Packing and Re-packing

  By far the most important underrated thing for a summer road trip is planning and packing. I excel at this (play me at Blockus I dare you), but even now I am at my wits end.                                       I start about a week early by moving things I know we will need into a central area. Mostly this is bringing up items from the basement, but just today I found my headlamp next to my computer. Then those items start to get organized into the boxes they will live in for the summer. We also start stocking up on new things we will need like sporty clothes and combos. 

I am a huge fan of separating everything into boxes that way the large trunk is broken into more organized more manageable units. It also keeps Aaron's mess (or mine) from taking over the entire trunk. There is a camping stuff box, a food box (long term storage), a everyday food box, a random box, and we each get two clothes cubes. It seems to work out okay and I like for everything to have a home. Every week or so I do have to reorganize and repack the trunk, but we can usually easily find and use what we are looking for. 

Another kink for this trip is a trip we are taking to Dry Tortugas, a national park that is notoriously difficult to get to because it is two hours west of Key West, where we need to take all our gear in waterproof bins on a ferry. It all fits in two plastic tubs with lids, but they are not as square as paperboxes and require more configuring. 

Up until yesterday, we were going to take Aaron's car because it is bigger and has some fun new car features like a GPS, and so my preliminary packing plan was for his trunk (so I repacked the food box and the camping box to better fit his trunk). Yesterday Aaron took me for my first standard car lesson in his car and realized that this might be too much too soon. I appreciate this decision because driving a standard makes me nervous and tense. I do realize that most people learn by forced driving, but this is my vacation. So last night around 9pm we decided we were going to take my car. 

Queue major to-do list. I know his trunk and my trunk are not the same size, so will the boxes fit and be arranged? I should know since we took my car last year, but I do not remember! My car was messy and ridden with a year's amount of pop-tart crumbs, sand, and other odds and ends. On top of that I actually wasn't done packing (neither was Aaron). Even though we will be in a really civilized (and probably Wal-mart ridden area) and we could get anything we are missing, I want to think of everything! I actually got up after laying in bed for about an hour to make a list so hopefully I could clear my mind and go to sleep. 

And it rained all day today. The forecast all week has been for rain and today is the only day where it has actually happened. And its not much, just enough to make it muddy right next to my car and make it uncomfortable to stand outside and try to arrange the trunk.

And its our fourth month-long summer road trip. We are experienced and just taking too much! Do I need fourteen shirts? Not really, but doing laundry is my least favorite part of vacation (though it is necessary). Do we need a new camping fan? Absolutely! I wish we had one last summer in Zion. Do we need a huge double sleeping bag? We don't think so, and as Karrie said for this trip all I need is "a bikini and a warm husband."

At this point the car is packed. All the kinks have been worked out and all that needs doing is packing the cooler in the morning and hitting the road. Bon voyage!