Travel Reflections

As we have taken several long (6-8 week trips), here are some reflections on how to improve our travels: 

1. We need to slow our traveling down. This means spending a few more days in each area with a little more downtime to explore. This also means having shorter driving days so that we can explore as we go. 

2. We should do more research on the campgrounds to see whether they have hiking,  biking, or boating directly from the campsite. 

3. We don’t want to bring our e-bikes anymore, as they are too heavy and take up too much space. 

4. We need to make sure that the things we pack in the van are the things that we really need. For example, we don't use our portable grill and it takes up a lot of space, so we are leaving that at home on our next trip. 

5. We are finding that many small towns have tiny downtowns, and some other surrounding areas that sound good on paper, but really are not so interesting. So we have to do better research on where we’re going and what we’re going to see at the places that we think we want to see. 

6. If we think we are going to bike in from a campground to a nearby town, we have to make sure that the bike trail is really bikeable and not along major roads.