In the last couple of weeks I heard a lot of people say: “Your planning must have been crazy!” To them we can only say “You have no idea” 🙂 During our planning we got lots of inspiration from other families and what they wrote on their blogs. That’s why I’ve decided to write something about that, too. Maybe it’s gonna help someone else.
At the beginning we looked at the map and tried to find out on which campgrounds we wanted to stay at. The following websites helped a us lot with our decision where to stay: www.womo-abenteuer.de, www.campsitephotos.com and also www.campendium.com. That made our route more specific. (That being said, we just changed something last week). But for most campgrounds it is important to make an early decision (up to 6 months ahead). There’s a time when you can start booking your Campground for a specific day. That means you go online the second the booking window opens. Maybe even try using several computers. You might have a better chance of getting a (good) spot.
We also thought a lot about the topic of sleeping. I have no clue about how it’s gonna look like in the end. I can just tell you about the thoughts we have right now. We bought a travel bed for Noam. (Phil & Teds Traveller). It can get packed pretty small and doesn’t weight much so that we can put it in our suitcases. For Nate we ordered an air mattress, so that he won’t fall out of his bed. (Kidz Traveller Bed) We plan on putting both on one of the beds. At least that’s our plan for now. Let’s see how it works out. Throughout our trip we’ll have temperatures between 0 and 25 degrees Celsius. That’s why we also had to find suitable sleeping bags for the kids. They shouldn’t feel too cold and also not too warm. In Germany there are no sleeping bags for toddlers specifically for Camping. That’s why we started looking for it online and we found something. It’s a down feather sleeping bag for babies up until they are 3 years old. It comes from the US and you can find it here: www.themilkandhoneyco.com. We’ve been using it for a few months now and Noam loves it. It’s so fluffy and we even think it helped him to sleep through the night. For the top part we got our boys some Patagonia Down Sweater Jackets in which they can also sleep in. And if it’ll get really cold at night they can wear some merino onesies underneath. This ought to be enough for them to be comfortable for when it’s cold. Nate is getting a sleeping bag called Rei Kindercone. You can pull it together at the end so that he cannot slip into it. For when it’s warm they have their regular sleeping bags from Slumbersac. They are not expensive and you can get them either thicker or thinner (TOG).
Another big topic we thought about was hiking with 2 kids. For Nate we got a child carrier. We tried several child carriers and found this to be the best suiting: Vaude Premium Shuttle (YMMV, be sure to test them yourself and don’t rely on tests alone – we didn’t like the often-praised Deuter Kid-Comfort). We’re gonna use the Cool Air 360 Ergo Baby for Noam. On the left side of it we’ll attach the bottle holder from OneTigris. We decided to order two of the Nalgene N-gen bottles and one Camelbak Chute (unfortunately this one is leaking a bit when you hold it up side down). But because we’ll probably also spend some time in hotter areas as the Death Valley we need to carry lots of water. We found out about some foldable water bottles such as the Evernew Water Carry. That’s what we got. Thank god there’s such an easy way to carry water and we found it online. For hiking poles we decided to get the Black Diamond Trail for Women (they are a little bit shorter and therefore lighter) and the Leki Photosystem (good recommendation for every photographer cause there’s a tripod screw attached in the handle so you can use it like a monopod).
For those who want to know about our child seats, we decided to get the following: Evenflo Embrace (We bought this one in Germany. A family who just got back from their trip in the US sold it to us) and the Britax Roundabout (we will ship this one to our first hotel in LA, where we will stay before we’ll get our RV. And before we had back we’ll sell it to another family that we meet at the Los Angeles Airport. Very convenient!)
Unfortunately I can’t say much about the electronic stuff we got. I know it was a lot to think about and it wasn’t easy to figure out what we need and where we can get it but I can’t tell you in detail, because Mike did most of that 😉 Maybe he’s gonna write something about that later. This was a part of the stuff we had to plan and do some research on. Of course, the things I wrote about were only a small part of it. So, only a couple more day until we say Goodbye and let the adventure begin…
