The open road is there, it will always be there. You just have to decide when to take it.
~Chris Humphrey
I guess we finally decided to hit that open road. The lack of posts these last few weeks is due to our first major truck camping road trip – 18 days, 11 states, 5816 miles. Melissa made a rough road map of our travels. Click this link for an interactive version of the map below.
The truck was my father’s – a 2003 Chevy Silverado, for farm use with only 23,000 miles. We took the rear seat out and have done a few things to try to make it more livable and useful for long trips. More on that in a later post.
The photo above is from our first night camping in a Forest Service campground in Shawnee National Forest, IL. This was one of only 4 campgrounds we stayed in on our journey (we spent roughly $80 on camping fees for the whole trip). The rest of the time we did was what is called dispersed camping – finding a spot on public lands (that allow it) and setting up camp wherever. Dispersed camping is free, and, if you have a 4wd like us and drive past where the RV’s can travel on the often rather rough dirt roads, you can be totally alone.
We weren’t sure where we were headed after visiting my Mom in the mountains of VA, but we turned westward and made most decisions on the fly as we drove (turns out the internet with a mobile hot spot, when available, is faster than ours at home).
The trip was a great way to see parts of this country as we drove through. In normal times, we would have explored more, eaten at funky local restaurants, and interacted with people throughout our route. But now, we tried to isolate, wore our masks whenever we were near people, and enjoyed a wonderful selection of meals that Melissa had prepared with many hours spent using our dehydrator before we headed out.
In the next several posts, we will share some of the highlights from our excursion and give some pointers on how to truck camp your way to some beautiful places across our country. We learned a few things that we might need to upgrade and are looking forward to another adventure to parts unknown in the near future.
Roads End Naturalist 
Leave a reply to Kathy Cancel reply