How to Road trip with Your Favorite Allies
As you may or may not know, we moved from New York City to Los Angeles last summer. We shipped most of our things, but decided to get ourselves from NY to LA by driving cross country with the pups.
A lot of folks have reached out to us over the past few months, asking about how we planned our trip, where we stayed, and what stuff we brought along the way. Here are some tips we have about planning a road trip with pups based on our experience!
Plan your drive
When planning a road trip, you generally need to decide how many hours you’ll drive a day and where you’ll stop each night. This is even more important if you’re taking a road trip with your pup. You want to be sure you plan for frequent stops for potty breaks and that your overnights have dog-friendly accommodations (and ideally dog-friendly restaurants).
If you don’t have time constraints, I would recommend having at least one full day at each of your overnights and spending that day exploring and walking with your pup as much as possible. That way, your pup will be tired out when they’re back in the car for the next day of driving.
Research your stops
The last thing you want to do after a long day in the car is to spend an hour searching for a dog-friendly restaurant you can get dinner at.
Sure, if your dog is super mellow, you might be able to leave him at the hotel or airbnb. But remember that it’s an unfamiliar space with unfamiliar things and your pup might be inclined to “explore” the space more than usual or to “sing” with joy about their temporary home. Having a list of dog-friendly places you could go will make it a lot easier for you to navigate the places you’re visiting without having to worry about your pup being up to no good in your accommodations.
One thing we found helpful was creating custom Google Maps. It helped us aggregate notes from friends’ recommendations and our own research and create an easily-navigable and accessible map to use on the go. Here’s the map we used during our time in Asheville, North Carolina. We obviously didn’t hit everything, but it was a great resource for us while we were exploring.
Get yourself in gear:
Car Accessories
The first thing I’d recommend is getting your pup a safe car seat / seat belt hookup. If heavens forbid you were to get into an accident, you don’t want your pup to go flying through the windshield. There are a lot of options, so it’s easy to get overwhelmed. Whatever you get, make sure it includes a way to clip your pup’s harness to the seatbelt (note: you want to use a harness rather than a collar to protect your pup’s neck).
We wanted the pups to feel like they had their own space so that it would be easier for them to settle down and rest when they were in the car, so we opted to get them car seat beds. We got them these ones as they looked quite cozy and had a lot of good reviews. They’re bulkier than we thought they would be (there’s not much space left over in the backseat of the car with a bed placed on either side of the car). But the pups LOVED them and do snuggle up in them whenever we ride in the car, so they’re perfect in that regard. A word of warning if you have a pup with a sensitive tummy who tends to get carsick - the cover for this particular bed is NOT liquid proof - indeed, liquids soak through pretty easily. We’ve had to remove the cover, soak out sick patches, and spray with cleaning liquids and Febreeze more times than we’d like to admit as Barak has a sensitive tummy.
In addition to car seats, I would recommend getting a car seat cover for whatever part of the car your pup will be in. We drove cross-country in a rental car, so we didn’t worry too much about car cleanliness. We probably should’ve thought about it more, though, since the rental car company wouldn’t accept the car with the amount of dog hair that was in it when we tried to return it (note: it wasn’t *that* much… they were quite particular).
Barak and SoomSoom ride in the back, so we got this seat cover for the backseat area of our own car. We like that it’s light colored - it matches our beige car seats and doesn’t heat up in the sun. It protects the seats from dirt and hair, so when we shuttle around fur-sensitive guests (e.g. my parents), it’s super easy to get the car in shape for them.
Car Kit
A prepared car kit of pup items will make your road trip a lot smoother as you won’t constantly be looking for supplies or stopping to grab things. Our car kit included things like -
Backseat (within reach while driving)
Paper towels
Trash bag
Travel water bottle (we like this one, since it has a built in bowl and you can return unused water to the bottle)
Trunk
A couple towels
Baby wipes
Paw wax
Extra treats
Extra poop bags
Travel bowls
Long leads
Dog jackets (in case it rains at one of your destinations. These jackets are cheap and effective!)
A chom chom! (even with seat covers, hair gets everywhere! This is a quick and easy way to clean A TON of fur up)
And in case you’re obsessed with organization, a car organizer! We have an SUV and got this one. We love how easy it makes it to keep our car organized!
The Overnight Bag
If you plan to stop in multiple places, the last thing you want to do when you get to a new destination is unload a bag of dog food, a bag of dog treats, a bag of bowls and kongs, etc. Plan to pack a single bag of dog things - food, treats, snacks, accessories, etc. That will make it easier to - (1) load and unload from the car, (2) find your pups’ things as you travel between places and are constantly packing and unpacking, (3) keep things your pups shouldn’t get into (e.g. the entire trip’s treat supply) out of reach, since you know exactly which bag of things to make inaccessible.
We also packed travel crates, since Barak and SoomSoom sleep in their crates at night and the routine is reassuring to them. We used to travel with normal crates, but they were heavy, difficult to pack up neatly, and annoying to take apart and put together frequently. The travel crates are SUPER easy to take apart and put together and have built in bed pads. Having them on our road trip was hugely helpful as there were a few evenings that we were able to leave them in the hotels without us - after long days of exploring, they were happy to curl up in their crates and sleep, even in unfamiliar places (which we know because of the laptop Skype spy-cam we set up!)
Make time to have fun
Road trips are a lot of fun, but they can also be stressful. Make sure to leave yourself time to have fun! Beyond that, try to have fun even when it’s a bit hard - even after you spend an hour too long cramped in the car or you’re hungry and unsure of when your next meal will be, remember that you’re on a road trip with your BEST friend and it can’t get much better!
When SoomSoom had to get stitches above her eye on one of the first days of the road trip and we were told she’d have to have a cone and be medicated for the remainder of our trip, I felt like our entire trip was ruined. But after the initial injury day (which SoomSoom spent squeaking and whining), she was in pretty decent spirits. If she was able to be in a good mood, I figured we should be too.
Take unexpected bumps in the road in stride and don’t let them get you down. If your pup is happy (and he will be, since they’ll be with you!), you should be too!
