Packing and Preparing
Phase one of our big park-to-park tour is upon us. It’s been a long time coming; planning the entire trip for 2020, un-planning it because of Covid, and replanning for 2021. But we’re more than ready at this point. With the day-by-day itineraries handled, the next steps is packing.
We’ll be living out of a 2002 Volkswagen Eurovan Weekender with a Westfalia pop-top for 31 days. We’re renting from Rocky Mountain Campervans in Denver. The van sleeps two “upstairs” and two downstairs. The Weekender — perhaps a moniker that doesn’t suit a month-long trip — is actually preferable to a full camper, in our opinion. The aftermarket electric cooler/freezer has more capacity than the built in refrigerator would. Most of our cooking will be done outside on a portable propane stove. So, without the cabinets, fridge, and range top that would be inside the full camper, our Weekender provides more space and a larger bed. We will have to be creative in the storage of our “household” items and clothing, but we’ll figure that our when we’re in the van.
To pack our personal belongings, we each got a Patagonia Black Hole duffel (70 L for adults and 40L for kids). Each person is using a few packing cubes inside the duffle to keep shirts, pants, and socks/underwear organized. We’ll check the duffels on the airplane, and each person will carry on the same day pack that they will use for hiking. The girls love their Camelbak Kicker packs that hold 1.5 liters of water in a bladder and still have room for a raincoat, some snacks, and a few other items.
We’re planning to have access to laundry about once a week. We did research into each campground to figure out where laundry and showers would be available. So, we’re packing about one week’s worth of clothes for each person. A full packing list is described below.
We also have hiking shoes, camp shoes, and slippers (flip-flops for those who don’t live in Hawai’i), along with plenty of extra socks. For long hikes, we always like to have at least one pair of extra socks in our pack. We are expecting to need both down sweaters and swimsuits, as we’ll experience a wide range of temperatures. We are also each packing a soft shell jacket and/or fleece sweater. Raincoats are a must for hikes or for rainy days in camp. And we have either sun hats or baseball caps — or both — for each person. The girls have trekking poles for longer and/or steeper hikes.
We’ll have some long drives between parks (at least eight hours on three separate occasions), so that means lots of books uploaded onto the girls’ Kindles and podcasts for the driver. We’re doing all of our downloading (e.g. Kindle, Spotify, etc.) at home with strong WiFi, because we don’t expect to have cell service for much of the trip, and we can rely on public WiFi for downloads. Speaking of cell service, as we drive between parks, we may not always have service for route navigation, so we’re planning to acquire road atlases for each state we drive through. We also have a handful of books that we used to do our trip planning research, which we’ll haul along with us.
We’ve printed up our itinerary (which we’ll share in detail after the trip) at FedEx with a hard plastic cover and spiral binding. One page per day allows us to keep track of what we are hoping to do. We’ve also put all of our proof of reservations (e.g. campgrounds, timed entry to parks, activities, etc.) into a single PDF and printed that out as well. This will be especially important at parks that have timed entries this summer, like Rocky Mountain and Glacier, as we’ll need easy access to our reservations at the gate. Finally, we laminated two copies the fifth grade Every Kid Outdoors pass — which is just an 8.5x11 inch printable paper — because we don’t want to lose our passport into the parks.
We’re planning to purchase our first ration of food in Denver, and we’ve mapped out grocery stops between parks. We’ve even determined how many meals we need to plan for at each stop, because we know we’ll have limited time during these pit stops. We’re also going to make a much anticipated visit to REI in Denver to grab some additional supplies. (We don’t have REI in Honolulu!).
We are packing all of our own water bottles. We’re not as concerned about weight as we would be for backpacking, for example, so we’re bringing metal HydroFlask bottles. We determined that four 40 ounce bottles and two 32 ounce bottles, which — along with the girls hydration packs — should be sufficient for daily consumption and even for the longest hikes. We like to keep the bottles cold and full of ice. The rest of our water will be stored in a 5 gallon (20L) jerry can that comes with the campervan.
It’s not easy to pack for a month in a campervan — especially when you have to fit it all into bags for airplane travel. We’re hoping that, with all of the preparation and pondering we’ve done, we’ll have most of what we need and the campervan will come with the rest. We’re sure that we’ll forget some things, so we’ve also mapped out REIs in cities between parks for our resupply stops.
Rocky Mountain campervans will provide us with the water jug, camp stove, all cooking & cleaning supplies, camp chairs, bedding & pillows, and other amenities. So, here’s the packing list that we came up with. What are we forgetting?
T-shirts x 7-8
Long sleeve t-shirts x 1-2
Shorts x 2-3
Long pants x 2-3
Hiking socks x 9-10
Underwear x 6-7
Camp pants (warm)
Rain jacket
Sweatshirt / fleece / soft shell jacket x 1-2
Down sweater
Hiking shoes
Camp shoes
Slippers (i.e. flip flops)
Hats, baseball cap or floppy sun hat x 2-3
Trekking poles
Swim suit
Sunglasses
Covid masks
Toothbrush & toothpaste
Hairbrush
Face wipes
Body wipes
Deodorant
Lip balm
Sunscreen
Bug repellent
Feminine products
Medications
Razor and shaving cream
Hair product(s)
Watch
Cell phone(s)
Tablet(s)
Device chargers
Power bricks x3
Multi-tool
Bungee cords, 550 cord, etc.
Clothes line & pins
Hankerchief(s)
Binoculars
First aid kit
Batteries (AA, AAA, etc.)
Bluetooth speaker
Flashlight / headlamps
Lanterns
Water bottles
Camera
Games
National Parks books
Journal(s)
National Parks pass