Pics of the Week: 8 Travel Tips: How to road trip when you have the Travel Bug but not the Planning Bug

Once we took a 2-week road trip from our house in Germany through Italy. We basically had the time and a travel budget, but nothing else planned. As we drove off, Mike and I kicked ourselves for getting to that point without doing better planning. However, the trip worked out great, and afterwards we felt like an itinerary and reservations would have slowed us down.

Mike and I have the travel bug but not the planning bug. Luckily we are both quite flexible and enjoy the serendipity that can happen when you travel without a firm itinerary.

We had 2 weeks planned for a trip to the South Island, and always meant to get it planned, but it never quite happened, at least not very precisely. Here are the key ingredients for our successful road trip..

1. NZ Frenzy guidebook - suits our style

In Europe, we liked Rick Steves guide books. In NZ, we like Scott Cook. It's important to find a guidebook with a travel style similar to ours - not just any random guide book.

2. 10 Best Day Hikes on the South Island of New Zealand

We used this list as a loose guide for our entire trip.

3. Audiobooks

Audiobooks for all the hours in the car, especially since you may not know at the beginning of the day how long you'll be in the car. I included a list of our audiobooks from this South Island trip at the end of this post.

4. MAVY - our family road trip vehicle

In Europe we had our Toyota Sienna, which worked great, too.

lots of storage space

Since we don't have the Planning Bug, we don't plan menus. We stopped at a grocery store when the supplies in our boxes started to dwindle. Our food wasn't fancy, but it tasted great when we were hungry and didn't take too much time away from doing things we liked.

Breakfast Box and Dinner Box

The way we do a Breakfast Box is to throw breakfast possibilities into a large box: Wheatbix, muesli, boxed milk, canned peaches, apples, bananas, Up-n-Go's, Milo, bowls and spoons, etc.

Dinner Box contained food such as:
pasta, canned chicken, canned tuna, canned soup, rice, sauce packets, cucumbers.
Lunch: trail mix, apples, oranges, green beans, canned meat, bagels, peanut butter and jelly

5. DoC

Mike and I have discussed leaving our estate to New Zealand's DoC (Department of Conservation) when we die. We love their little bare-bones campgrounds, all their backcountry huts, their well-maintained trails that make the backcountry in New Zealand accessible.

one example of DoC trail engineering - Roberts Point Track near Franz Josef glacier

6. Lakes and rivers for bathing

This didn't work in Europe, but in NZ there are lots of warm-ish rivers and lakes for washing up after long hikes. Two weeks would have been a long time without a shower.

7. Sugar for Kids

In Europe, we motivated the boys to walk through castles and art museums by promising them a gelato when we finished. At the time, one scoop was 80 euro cents, or sometimes 1 euro. If it was an especially long day, we'd even get gelato TWICE to keep us going.

On our long hikes on the South Island, we used lollies every 'k' (km) of the steep parts to keep Sage and Joyce going. Mercy's and Oak's sport watches told us when it was time.

8. Doomsday Weather Forecaster (Mike)

I asked Mercy if she thought I'd left anything off of this list, and she mentioned lollies (which I added after she mentioned it) and Dad's weather forecasting. Mercy: "Having Dad forecasting such terrible weather, we felt really happy with the little rain that we got."

One of our top serendipitous experiences was finding this spot to free camp for two nights...