On the Road | Our Daily Schedule

 A common question we get is about our daily schedule when we were on the road. Here's a little insight....

Up and at 'em: when we camped we were up early, had breakfast, and packed up camp by 10am. If we were in a hotel, we slept in, had breakfast, and left around check out time, usually at 11am. When we were at hotels we usually stayed up late using the free wifi to upload pictures and videos, catch up online, and plan our next day.  If we weren't staying in a hotel we would plan our next day on the iPhone, whenever we had service (which was often, except deep in the mountains). Generally this was my responsibility when Taras was driving.

Move it: nearly every day we drove to a new location (when we visited big cities and the larger National Parks we stayed put for two to three days). When we left our lodging spot each morning, we would drive to our next stop. Most days we drove for about two to four hours. We would either have something in the car for lunch (food from the grocery store), eat lunch when we got to our destination, or, on the days we drove more than a couple hours, stop for lunch to break things up.

Enjoy the day: Once we got to our destination it was all about exploring. You really can see a lot from 1pm to 10pm, you'd be surprised by how much time that really is.  It's enough time to use the daylight hours for a quick hike then set up camp and cook dinner, or plenty of time to see all the highlights of a smaller town. If we didn't see everything we'd hoped to see that day, we'd be sure to check it out the next morning before leaving town.

I realize that, when reading this, it can sound sterile and not fun. What about hanging out at the best local coffee shop?  But you didn't try every bakery in town to decide which is best! You didn't have time to try all the best restaurants! The thing is, when you are on the road every day, most days you are getting all of those things (new restaurants, great local coffee, etc.).  The need to discover all the best places at every stop goes away once you realize how many new things you're seeing each day.  Our usual approach to traveling - having a giant list of places to see over the course of five or so days - became impracticable, for sake of time and budget, and for the reality that it would have been too much... over stimulating, and hard to take it all in.

Because of the structure of our trip (50 states in six months) we did often feel rushed in the beginning of the trip.  This feeling wore off a lot once we talked about it - we knew we wanted to continue the trip in the way we set out to do it, and accepted that it meant we wouldn't be able to frolic for days at every stop.  Sure, it was hard to sometimes have to pass up a hike because we lacked time, or to not be able to set up the tripod and take pictures for hours, as we originally imagined we'd have time to do.  But you can't have it all, and we decided seeing more places in the amount of time we had was worth missing out on some leisure and down time.

Read more insight about our time on the road here.

-Amanda