What you need to survive a 4 month roadtrip with two kids under 5

When we decided to take on this monster roadtrip, I spent a good bit of time lobbying Megan to let us get one of them sweet #vanlife rides. You’ve seen them. They’re the status symbol for hip traveling millennials. Outfitted with a mini fridge, a bathroom, sleeping quarters for 2-4 people, the roadvan was going to be how we’d get around. I was excited. I was ready to trade in my Subaru Forrester. Then I looked up how much these vans cost.

Anywhere from $75,000 - $150,000.

One day I will own a vehicle with a ladder attached to the side. One day

It was then my feverish ideas of living out of a van came crashing to the ground. We would have to make do in our trusty Forrester. The small SUV has cargo space of 34 cubic feet and overall 74 cubic feet (a little less room as an average sized closet). Everything two adults and 2 kids under 5 would need to live for 4 months in multiple climate zones would need to fit in there. Here’s a collection of things, some practical, some humorous (and practical) that we needed to survive the trip.

The MVP of the Trip

Right now most of you are thinking “the MVP of the trip is an iPad. has to be”. And while this is a good guess (the iPad is in the runner up category below), the true MVP of this trip has everything to do with the fact that we decided to embark on this journey with a kid freshly escaped from shackles of having to wear a diaper. Nora Muehleman was admitted to the halls of those who pee in toilets just 2 months before our trip. Naturally, we decided it would be a good idea to celebrate this life altering graduation by strapping her into a seat and driving her in a car for 9,399 miles. We went back and forth the weeks leading up to the trip on whether or not to put her in a pull up while we were driving. On the one hand we would be able to drive for longer stretches, making more efficient time with our trip. On the other hand, the idea of a kid we spent 3 days potty training possibly regressing because we were too lazy to pull over every 2 hours felt like taking two steps backward. So we took this mini potty.

I have an entire album on my phone that is called “Nora peeing in the back of my car”. I will not share it here because Nora will grow up one day and discover this website and then move out of our house never to speak to me again. So I’ll just say that it is a collection of about 25 pictures of that small potty in Joshua Tree, Salt Lake City, somewhere outside of LA, Yellowstone, at the second lowest point in the US (Salton Sea), in the middle of Teton Pass, Bryce Canyon, in front of a bunch of hoodoos in Southern Utah, and a variety of other places. We kept the potty in in the Thule always towards the edge for easy and methodical extraction. At the beginning of the trip, it would take me about 10 minutes to unlock the Thule, get the potty down, get Nora out, let her go, put her back, put the potty back, and then close the Thule. By the end I had this down to about 3 minutes to the point where I vaguely looked like a Formula 1 pit crew.

By the end of the trip, we started to use the portable potty (a portable potty, if you will) less and less as Megan’s attempts at training the girls to pop-a-squat became more effective. We were in Grand Teton National Park when Nora successfully peed in the woods for the first time. It’s occasions like this that I like to commemorate.

The MVP Runner Ups

These following items may have not demonstrated the utility of the porta potty but they were invaluable for 1) keeping young children amused in the car or 2) giving dad something to drink his jameson and ginger out of when hanging out by the pool

iPad

Look y’all, I’m not gonna take up your time with how f’ing great the iPad is on a roadtrip. They are f’ing great. Here is something I will say though. On our first 1 month roadtrip in November of ‘20, Nora was just barely 2 years old (and pre potty trained). The iPad was lost on her. She’d watch maybe 10 minutes and then want someone to entertain her. However, on the big monster roadtrip, she was about 4 months older and all of a sudden the iPad could hold her attention for an hour or so. Lily, then 4, could watch the damn thing for 8 hours without needing to stop for water, food, or sanitation. She’s an iPad watching machine.

Extremely Cheap Cafeteria Glass

My friends and family know this about me but I am extremely queasy around things that are “fancy”. This could be the result of kids making fun of my knock off Starter Jacket in 8th grade or the fact that I’ve been politely asked to “wait in the bar” at multiple country clubs because I was wearing denim (these were meetings with investors. I don’t wander those places by choice). But I prefer the … lesser fine things in life. And for some reason this extremely cheap cup that you can get any Luby’s cafeteria reminds me of home. I use it on weekends to mix a Jameson and Ginger Ale (Red Rock Ginger Ale only. IFYKYK). It probably sheds enough BPA to help me grow a 3rd nipple but I love it. When we were packing, this was a no brainer. And I used the shit out of it on our trip.

The Rest of the Stuff

Ok, here’s a collection of other things we packed, what we learned that we needed to pack, and other musings on packing for such a long trip

Tools

I packed a small array of tools that fit into my glove compartment. When you’re on a 1 week roadtrip to the beach, you don’t need much. Odds of you encountering something weird are pretty remote (unless you’re headed to Florida). But when you’re on a 4 month roadtrip traversing the Mojave Desert, Southern Utah, and Los Angeles, any kinda damn thing can happen. A wrench, screwdrivers, and a set of allen wrenches are good to have (we ended up using all of them on our trip).

Toys

Ok, unpopular 21st century opinion here: your kids don’t need as much shit as you buy them. Kids are imaginative. They will bitch and moan about being “bored” (my trigger word) but give them somewhere with an outdoors and they will find shit to do. In Palm Springs it was a few climbable trees in the yard. In SLO it was a weird creek they could wander around. In Driggs it was a long easy street they could ride their bikes on. So don’t bring that many toys. They’ll find shit to do. That said, Megan did have the genius idea to tell the girls they could spend $5 at a Dollar Store at whatever town we hit next. This meant we didn’t need to pack much and they could buy cheap stuff that felt new and fun.

Shoes

You’re gonna write about shoes right now TJ? Yes, yes I am. Shoes take up a lot of real estate. I took 2 pairs of shoes and a pair of flip flops for 4 months. One pair of shoes was a pair of old Nikes (what I ended up wearing to my step dad’s funeral. a story for another day) and a pair of Hokas. For those unfamiliar, Hokas are trail running shoes but I wore them for hiking, farting around town, riding bikes, or whatever. They are versatile, comfortable, and relatively affordable. We visited 8 national parks and I can’t tell you how many people I encountered that were dressed like they were about to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro but were actually going on a .75 mile hike around a lake. If you’re doing back country hiking, bring the fancy hiking shoes. For everything else, get something comfortable you can wear to anything (even a funeral).

Electric Skillet + Other Kitchen Stuff

Before kids I probably made a grill cheese or quesadilla once every 15 months. Post kids I am the Gordon Motherf’in Ramsey of quesadillas and grilled cheeses. And the number one tool in my arsenal is an electric skillet. It also makes pancakes AND it is super slender, fitting into all kinds of nooks and crannies in the car. You have to take one. We used it 3-4 times a week on our trip.

Besides the skillet, we found that bringing a few other kitchen items made cooking more familiar while in someone else’s home. A variety of spices (salt, pepper, garlic salt), a spatula, and our set of kitchen knives made it so that cooking in the evenings felt like we were in our kitchen.

AppleTV

The key to a long trip is getting in fast, getting settled, and finding tiny comforts of home. For us that was bringing our Apple TV and our Alexa. We are the type of family that spends most of our day listening to music and then weekends / evenings watching some TV. So having these devices allowed us to easily have what we typically listened to and watched at our finger tips (honestly we bring this shit on short trips too)

Thule

What was the thing I cursed at the most on our trip? If you own a Thule then you know that this is the answer. At least an older Thule anyways. You know these things. 65% of Subarus have a Thule permanently attached to the top (to carry what? groceries? I don’t know). What I discovered is that closing a Thule requires a combination of jedi skills, black magic, and raw good luck. There are a variety of switches and levers inside the Thule that need to be in perfect alignment in order to close. Approximately 98% of the time I attempted to close the damn thing, these switches and levers were not in alignment. So I would unpack, repack, then unapck again, then repack again until alignment was made and the Thule would close. It is entirely possible I was putting too much in there? Or maybe I’m just an idiot at packing? Either way, while the Thule was a godsend, it was also a colossal pain in my ass.

Every household is different so this is certainly not an exhaustive list of things to bring. Obviously you’ll need clothes (right???) but that’s dependent on where you’re going. We brought about 8 days worth of clothing + cold weather clothes and for the most part, that worked well for us. We did have to make a few runs to REI to load up on cold weather gear that we didn’t anticipate needing. But otherwise, we were well stocked.