"Out of my cold, dead hand...."

We are leaving in just a few short weeks for our trip and have everything set in place (well, mostly)....the van has been tuned up, tent sites have been reserved, and I am finally feeling a sense of peace about this whole thing. 

Cue the email "ding!" notification on my phone on this, the last day of school.

I open it up to see THIS:

 

My husband has apparently been Craigslist shopping RV's behind my back.  BEHIND MY BACK.  Not nice RV's mind you....what he's been shopping is something that Cousin Eddie would probably just love.  I got CC'd on an email he sent about this lovely 1989 Shasta.  I don't even know what that is.

Here's a lovely front view of the Shasta:

 

Can you even imagine us hauling this thing from here to San Francisco and back?  I mean, seriously--how the heck are we going to parallel park that near the Fisherman's Wharf.  We'd probably miss our ferry to Alcatraz because we'd be stuck circling the block trying to find a spot to house Shasta.

 

I replied to his email with a simple "ohmylord" but later when we had a real conversation about it, he tried very hard to sell me on it.  He was so excited about it that he actually said:  "if this were to work and get us all the way to California and back, I don't think I could ever part with it. We'd be set for family trips for life! You'd have to pry the keys for this thing out of my cold, dead hand." 

 

OY VEY to the max.

FAQ's: FOOD EDITION

FOOD!  This is probably one of my biggest planning "issues" of the whole trip.  In the past year, I have personally made some pretty significant changes in the way that I eat--I try to eat primarily "clean foods" or whole foods.  (Key word there:  primarily....if you saw me eating my way across Kentucky last weekend, don't be a hater...ALSO, when I post an instagram pic of me eating at In & Out Burger....just shut it.) 

Typically, when we go on a trip/vacation, we TRULY go on a trip/vacation and don't worry too much about what we eat because it's usually not a very long time and being "on food vacation" for 48 hours isn't a huge deal to me.  However, because we are going to be gone for almost 3 weeks, we cannot take a total food vacation or else we'll all be suffering some ill effects in the ol' GI system......not to mention unsightly weight gain.  Hello, swimsuit season!!! 

FAQ:  What will you eat while traveling?
We are taking a mambo jambo cooler and aim to eat only 1 meal at a restaurant each day (while we're traveling and camping.)   So....we are probably going to do breakfast and lunch in the car/at a rest stop by eating food we packed or bought at a grocery along the way.  Then, we will have a sit down dinner at a restaurant. 

Because we're not going to be cooking anything (AT.ALL.), all our food items have to be served cold.  We don't own a camping stove, not that it matters....I don't have any plans to be cooking and cleaning anything up while we're traveling. 

Sorry, environment:  paper plates it is!

We brainstormed a few meal ideas the other day....here's what we came up with:

Breakfast: 

• Muffins (I have an excellent recipe for healthy banana muffins that are hearty and delicious.  I'll post it below)
• Instant oatmeal (getting the hot water and/or using a lovely microwave at gas station)
• yogurt and granola
• Fruit

Lunch/Dinner:

• wraps or sandwiches:  nut butters, or ham/turkey
• chicken salad (We love the cranberry chicken salad from Costco)
• fruit & veggies with hummus/ranch dip
• black bean & corn salsa

Snacks

• Cheese Sticks
• Gogurts
• Trail Mix

SO....there you have it!  That's my food plan for now.  As you can see, there is much room for improvement and I'd love some help brainstorming some other good options that will travel well.
Help me out....FEED ME! 




LWOW Banana Muffins

2 bananas, mashed
2 eggs, beaten
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup applesauce
1 tsp vanilla
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 cup flax seed (milled)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chocolate chips or nuts (optional)

Combine bananas, eggs, brown sugar, apple sauce and vanilla in a large mixing bowl.
In a separate bowl, combine flour, flax seed, baking powder, cinnamon and salt.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and stir until combined.
Fold in nuts/chocolate chips

Bake at 350 degrees for about 12-14 minutes. 
Yield:  18 muffins

Roadtrip Playlist #1

By my quick and unofficial estimation, we will be spending AT LEAST 100 hours in the car over these 17 days and we need some good tunes to get us there and back.  I'm making a couple of playlists on spotify to get us going. 

Playlist #1 is going to be songs that are specifically categorized as ROADTRIP SONGS.  (literally--songs about the road...or where we're going....or what our state of mind may be as we travel...)

Here it is:

1.  On the Road Again (Willie Nelson)
2.  Life is a  Highway (Rascal Flatts)
3.  Route 66 (John Mayer)
4.  King of the Road (Roger Miller)
5.  Drive My Car (Beatles)
6.  Don't Worry, Be Happy (Bobby McFerrin)
7.  Hit the Road Jack (Ray Charles)
8.  I've Been Everywhere (Johnny Cash)
9.  Runnin' Down a Dream (Tom Petty)
10.  I Get Around (Beach Boys)
11.  Every Day is a Winding Road (Sheryl Crow)
12.  Roam (B-52's)
13.  Holiday (Madonna)
14.  The Little Old Lady from Pasadena (Jan & Dean)
15.  No Particular Place to Go (Chuck Berry)
16.  Don't Stop (Fleetwood Mac)
17.  Party in the U.S.A.  (Miley Cyrus)
18.  Bye Bye Miss American Pie (Don McClean)
19.  I'm Gonna Be 500 Miles (The Proclaimers)
20.  Ain't No Mountain High Enough (Marvin Gaye)

and my personal favorite (speaking of our state of mind as we travel)......
21.  Jesus Take the Wheel (Carrie Underwood)

Roadtrip Brain Dump

[Warning:  This post is going to read more like a journal entry.....a little peek into my mind, if you will.  Don't say I didn't warn you....could be kind of scattered!]

We don't have too much time left before this trip will take place.  Michael has wanted to take this trip for a long time and had finally convinced me that we could pull it off and I conceded to it once I realized that our youngest would now be old enough to have actual memories from the trip. We've been talking about it seriously for about a year since our friends from SoCal came to visit last spring and we realized we wanted to see them again and purchasing 5 plane tickets to LAX wasn't going to happen.

When we mention that we are doing this, we get one of two responses: 

1.  Y'all are crazy. 

2. That's amazing!!! My family did a trip like that when I was a kid and it was truly a highlight from my childhood.

We don't know anybody else who has done this trip recently, and I really haven't been able to find a blog or a pinterest board that describes this type of journey exactly.  That's one of the reasons I decided to start this blog!  I wanted it to be a resource for people to use in the future because once everybody sees what a genius plan this is, the jealousy factor is going to be SKY HIGH and you'll all be scrambling to plan your own WOW trip. 

I don't know who is more excited about this trip--the kids talk about it daily and once we made official reservations the other day, I suddenly got VERY excited. (even though they were CAMPGROUND reservations!!! More on the fact that I'm not NOT! not a camper on another day...)

There is SO MUCH to do to get ready for this trip.  I'm a little bit afraid to sit down and actually make a list of the things I need to think about and take care of because ignorance is bliss.  Ignorance is also unprepared, so it's time for mama to be a big girl and not do what I usually do when it comes to trip planning/packing:  procrastinate. 

SO....I think that's what I'll do for the rest of this blog post.  I'm going to make a "to do list":

1.  Finish making camping reservations for Part 2 of the trip (San Francisco/Yosemite/Albuquerque)
2.  Make a packing list for each person
3.  Make a car entertainment packing list (ipods, chargers, etc)
4.  Brainstorm some snacks and meals-on-the-road that will fit into our cooler
5.  Find and assess quality of our sleeping bags.  Do we have 5 good ones?
6.  Check on typical nighttime weather conditions for the places we will be camping. How chilly does it get at night?
7.  Make spotify playlists for the car
8.  What does the car need done, maintenance-wise, before we go?
9.  Download any roadtrip apps that will help us
10.  Research what we should do during our 2 days in Rocky Mountains
11.  Research what we should do during our 1 1/2 days at the Grand Canyon
12.  Do we need to buy tickets for the Angels baseball game ahead of time?
13.  What should we do in San Francisco (2-3 days)?  Do we need tickets or reservations for Alcatraz?
14.  Arrange for house sitter while we're gone 
15.  Buy or borrow a little travel TV/DVD player for the car

I'm sure there is so much more....I think I'll stop there for now because, that's plenty!