Surviving a road trip

How do you survive a road trip?

After travelling 5044 miles across America on my road trip with my best friends, I think I have a few answers as to how to survive the long, sometime’s seemingly endless journey. At least, these are what helped with my journey; hopefully they help you too.

 

Firstly, you need some good music in your life. When you’re driving long journeys especially, you can’t rely on the radio to keep you going because you’re constantly losing signal and having to jump between stations, believe me I know. Our music was all on my phone, so whenever it crashed or when I’d lost/left behind my wire’s to charge it the radio was all we had. We had to make do at these times. When my phone was working though, oh we were in for some good times. I’ve already given you a glimpse of our playlist in my previous post but we listened to such a variation and loved every minute of it.

Now good music is great, but great company is better. If you happen to be heading on this journey make sure it’s with people you get along with, people who can hold a conversation and give you some laughs along the way. There’s nothing worse than being bored, especailly when you’re confined into a tin can with people who aren’t making things any better.

Tying into the company, having someone else that can drive is a massive bonus. Depending on the length of your trip you don’t want to be the one constantly stuck behind the wheel. On our trip, we had 3 drivers in total and we all took our turns behind the wheel, with a month long journey and some drives being upwards of 7 hours you want to be able to relax and let someone else deal with the driving part.

Make sure to stock up on snacks and water before you hit the road. You don’t want to be on a long drive having to stop more regularly than needed/wanted all because someone feels peckish and wants a packet of crisps. Bulk buying water is a must, not only will it last you a good while, it will also save you money rather than continuously buying single bottles.

Fill up yout tank. It’s just common sense, make sure you have a full tank before you hit the road and have a limit for how low you’ll let the gas go before you stop to refuel. For us, we wouldn’t let our tank get below a quarter full, just to be on the safe side we also checked where gas stations were along our route so we knew where to top up if the next one wasn’t for a good while.

Music and conversation are good but sometimes you’re not in the mood for either. Bring some books, make sure to have some good apps on your phone/ipad or whatever to keep you entertained, car games. Just things to keep you sane really.

Stop whenever you want to. Don’t just stop because you need gas, the toilet, stock up on some snacks or stretch your legs. Some of the best places you’ll find will be the places you don’t intend to stop. I know we stopped at a random wee gas station in Texas and found they had some maps on the wall (both a map of america and rest of the world) along beside the maps were pins and they asked you to put a pin where you’re from. It was amazing to see where everyone had come from to this random gas station, more amazing that we were the first Scots.

The best thing you could do, take pictures. I don’t mean just to post on some social media site either (instagram, facebook, twitter, tumblr, wherever), I mean yeah it’s great to share your pictures with everyone but sometimes it’s best to take some random snaps just for yourself. Make a scrapbook, pin them on a wall, take pictures of the memories.

 

 

Do you have any good road trip ideas? Leave a comment of them below to share with us all.

Blogging when you’re not travelling

When I first started yasmintravels I neglected my blog a little (okay maybe more than a little).. but as someone who was just starting out I often wondered how do I write posts on a travel blog when I’m not travelling?

It’s a question that took me more than a little while to eventually figure out the answer to. I found that when I wasn’t travelling somewhere it was difficult for me to work out what to post. I just assumed I could only really post about travelling and as it happened.

I’m not saying that now I have everything completely figured out or that I have my blog where I would want it to be but I thought I’d give you all a couple of hopefully useful ideas if you’re ever stuck in a rut like I’ve been many a time.

Lists:
Everyone loves a list!
Whether it’s your top 5 favourite destinations, top 10 favourite hotels, top 3 restaurants. Anything just get writing lists, everyone loves to read about them and it let’s people get to know about you and what you like a little more.

Advice and tips:
Even if you feel like you have no advice or tips to give anyone or if you feel like it’s all been said before there’s someone out there that hasn’t read it and is searching for your post to help them.

Photo posts:
If you are anything like myself, you will have about a gazillion photos of absolutely wverytjing you’ve ever done and everywhere you’ve ever been. Turn them into posts! I don’t know about you but sometimes I can’t be too bothered reading a post and will basically just go in search of beautifully picturesque images instead.

Reviews:
A classic post. Write a review. It could be a review of somewhere you’ve ate, somewhere you’ve stayed, a company you have used. Reviews are always going to be useful to people so write them.

Stories:
The thing that I feel attracts me to posts and blogs mostly is the feeling that there is a person behind writing all this and the getting to know someone. No-one wants to read another generic post, add some of yourself to it. Tell us a story about something that’s happened to you, let us get to know the person behind these posts.

Future plans:
So you’ve found yourself stuck at home, you’ve been your trips that you’ve had planned and now you’re sat at home planning some new adventure. Write a post! Tell us all what you have planned, maybe we can add some advice and give you ideas of where to go and what to see next.

Guest posts:
You’re running out of ideas but you’ve made a friend that runs another blog. Why not ask them to do a guest post? Your readers will get to read posts from someone else’s point of view and you’ll invite some traffic towards the guests blog.

Bucketlist:
Another absolute classic. Everyone and their gran these days have a bucketlist (and if you don’t you should). Some people think they’re overrated, not me. I love reading people’s bucketlists, I love knowing what other people aspire to do in the future.

Explore your own:
Something I’m trying to do a lot more at the moment is explore my own city of Glasgow more, and sometimes I’ll try to venture out to see more of Scotland. If you can go out and explore your own town or city, somewhere you’ve probably grown up and thought you knew everything about. You’ll probably learn that there’s things and places you didn’t know were right around the corner from you.

Favourite blogs/posts:
The great thing about blogging is there may be so many people writing about the same thing, but we all have a different view and perspective on things. Dedicate a post to your favourite blog or post out there.

So, these are a few tips to help you when you feel like you’ve no motivation to write.
You don’t always have to be travelling to write a travel blog.

Do you have any tips or advice on writing posts when you’re not travelling? Maybe I’ve missed something out? Feel free to leave a comment below and let me know!