How to Prepare for the Ultimate U.S. Road Trip

Welcome to Season 4 of the TravelEssary Podcast! In this kickoff episode, we’re gearing up for the ultimate family road trip across America, and sharing everything you need to know to get road trip ready.

Before you hit the open road, preparation is key. In this episode, we cover essential road trip prep tips every traveler should know:

• ✅ Vehicle Prep – How to check your tires, fluids, and ensure your RV or vehicle is road-ready.
• 💳 Finances & Safety – Why you should notify your bank, plan your budget, and carry some cash for emergencies.
• 🗺️ Travel Tools – The importance of having paper maps as a backup and how apps like GasBuddy can help you save money on fuel.
• 🛡️ Insurance & Coverage – Making sure you’re protected before hitting the highway.

Whether you’re planning a family RV trip, a cross-country road trip, or just a weekend getaway, these tips will help you start your travels with confidence.

👉 Be sure to stick around for next week’s episode, where we’ll dive deeper into the best travel centers, rest stops, and road trip hacks to keep your journey smooth and stress-free.

Transcript

  We are the Essary family and we're exploring America one destination at a time. Today we get to kick off our fourth season of TravelEssary. Let's chat.

Well, welcome and thank you for joining us on this episode. We are so excited to kick off season four. I know. Can you believe it? We're already at season four. I know. Which is incredible to us. We want to thank all of our listeners. We wanna thank all of our Patreons, anyone who leaves a comment, rates us, anything like that, who is interactive with us.

Thank you so much. Um, y'all give us the drive to keep on doing this. Mm-hmm. And so we're so appreciative of that. And. Season four is gonna be a little bit different than kind of the other seasons, right? We talked about it in our last episode, season four is, you know, what we've been working for this whole time, season four kicks off like our dream, our goals that we've had.

It's kind of for years now, and, uh, I, I can't wait to dive into it. It's gonna be something that's gonna be super exciting, that is gonna be a little different from us because we are actually taking our show on the road, right? Which is something that a lot of people always dream about doing,

and we're gonna keep on giving you more information, more tips and tricks about how. To stay safe traveling, how to prepare for traveling and how to just. Get outta your comfort zone a little bit and be a little adventurous, right?

I can't wait till we are able to podcast from different locations from all over America. It's really exciting. Um, but before we do, you know, we gotta start somewhere before we hit that road. Before we make this giant road trip across the states, we've gotta get road trip ready. And being road trip ready is something that everyone needs to consider . Any kind of trip that you're getting ready for that's gonna go out of what you're, you normally do. You need to be road trip ready And we have just a few little tips and tricks of, you know, a little checklist that you can go through that in our opinion, everyone needs to go through, right?

Um, none of these are expensive, but I do feel that. Most, if not all of them, are pretty vital and really important to make sure that you are safe and comfortable whenever you are taking long trips, and not just cross country trips, but if you're going, you know, more than a few hours from your home and your place of comfort and security.

Then I think these are great ideas to follow and these are definitely things that we do even here in Texas where we do a vast majority of our treble now. And in the past, well, yeah, but Texas is massive. It's huge. And, but it's even something we've done on the longer trips, New Mexico. Mm-hmm. Oklahoma, Florida, uh, South Carolina, that, you know, we definitely do these because we believe that they're important to not only save you.

A headache, but time and money as well. Right. And the the first thing that if you get ready for any road trip. You that you need to take care of is the vehicle. You always need to take care of the vehicle. Yeah. Vehicle prep, it's like road trip 1 0 1. The, the first thing that I do seriously, sometimes before I even go into town, and for those of you who may be new to our podcast, we live in a very rural area.

So yes, we go into town, but even before I make that, you know, 20 minute trip into town, I'm checking my tires. And checking tires is something you can do visually. I mean, you can tell whether you have a low tire or not. Mm-hmm. But if, even if you're, you're unsure if it is a low tire, getting just a little pressure gauge.

Yes. Is, I mean, they're so inexpensive. I think they're like a dollar 50 at any local, , automobile place. And you quickly just, you, you put it on there, you check it, make sure it's good to go, and then you know your tires are good because tires will also save you miles per gallon. Mm-hmm. There's a little bit of saving that happened if you have the right air pressure.

Right. And you don't wanna get stranded so far from home. With a flat tire or some sort of issue and it being a time in the evening or a weekend where places aren't open and no one's available for you to purchase a new one. We have been there, we have done that. And so we are warning you, make sure you're checking your tires.

Um, like Jeremy said, I encourage everyone to have some sort of tire pressure gauge in their vehicle. At all times I have a tire inflator. I think we paid like nine or $10 for it at the local hardware store, and you plug it into your cigarette lighter, your charging port, and it airs up your tires. Now this is for smaller vehicles.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't suggest this for your, your bigger vehicles. Yeah. I don't think it would work in Jeremy's truck. Anything, anything over a two 50 or a 2,500, um, this probably isn't gonna work if you need that tire pressure to get up to like the 60, 80 mark. Mm-hmm. But if you're looking for, you know, the 40, 35 mark, which is most

smaller vehicles, smaller SUVs, then it will definitely work for you. It's super small. You can put it anywhere. Mm-hmm. You can put it in little storage compartments here or there, and it doesn't take a whole lot of space. Yeah. It's really great to have on the road because if you're somewhere where there is no.

Air, you know, a lot of gas stations, they don't have air available. Yeah, they, they removed a lot of them. Or if you're in between destinations and you're driving down a rural road or a freeway or something, you have that in your car. So if your tire starts going flat, you can air that up until you're able to.

Get to whatever destination you need to, which brings me, into the next one, which I think is super important. If you're gonna be anywhere, especially like overnight travel, long-term travel in a car, you need to have a spare. And my suggestion is all new vehicles come with something, but they usually come with a donut.

The donuts, they don't come with a true separate tire that you can replace out. Mm-hmm. The donuts are fine. They get you where they need to go. Sometimes they're not aired up all the way. That's where the inflator mechanism comes into play. Mm-hmm. But. If you have the room and you have the availability, get a true spare because the donut's gonna

limit you as how fast you can go. Mm-hmm. And sometimes you wanna get out of certain situations or you have a long ways to go. And having to travel that slow could put you in a time crunch if you didn't leave yourself enough time. Um, but having a spare will allow you to continue traveling just like normal until you can get to a place and they open up.

Mm-hmm. Right. 'cause we've had someone on the weekends where they were closed. Right. That you can actually get that replaced or patched up or fixed. Yeah, that's literally like, I think we just talked about tires for five minutes, but that's because, uh, your tires are gonna get you to where you need to go when you're on these cross country trips.

When you're on your road trips. Um, vehicle prep is important, but like tire. Tires are so important. You've gotta make sure that you have what you need in order to keep your vehicle going and going safely. And other things that help your vehicle go, that are super easy to check, that will save you a ton of money in the long run.

Now they, it could happen at any point in time, but check the fluids of your vehicle, right? Check the oils, check the transmission, make sure that. You have enough that they're good, they're topped off. Because if you get into a place and you didn't check that and your engine locks up, that's gonna cost you almost half of what a new car is.

Yeah. Because the engines are expensive and then you have to find a mechanic. Mm-hmm. Do you trust the mechanic? Are they open? There's a whole bunch of stuff that goes into play every single time that I travel in mine. Whether I'm hooking up to a new RV or um, I'm leaving the house, I check the fluids.

Because I cannot get into a dire situation where. My engine fails me, right. You know, me being a woman, I don't really think of the fluid part too much. I don't think of the oils and, but the one thing that I do think about is windshield wiper fluid because I despise being on a long trip and those. Bugs like splatter onto your windshield and then you go to clean it off and there's no windshield wiper fluid.

Yes. And you can't see, and it's a whole mess. And again, you know, us living in central Texas, I'm sure people who do not live in like. , Larger cities totally understand what I'm talking about when this happens. There are times we can go through entire swarms of bugs and our windshield is just plastered with guts, and I'm very grateful in those moments to have windshield wiper fluid.

So get those topped off. You don't have to go get it. I'm not, we're not saying go get an oil change or go to your mechanic every single time needs one trip unless you needs one. Yes. Now, if your car needs one, get it changed, but. If you're going two weekends in a row, you don't have to go get an oil changed twice.

So don't, fret about that, but do make sure that it's topped off. Leaks happen all the time and you never know it until it's too late. Right. , Another great idea, no matter where you live it's to have an emergency car kit in your vehicle, in your trunk, under a seat, wherever it fits.

There are so many different kinds. They have so many different price ranges. Mm-hmm. They can be very cheap from like, you know, 30 to $40 to $150. They'll have things like jumper cables and that tire pressure gauge we were talking about. Some of them will have emergency blankets. If you're up north and you get stranded in the snow, what else do they come with?

They even come with, especially depending on what region you are, but usually if you're in the north and. You typically get snow and I'm talking about like a couple feet of snow. Mm-hmm. Not what we consider down here in Texas. Snow, we just get some dustings every now and then, but whenever you get true snow, they actually even have, some of 'em have a, a pole that's almost a flag pole type thing that you would see on like a, a, a bicycle or something.

That you can put on your car. That way if you do get snowed in or you have to abandon your car, at least there's some type of identification to where your vehicle is located, right? So if it's off in the ditch, at least you can locate, locate it by that. , There's some other things that they put in there.

, Some of 'em have ponchos in case you have to walk somewhere. , Some of 'em have extra fuses in them in case that you need in case something goes out and you just need to replace a fuse real quick., But the vast majority of 'em aren't going to have the jumper cables, like you said. That's one of the biggest things.

Hmm. And the last thing you know as far as vehicle prep goes is make sure. You have insurance, don't be driving without insurance. And two, make sure that card, you have a printed off version in your vehicle at all times. Because if there's an emergency, if you get pulled over, if there's any kind of situation like that, it will make your life a hundred times easier to have that print it off, ready to go.

Don't get caught in one of those situations where you don't have cell service and you can't pull it up. Mm. Have a printed copy. I mean, like Missy said, if you get in a wreck and all of a sudden your phone gets destroyed, how are you gonna pull that up? No one's ever gonna know that unless you bring a printed copy.

Right. It, it just makes life so much easier to have that and make sure it's in your vehicle. The next thing you want to check is your finances. This one is actually more, in my opinion, it's more crucial mm-hmm. Than even the car prep. To have your finances, especially notifying your bank. Mm. If you're going outside of what you normally do, especially crossing a state line, state lines.

Because if you get somewhere that's outside your norm, they will freeze your account. Yes. Until they can verify that it's actually you. Yeah. And ask us how we know this is, we run into this situation way too many times. Yeah. Multiple times. Um, so, you know, fortunately now. The last couple of times that we have traveled outside of our norm, which I feel like our bank should just know by now, we travel.

But thankfully they have sent us text messages and they have, and it has asked, you know, is this you or is this not you? And you can respond yes or no. And if you say yes, it's me. They just. Ignore it and move on, and if you say no, they lock down your debit card. Before that, when we would cross state lines, there were times that we were trying to get gas or at a restaurant, and it was flagged as fraud.

This is before the times of smartphones. We didn't have access to the bank. Right. On our smartphone, right? And it would get flagged as fraud and the debit cards would be shut down. We wouldn't have any cash on us. It would be a whole situation. And we wouldn't even be in our home state. Like it, it would, it's just a whole ordeal.

After it happening a few times, our bank said that they do highly suggest when people travel outside of the country, outside of the state, even, , even here in Texas, if we travel more than like a three hour radius, they suggest it. To inform your bank, Hey, on these days I'm gonna be in this location, so please don't flag my account as fraud.

Please do not freeze my assets. And I'm so thankful for the banks that do this because it used to be, you know. Someone's stealing a credit card or getting your, your debit card information and then running a monk, and then no one knows until you get a bank statement mm-hmm. Of like, oh my goodness, where did all my money go?

Right. , They've been super active with, you know, identity theft and things of that nature, so I'm so thankful that , they do this, but sometimes it can be an annoyance whenever you go pay for something and it gets declined and then you're having to call, or you know, you have to answer a text or do some type of triple audit, you know?

Identity off dedication. Yeah. And so it can be sometimes a little frustrating whenever you're either in a hurry or you get to your place of destination. Say we get to the county fair and you get there and you have to buy tickets in order to purchase anything inside the county fair. And you go to purchase those tickets with your debit card and it freezes.

You've made the entire trip there and now you can't have a good time because your debit card got frozen. So thank goodness for smartphones and mobile banking. It has definitely made our traveling life, yes, a lot easier. Like traveling is definitely, . Less of a hassle now because we're able to do these things instantly with us and our bank without there having to be us having to call and it be in a whole situation, you know, , which leads me into my next tip when it comes to finances, is carry some cash with you.

Anytime you're going outside of your, your norm, your comfort zone, your home base, grab some cash out of your bank and take that with you. Don't leave without it because there are just too many instances where you're gonna need that. Now you don't have to take a whole lot. We're not saying go empty your bank account and take your bank account with you.

What we're saying is just have enough to survive wherever you're going. So if it's a weekend type thing and you know that you plan to spend, about $150 on all your good stuff, then take about $150. Just take enough to survive.

That way , you can at least last till Monday when the banks open back up. Right. There have been so many instances, , where we were at restaurants specifically where. But not only was our bank, , you know, flagged for fraud or something like that, but a storm came through and the power went out and their systems were no longer working.

Yeah. So we were stuck until the power came back on, and then we had to wait for their system to reboot. Yeah. Because we didn't have any cash on us. We only had our cards and they couldn't accept payments, and they were like. Blocking the door, like no one's in or out because we can't accept more people if we can't take payments.

And these people can't leave if they can't pay. So it was a whole thing. It's always just great to have emergency cash on you. Absolutely. But not only do you need, in our opinion, just notify your bank of what's going on, but you also need to notify someone, a family member, a close friend, someone who cares about you if you don't show up after your trip, right?

You need to notify them of your travel plans. I'm not saying a step by step, let's walk through this and hold my hand, but give them a general itinerary and especially a check-in date. If I, I am gonna check in at this time and I'm gonna be here at this time. And if those things don't happen, then it's cause or concern.

You hear way, way too many stories of people going on solo trips, solo backpacking trips, solo cross country trips, and no one really knowing. Where they're gonna be at what time? Yeah. And so they're missing for way too long before the alarm is raised because no one was really knew when they should start being concerned.

So notifying just anyone close by, and this is where smartphones just have kind of went a little above and beyond now because. We use a certain app that tracks our phones, as long as our phones are on person, then we know where each other is, so Right.

Well, there's always those instances of not having service. Right. You, you do run into a lot of national parks is definitely this way where you're gonna run into no service. And so by having like, oh yeah, we're gonna go to Yosemite for, you know, two days. Well if I don't hear anything in two days, then something's drunk.

Hmm. So, and it gives your family and friends peace of mind as well. They're not gonna be stressing about should we have heard from him by now? Or you know, what, where are they gonna be? When are they gonna be there? They can have a general idea of, well, what's not where he yet we know there's no need for concern and that'll save you from a million phone calls while you're trying to have a good vacation of people checking in on you are the thousand text messages that once you do hit cell service come flooding you up.

Right, right. , So speaking of cell service, . Bring a paper map with you if you're going on long road trips, and I know this may seem, you know. Like ancient, ancient, and, you know, maybe not worth it. But if, you know, especially the more west you go, the, the less likely there is that you're gonna have cell phone service,

but having that paper map, because you never know. When some, when a, I mean how many storms have come through that cell service just stops for a couple days. Right? Because they're still working on it 'cause it got hit by lightning or, or whatever. Oh, I've had several instances where I'm driving through an extremely rural area and I did not know where I was heading and I was using my GPS and then my GPS is.

Searching for network, searching for network for like 20 minutes. And I'm like, I hope I'm still driving in the right direction. And that's usually where your turn comes in. And that's the one that you miss. Mm-hmm. And then you get to a town going, wait a minute, this was not the next town that was on the list.

Again, ask us how we know there's way too much experience into this one. Well, the more you travel, the more you know. And, and the great thing is hard lessons learned, especially if you have like a copilot. It also gives YA conversation piece. It it, you know, you get to learn how to read an app together.

Wait, are you talking about when you're yelling at me, what is the GPS saying? And I'm like, it doesn't have any network. And you're like, which way do I go, babe? I'm like, I, I don't know. I don't know where I'm going. I, I don't know where you're going either. We're going to Florida and South Carolina. I have no idea what turn we're taking.

Oh man. So many times the GPS has crapped out on us, and it's like, what do we do? Especially when we're going through large cities. Yeah, like a mixed mass. Yeah. Right in the mix. Match. Yes. That's where it happens. And then we're like, what exit do I take? I'm like, I have no idea. I,, I can't stand them anyways.

And then whenever the GPS goes out, it gets. A thousand times worse in like 10 seconds. Yeah, so we used to do this thing back in the ancient times that was called MapQuest, where we printed off directions. If you are going somewhere super unfamiliar where you think you're probably gonna lose cell service, do that.

It's still available service. Do it. Oh yeah. Do that or do it. 'cause then at the very least you have that on you. If, if you're not a good map reader, you don't have to go purchase maps, then do that. Just real quickly, print off some MapQuest directions before you leave and that will at least help get you to your next stop until you get some service.

Um, another great tip is now, this is more of Jeremy's territory, is know how far in between your gas stops.

You don't wanna run out of gas. So in my opinion, even if you're a new driver, you should know how far you can travel on a full tank of gas right now. I'm not talking about like from straight up, as full as it can possibly be to like run outta gas. Don't do that. But usually around, you know, I got a quarter of a tank, a little less than that before I hit E, how far I can go.

I know in our vehicle we can travel 400 miles. Now that still gives me a little bit of Lee room in case we run into a situation. I need to go a little bit further than that, but I fill up every 400 miles. So you should know your vehicle, , however many gallons your tank holds. How many miles per gallons.

You do the math, you figure it out. , I know that some cars now are, well, most cars now are coming where you can actually go to like the fuel economy and it'll tell you how far you have to travel before it becomes empty. Right. And this is another. You know, area where it's a good idea to kind of know where you're going.

Don't just solely rely on GPS. , I love to look at the route that I'm gonna head out onto before we actually leave. Yes. Like I'm not going to a hundred percent rely on GPS. I want to have that visual representation. I wanna get an eyeball of like what. , Major cities we're gonna go through.

Mm-hmm. Things like that. And so when I see those signs on the highway, I know I'm heading in the right direction. But , it's a good idea to do that because if you only have a quarter of a tank and the next city is further than what that quarter of a tank is gonna take you, then you need to know, Hey, I need to stop here and get gas instead of trying to make this, , we know way too many friends and family that this has happened to, and they have ran out of gas Again, we live in central Texas , there's a lot of space sometimes in between gas stations. . What really gets people in trouble is some type of emergency. They didn't set enough time to prepare for the trip. They jump in their car 'cause they're late now and trying to get there.

They just take off. Yeah. So they didn't check fuel, they didn't check fluids, they didn't check tires. And they get an hour and a half down the road. They don't take care of those things. And something happens. Right. , The gas one is so simple. , This is the way that I do it.

This is the way I suggest anyone who is going on any kind of trip, not just a normal, your day of going in and going to work, any kind of trip you fill up in your hometown or wherever you're at, you fill up first and now you know, hey, we're only going 200 miles down the road. I'm good on fuel. Even if I gotta take a detour around, because there's detours out here that will take you 30, 40 miles outta the way.

Right? That. I'm good no matter what, or hey, I know that I can get here to the Metroplex in one take of gas. We will fill up again and then we'll head into Oklahoma. So you kind of already have it pictured in your mind where you're gonna stop and get gas. That way you're always good to go in case of any kind of emergency, what's to happen?

And speaking of gas, if you wanna save a little bit of money while you're traveling, apps like Gas Buddy, and there are other ones out there, but I cannot think of them. But apps like Gas Buddy, they help you find the gas stations, and let you know what that current price is there. So you're getting the best for your money.

Like you're getting your money's worth. You're not spending an arm and a leg because sometimes from one side of town to the other, the gas prices can be like a 10 cent difference or more. I've seen them 20 cents to 30 cents difference from one side to the other. In the same town. Same town. Yeah. It's crazy.

So if you wanna save money on those trips, then. You know, hit up gas buddy. And whenever you're talking about , making a gas stop or even a food stop, there are other places that you can stop on the road that you need to take full use of, get out of the car, stretch your legs.

But it's definitely, the rest stops the travel centers, , even truck stops because there, those, sometimes those are not inside big cities, but it does have like a. They're large enough that they'll have a convenience store. , They'll have usually some type of restaurant that's with them and they have the most room where you can get out and walk.

Yeah, we actually are going to go in depth next week when it comes to rest stops and travel centers., Jeremy has. Quite the experience now when it comes quite the experience when it comes to the different types of stops and they're not all equal. Oh, absolutely not. I will tell you the ones that are like top of the tier, and I will tell you the worst ones that you need to.

Try to avoid. Yeah. And we recently learned that you know, the different names means you're getting different things. A rest area does not equal a travel center. A travel center does not equal a truck stop. Um, but we wanna dive into that next week and get into more depth with you guys, give you all of the ins and outs when it comes to your pit stops.