really is exciting to just think like, wow, like these animals are here and not too far really from where we are and regular civilization.

3 (32m 3s):
I mean we’re in their home.

1 (32m 5s):
It was such a cool thing to see. Another one of our funniest stories we have from one of our first road trips we took together was on our Sequoia Kings canyon trip where we did a massive 16 mile hike. I think it was in the middle of winter where we got lost and we were near starvation. And when we got back into the car to continue on with our Road trip, we split four ways, half of a sale banana flavored bagel that Zena had been trying to push on us all weekend And that half a bagel and the car was glorious.

4 (32m 42s):
I mean, I remember thinking to myself all before we did that, hike, Zainab, just trying to say, does anyone want this bagel? And I kept thinking to myself, shut the fuck up. No one wants that bagel. But that 16 mile hike was a very unexpected hike. Kim wanted to make it longer because there was snow that was blocking the main road to the trail head. So she was like, oh, what’s another couple of miles on it. But anyway, we ended up getting lost and we had no snacks on us for the hike because we weren’t expecting it to be that long. So we were exhausted at the end of it, nonetheless. And so I can’t tell you how delicious a stale banana flavored bagel actually was. So anytime I think of Road trips, I do think of that story.

4 (33m 24s):
But one of my personal favorites is our Southwest road trip that we did. And this goes back to one of our tips, not having like a specific rigid plan and finding things that are in your stop location and doing it. And we were in Mesquite, Nevada, which is on the border of Nevada and Arizona. And we ended up going to play bingo. And does anyone remember what a shit show bingo was? And by shit show? I mean, what a great time

3 (33m 52s):
I freak out.

4 (33m 53s):
I don’t know what you’re talking about.

3 (33m 54s):
The hymns, the one that suggested it, she’s like, oh my gosh, it’s going to be so much fun. So we’re like, let’s Go with the flow. We’re like, okay. And, oh my gosh, it is so fast. B 35 B through five. It must be three to five to I two in 24. Like it’s so crazy.

1 (34m 13s):
Don’t even breathe between the numbers.

3 (34m 15s):
I know like, I’m so sorry to the bingo MCs, because I just went so slow.

4 (34m 19s):
It was super fun. But I, in my defense, cause you guys called me out for freak out. I had a lot to drink that night and I was panicking. Cause I wanted to win because you guys know my competitive edge that I had. And I was like, freaking out, like, how am I supposed to win if I can’t even keep up? And it was a fun little shit show, but in a good way. And I’ll always remember that trip. It makes me always want to play bingo even though it’s so fricking stressful.

3 (34m 41s):
Yeah. And so just spoiler alert, none of us won that night

4 (34m 45s):
And none of us and you know, who won everyone, playing the machines. And let me tell you something, that’s the new hack I’m giving it out here to you guys. Squad tip. He played bingo. Don’t think it’s going to be fun. And do the bladders play the machines. Everybody that was winning was playing the machines.

3 (35m 0s):
I was so excited. I had a pink blotter and everything. Nope. Okay. And one last memorable memory on the Road trip. You guys, I had to have been about five years old and I think we were driving through Utah or something somewhere around there and I had to pee. So my parents stopped on the side of the road so I could pee. Cause you know, I’m five years old anyways. My mom is helping me pull my pants down so I can pee. And I start to run forward with my pants between my legs and my mom’s like, where are you going? And I ran to go pick up a $20 bill. And my mom’s like, oh my God, Santa just found a $20 bill. And so she tells my dad and then my dad comes around. Then all of a sudden the entire family is searching for money because I guess someone dropped their suitcase full of money or something over there.

3 (35m 44s):
And we ended up finding $300 and my dad branded it. Zena’s lucky PIs.

2 (35m 52s):
That’s amazing.

4 (35m 52s):
I mean, I was, if you were five, I was younger like three and I don’t remember that, but I mean, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that story being told in the family, but $300 back then when you were five was a lot of money. That’s like finding close to like a thousand dollars out there on the road.

3 (36m 9s):
So you get to keep any

4 (36m 10s):
Of it. And that’s another squad tip while we say have that TP, you know, if you got to go on the side of the road, you might be lucky like Xenon find some cash out there.

2 (36m 18s):
So thinking about all of these memories, it makes me really want to take a road trip and let’s talk about some Road trip ideas that we want to share with all of our listeners.

4 (36m 27s):
Well, one of them, I would say, and again, just right now, keeping with the theme of COVID and a lot of places, not necessarily on lockdown, but restrictive on what you can actually do. The national parks right now are really, really big in terms of visitation and actual legitimate things to do. And one of the best road trips that you can actually take is flying into Utah and doing Utah’s five national parks. And you can actually make that a circle and spend a good amount of time hitting all five of Utah’s national parks.

2 (37m 0s):
And I’ve already mentioned it several times, but we did the Road trip between grand Teton, national park and Yellowstone national park. And those are two of the most amazing national parks I’ve ever been to. They’re so beautiful. They’re so unique. And I definitely recommend them.

1 (37m 15s):
I second, that highly recommend 10 out of 10

4 (37m 17s):
Would do again. I

1 (37m 19s):
Would,

3 (37m 20s):
I love grand Tetons and I also love Utah because I found $300

2 (37m 23s):
And we’ve also talked about the American Southwest road trip that the squad has been on. We went to the grand canyon, antelope canyon, as well as the valley of the fire state park, which was a great road trip. If you’re looking to start in the American Southwest, I love that we’re all from Northern California. We’ve done a road trip that hit the redwoods crater lake in Oregon and Lassen national park as well, which is a great road trip for anyone in Northern California.

4 (37m 49s):
Absolutely. And keeping with the theme you could even go to Arizona. Arizona has three national parks. You can make the loop and do that. Florida has three national parks out there. We have an episode on Florida’s national parks that just recently came out. So do check that out if you haven’t already to get some ideas for that, but there’s just so many great ideas. One in particular that I would highly highly recommend. And this is just me being partial to California, do a Yosemite national park, Kings canyon, national park Sequoia national park. They’re not very far from each other. They’re in the same Sierra Nevada mountains chain. So very easy to complete all three of those and have yourself a good time as well.

1 (38m 32s):
I think another cool road trip to do would be a cross country road trip where you can hit a bunch of random stuff in the middle of the country. That’s probably open right now, even with COVID. And then another one that we have done before we’ve attempted to do before the big Sur not or Road trip is the Road trip up highway one in California, iconic road, beautiful scenery. When there’s not a major landslide preventing your path,

2 (38m 56s):
Another road trip, we actually did plan, but haven’t been able to go on is the Road trip of the south. We were supposed to go on a road trip, landing us in Tennessee, going to Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and flying out of Georgia. And unfortunately due to COVID, we did have to cancel that trip that we planned

1 (39m 13s):
For. Now it’s postponed until a later date.

3 (39m 15s):
I’m so sad. That would have been my birthday trip. And we were calling it the south and the mouth

4 (39m 20s):
South in the mountain. We

1 (39m 21s):
Still will have that south in our mouth.

4 (39m 26s):
Any other epic road trips that you ladies could think of? I mean, there’s so many that you guys can do out there, but you know, we love the national parks. That’s why we’re hyping on those ones. And they are very relevant right now, given the current situation. So that’s why we’re hyping them up, but so many great ideas out there that you guys can do and have an epic time.

2 (39m 45s):
Speaking of the national parks, we have been working tirelessly on creating itineraries for you guys. And we do have some coming out and we’re so excited to release them. The first one that we did was the Yellowstone and grand Teton national park trip, but we have so many more coming your way and we are so excited to announce that we are making itineraries for you guys to check out.

3 (40m 9s):
And these are super comprehensive and super thorough where we stayed options for you. If you don’t want to stay where we stayed, what to do from set up until sundown places to eat super, super, super comprehensive. So you don’t have to do anything. Yeah.

1 (40m 23s):
So we even get down to the mileage from one place to the next. So it literally takes all the research and guessing out of the trip for you. We’re going to be selling them on their site and announcing it on our social media when we have them up and ready. So be looking out for those. And then I just want to say one last thing on the topics of Road trips, national parks are of course, one of the best places to see most beautiful places in our country, but don’t think of Road trip has to be something where you take time off of work or go on this big extended trip with a whole crew. It could be you and one other friend jumped in your car and just take a day trip three, four hours up the road to a cool destination like solving from San Diego or even LA I have one memory of doing a girl’s day in LA where we just Road trips up there.

1 (41m 5s):
We packed popcorn. We loaded up the car. I played music. It was fun. Bopped around LA came back, caught the Disneyland fireworks from the freeway. Still one of my favorite leg day trips road trips to this day.

2 (41m 17s):
Yeah. Road trips can be a shore or as long as you want them to be from just a few hours to several days, there’s so much you can do and you don’t have to take a lot of time off to do

1 (41m 27s):
And they can help fill in the gaps of depression from all the trips you can’t go on this year.

4 (41m 32s):
I can’t tell you how many weakened that we’ve taken that have just been like road trips that have been two, three days, you know, leave on a Friday, get back to work on a Monday. So very good point, Kevin. They don’t need to be that epic ones, even if they’re just short and sweet. They’re amazing. Nonetheless, super fun.

1 (41m 47s):
All right. Now it’s that

3 (41m 51s):
Question

1 (41m 52s):
Question Of the week, the

3 (41m 59s):
Week.

4 (42m 3s):
All right. Since it’s your favorite time, Kim, why don’t you tell us our question that we have,

1 (42m 7s):
Okay. This one’s coming from Ricky from North Carolina, he’s asking what is one road trip you want to take

3 (42m 16s):
Ricky? I can’t wait for the day that we do an RV trip across the country.

1 (42m 21s):
Yeah.

2 (42m 23s):
So unsuspecting, but one of my Road trips that I do want to take is to fly into Denver, Colorado, drive up to South Dakota and go to Badlands national park, Mount Rushmore, and then drive up to North Dakota as well and see some of the national parks up there and then drive back down to Colorado,

4 (42m 44s):
Very unsuspecting the Dakotas, huh? Well, I’m on it with Zane on what she was saying about the RV. But for me two things, I really do want to do a cross country road trip. And I think it would be fun to either drive like interstate 90 in the north or interstate 80 across or even 10 on the south portion. And just go from west coast to east coast, east to west. It doesn’t really matter. And if that happens to be in an RV Zana all the better, because I’ve been on RV rage, as of late with COVID thinking like, where can I stay at at RNN hotels? If I want to minimize risk cook, my own food restaurants are closed. So I think that would be absolutely epic and to do it in an RV, I think would just be absolutely amazing, but that one would need to invest a lot, a lot of time, but I’m willing to do it one of these days.

3 (43m 32s):
Yeah. And we have looked into it too. Like how much is it going to cost to rent an RV? All the things that we’re going to need, because there’s a lot of unsuspecting things that we didn’t think of. But Ricky, I promise you one of these days, we’re going to bring you a RV trip episode and I can’t wait for that one.

1 (43m 49s):
And then for me, I have to domestic in the U S I would love to do a fully up and down the coast. I live on the west coast. I’m not that excited about it. I’ve seen most of it, but I would love to do Maine to Florida all the way down. I think that’d be so cool. And then internationally, I would love to do the Iceland ring of fire,

4 (44m 10s):
Real solid ones.

3 (44m 11s):
I know once you said that, I was like, oh my God, you got me go with

4 (44m 17s):
All the west coast is the best coast.

1 (44m 19s):
It sure is. But I have been up and down and all in around this west coast.

4 (44m 24s):
I know I got to do something new.

1 (44m 25s):
Yes. All right guys. Well, that’s our episode for this week. Thanks so much for tuning in and listening to us, please. Sure. To follow us on all the places, Instagram, YouTube Travel Squad Podcast. We also have a Facebook community group called Travel Squad mob. Join that super-fine and be sure to send us in your questions of the week,

3 (44m 44s):
If you found the information in this episode to be useful, or if you thought we were just playing funny, please make sure to share it with a friend that would enjoy it.

4 (44m 52s):
And as always guys, you know, please subscribe, rate, and review our podcast and tune in every travel Tuesday for new episodes

2 (44m 60s):
And stay tuned for next week’s episode, we are staying close to home and exploring our own backyard and pigging out on some of San Diego’s best tacos.

1 (45m 13s):
Bye everyone. Have a good week.

6 (45m 14s):
Bye.