Road Trip Top Tips

A shorter episode than usual, I talk you through some top tips for planning and taking a road trip! Find us on Youtube at Shire Travels and instagram at shire.travels for even more content. 

Transcript

Welcome back Shire travels. in this one I'm going to be giving you some top tips on planning a road trip. We've taken many road trips around Australia. We've driven from Perth to Broome, we've driven cairns to Brisbane twice. We've done lots of road trips around Victoria and several road trips to South Australia too, including the Flinders ranges and York Peninsula. Over the next 18 months we've also got a couple more road trips planned. We're going to be doing the big lap of Tasmania and we're also going to head to kangaroo Island in South Australia too. Some of these road trips cover really big distances. Perth to  broom especially was 3000 kilometres. In all cases were limited by the amount of annual leave we have, so most of these road trips took place over 1 to 3 weeks. This required a lot of preplanning. We wanted to make sure we were going to hit all the top spots, but also had to be realistic about how much we could see in our limited time frame. Some of our road trips we've flown into one destination and made our way to another, and then in other cases we driving from home to the destination and the aim of the game is pretty much to get there as quick as we can. In both these scenarios we kind of have different ways of planning things to our talk you through both of them. On our road trip from Cairns to Brisbane, for example, we knew there were lots of really good spots to stop on the way. Therefore a lot of time was spent planning and working out exactly how much time we would need at each spot and exactly where we wanted to stop along the way. whereas with the trip we did to the Flinders ranges, the goal was just to get to the Flinders ranges as quick as we could, so we didn't really stop many places on the way and when we did it was just a quick stop overnight and then back on the road. My first it would be be realistic about what you're going to be able to see on your trip if you're restricted on time. Even people who take a year or two off work to travel round Australia and do the big lap always say that they have to miss out on certain things because there just isn't enough time to see everything. When we're planning our road trips, we definitely pick and choose the places that we want to stop at. Sometimes we do just have to accept that we're not going to be able to get to a certain spot, although we're only going to have a very limited time there. For example, during our trip from cairns to Brisbane we didn't do magnetic island because we were so restricted on time we'd only be able to take a morning really to travel round the island and it just wouldn't be enough time we'd barely be able to see everything and we probably would spend a lot of money to not really get much out of it. It can be quite disappointing and get Fomo thinking oh, you've missed out on this incredible place. Don't worry it's not going anywhere. It's always one to add to the list for next time or it's somewhere where you could choose to take a single trip to that destination specifically. It's also hard not to feel rushed, particularly when you are on a tight time frame. on our post broom trip we had the mentality that it was going to be a way of sampling a few different towns and areas and working out places that we definitely wanted to come back to next time. Okay, we've accepted that we're not going to be able to see everything on our road trip. What's next? We need to work out exactly what we do want to see where we want to stay and how long for. Therefore, my next tip is to plan ahead, booking things like accommodation and towards in advance just take the stress out of the trip. It means you could spend your time on the road actually enjoying it rather than having to spend time on the Internet, looking for somewhere to stay or trying to book different tours. It's already done, and this is something that I quite enjoy doing, sitting down and working out exactly what we're going to do on the trip. Now this isn't for everyone. I know there are people out there who prefer to just fly by the seat of their plans, take things as they come book things on the fly, etc. and look usually it works out for them, but me personally, I'd rather just spend my time on my holiday, actually enjoying it rather than having to try and get foam reception and work out where we're going to go next. in terms of working out exactly where to stay and what to see what to do, YouTube, Instagram are usually my first ports of call, particularly YouTube, I really like to be able to see videos of places compared to Instagram, it's a lot more harder to Photoshop edit and pretend it's really nice. I think with Instagram, you really have to take things with a pinch of salt. I remember seeing someone's picture and they were parked up by a river bank by themselves in their caravan, no one else around, and then in their stories they posted what their place was actually like, and they had photoshopped out about 30 other caravans that were all cartled around them, giving the impression that they were there by themselves and the area wasn't busy very much Instagram versus reality. Now when I am looking on YouTube, one thing I'll do is look for channels that don't have many subscribers or videos that don't have many views, quite often with very big channels, yes, they make really nice beautiful content, but they're often being paid to tell you that a place is good or being given a free stay in order to give a good review. I'd rather live for a smaller channel one which shows places,arts and all, what it's really like talking you through the facilities, etc. I find there can be a little bit more reliable than those really big channels. Another tool I use for planning is guide books. The likes of Yoni planet are usually pretty good. It gives you some good advice on accommodation and things to do. in Australia specifically, heemma maps atlases are really good if you're taking a road trip. They are very comprehensive guides. The maps in them are fantastic, and if you're into your four wheel driving in a lot of the books, they have a top 10 fourwheel driveet track section at the back of the book, for often as ranger's trip this was invaluable. It gave us so many ideas and it was fantastic. Another thing I love about the heemma books is that they give you a really comprehensive overview of the area and the history. Things you need to be aware of, maybe dangerous animals or all road or climate conditions that you need to be aware of. Once you start building up a list of places you want to stay, visit, tools you want to do, I always find it's really helpful to get an Excel spreadsheet going. I know it's a little bit nerdy, a little bit old school, but it's really useful just to sit down and plan everything out. I also find it really beneficial. If I'm going to be out of foam reception, I can print the spreadsheet out and I usually have a column in there which might have the address of where we're staying, a phone number, an additional information on places where there's fuel, food and water. Another thing I do is put on spreadsheet the approximate distances between each place that we're going to. This was very beneficial in the Flinders ranges because we knew that it might be difficult to find fuel, so I gave tom the spreadsheet with all the distances on it. It also included the distances of any day trips that are wanted to do. That way he could sit down and work out approximately how much fuel we would need and whereabouts we'd need to top up. Another thing I'll add to the spreadsheet as well is some meal plans. Again I find this ranger's trip we are going to be quite remote. We probably about six or seven hours from the nearest supermarket, therefore I wanted to be as prepared as we could be and make sure that we weren't going to run low on food. Obviously another big factor when traveling is budget and this may influence where you stay, what tours you do, etc. That's why planning in advance can be really useful. You may turn up to a town and the only place available is an expensive hotel, but you could have stayed in a caravan park for much cheaper always pays to do that little bit of research ahead of time and book ahead. In addition to this, it's always worth checking if accommodation have midweek deals or specials or tours might have discounted days on quieter days, and again checking in advance means that you can try and plan your trip around this and maybe save yourself a bit of money. depending on the type of accommodation you're staying at, it might also be worth signing up to rewards programs too. For example, if you're going to be doing lots of camping, car, it's worth signing up to programs like good day rewards or traveling Australia with kids, memberships cost around about $50 and you usually make them back on your first day with the gday Park app as well, you can also build up your membership and you get different benefits. For example, you can get an early check in, late checkout, bag of ice with your stay, as well as special member pricing. Okay, what about some apps that can help you plan your trip? Well, most people might know about wiki camps. It can be incredibly useful to find places to stay, places to chop up water and points of interest. You can also use a planning tool on there to map out exactly where you're going to go, which is quite handy. Similar apps include campipedia and also hip camps as well, which is specifically for campaign caravan accommodation. Another handy app is fuel map, Australia, which tells you the price of fuel which would be handy if you're looking to save a few dollars. The gas finded app can also be useful as well if you need to refill gas bottles on the road. Another is the useful app to have is the state emergency app for the state that you're traveling in, so in Victoria we have the Vic emergency app. This provides up to date information on things like bushfires if there's a tree fallen down, anywhere that the SS or fi brigade is responding to it will pop up on the app. It is extremely useful, particularly during bushfire season. you can see whether there's any fires and any warnings that are relevant to that far. You can also see if there's any roads closed as well. Most importantly make sure you have either Spotify or Apple Music, whatever it is to make sure you have a road trip playlist preloaded and ready to go. Now on a more serious note if you are traveling remotely in Australia, it's useful to have either a emergency beacon or a satellite phone, some way of connecting to people instantly to tell them if you are in trouble. Now there are plenty of different options out there you can get satellite phones. Some people have stal and use that. We have a zola, which is a small emergency beacon. You can pretty much fit it in the palm of your hand. unit itself just has a cabineer clip that you can clip onto something and a red SS button that when you press will send out a signal to say that you're in trouble. A really handy feature it has is messaging. You connect through the zolio app and you can email or text people and let them know that you're okay or give them an update on your location or if you need help. Now it's not the cheapest thing to have the device itself with about $250 You then have to pay a one time activation fee and it's a monthly subscription after that. There are all different levels of subscription you can get two in terms of the number of text messages that you want to be able to send. And while it is a bit of money and it can be a little bit like it's money going to nothing because you don't use it, well, it's probably as good that you're not having to use it. Now, even if you're not traveling remotely is always handy to have a first aid kit in the car, knowing what's in it where to find everything and having a very basic knowledge of first aid can really help you out if you get into a sticky situation. If you are traveling remotely, it is also worth having a snake bite kit too. A couple of other common sense safety tips is letting someone know where you're going and telling them you route, and if you're traveling in your own car, giving a once over, making sure it's in good repair before you head off. Another thing to check before you go on your road trip is whether or not you're going to be going through national parks, conservation areas or areas that require special permits. Now for a lot of national parks in Australia, you can buy these easily online or you can get them at tourist information offices. However, if you're going somewhere that does need a permit, for example, somewhere like Arnhemland, you need to play for these weeks in advance. Therefore take a bit of time, work out exactly whataths you need to get and give yourself plenty of time if you need to email and apply for the permit. There will be nothing worse than travelling a really long distance only to realize that you aren't able to be issued a permit if for example, there was a limit on the number of cars that are allowed into a certain area. For example, phrase R island, which is a very popular tourist destination, they only allow a certain number of cars on the island each day, so you need to put your pass well in advance. Now going to talk you through some tips if you are traveling with kids. Now pre kids Tom and I could happily travel six to eight hours in the car, pretty much nonstop, punching it through, maybe just stopping once to go to the toilet and that's it. These days though were two small kids in tow it is a hole at the ball game. I spend a fair amount of our time when we're planning road trips looking for different playgrounds. The easiest way to do this is just Google maps. search for the term playground in the rough area that are going to be driving through and see what comes up. This is forced us to stop off in places that we wouldn't usually stop off in places that we would previously have just gone straight past, were stopping off, going to the bakery, having a look around the local area, and we found some really nice places. Now part from strategically planning our stop some other advice I can give you is bring more snacks than you ever thought that your children could possibly eat because believe me, they will eat them. Baxy organizer that can hold their water bottles, snacks, toys, the sticks that they found at the park last week and insist on bringing on holiday with them. They're really handy. They can keep all your stuff together very neatly. You can get ones that can fit between the back seats if you've only got two car seats, or we get ones that clip onto the drivers and passenger front seats. In terms of entertaining kids on the road trip look at entirely dependent on their age. older kids are probably more happy listening to music, reading a book, looking out of the window, younger kids and toddlers, let's face it they can just watch their iPad. That's what we do set them up with a movie and a heap of snacks and everyone's happy. A top t as well. if you have Disney+, you can actually download movies and watch them for 30 days. This is really beneficial when you're going somewhere where you won't have any phone reception. I want to keep the kids entertained. One thing that our three-year-old tends to use on road trips and also on plane trips as well is a magic drawing tablet. Now it looks like a tablet or an iPad pad, but is made of plastic and has a screen on it that you can draw on a press of button and all the writing disappears. Really handy, it saves taking reams of paper and a heap of pencils in the car. My final tip for traveling with kids is to lower your expectations in terms of when they sleep, what they eat they're out of their normal routines. We have to accept that maybe their behavior isn't going to be the same as it normally is. Now we've got the wildlife in the car under control. Let's talk about wildlife outside of the car. Now it's fairly common knowledge in Australia that if you're driving at dawn and dusk you are likely to see animals such as kangaroos more active, wombats, those sorts of animals. It's recommended to limit the amount of driving that you do at that time of day and driving at night too as animals are more active. Some animals to look out for during the day, though are wedge tailed eagles they like to feed on rowill and often they will eat to the point where they are so heavy they can't take off and fly, therefore it are driving along and you see one ahead of you, slow down and beep your horn and it should waddle off the road before you get to it. Other big birds to watch out for are emus. Now Tom and I had seen emuss a couple of times when driving on road trips, but when we were heading up to Alarula just north of the Flinders ranges, we were towing a small caravan and we were absolutely loaded to the brim with water, food, fuel, and we saw two emus off in the distance, didn't think much of it, but all of a sudden they started racing towards us. of all the places they could have run to they ran straight for us. There was a car coming the other way. Tom said, look, I can't swerve. I can't break. These emus ran out in front of the car that was coming in the opposite direction and missed hitting our caravan by a feather. They were incredibly stupid animals, and we couldn't quite believe that they were just in the middle of the paddock doing nothing and then saw us coming and just made a beeeline for us, so that's definitely something to watch out for. They may look like they're nice and calm chilled out, but next thing you know they come flying towards you. The other thing with emus is if there's a couple of them there, they tend to follow each other so you could have the bad luck of taking out more than one. If you do hit an animal, there are numbers that you can call if the animal is still alive. There's organizations such as wires, who, if you call them, they can give you advice on what to do and perhaps send out one of their volunteers to help you, you can often see their mobile number on signs throughout Australia, or if you google it, you'll be able to find their number two. If you don't have phone reception and you have hit an animal, and it doesn't look like it's going to survive, it is handy carrying a shovel in case you do need to put the poor thing out of its misery. Okay, enough about that quickly tacking on to other gear that might be useful to have in the car recovery gear, if you're heading off road, a tie repair care and a set of jumpies are always ready handy to have in the car, as well as that it's always good to have a couple of bottles of water and some snacks tucked away just in case. So that's a rap on this week's podcast. I hope you found some of those ti tips helpful. This week's episode was much shorter than our usual episodes. Our usual episodes actually coincide with our YouTube videos. This week on YouTube, it was a part two video, therefore you got this bonus podcast. Next week we are back to our usual programming. We are going to be heading from Cairns to Brisbane on an epic road trip. Be sure to follow so that you don't miss out and head over to our YouTube channel if you want to see all the footage from this amazing trip. You can also find us on Instagram at shotras. See you in the next one.