It was during one of our usual weekend drive along the Pacific One that I and Vijay were discussing what to do for the year end vacations. Vijay had thought of Peru a few months ago, but we couldn’t plan since my stay here in the US wasn’t confirmed to continue until that weekend. Since it was already end of October, Peru seemed pretty costly. Not knowing what to do, ‘…well in that case, we might as well just pack our bags and do a cross country trip…like our usual style of not planning anything and just heading out!’, I uttered casually. I had no clue what so ever back then that we’d actually do it.

Over the next month, that casual idea sprouted into major planning, discussing with our friends and colleagues regarding the route, places to see, what to do & where….etc. While most of them said it’s pretty risky since we’d be going out in the cold winter, JC my colleague who had done it a few years ago during spring bestowed confidence in us. Few of the elders I know said it was their dream to do a cross country trip across US but hadn’t for various reason and still regret they should’ve done it when they had the chance. As much as I love to be outdoors enjoying the nature, I was initially a bit scared as well, imagining all the things that could go wrong as it would just be the two of us in a normal sedan against the harsh winter in unknown territory. But then, I did not want to end up regretting later. I’ve always done everything I’ve loved and wanted to do. If I miss this chance, I might not get to come back to US again and even if I do, I might not be in a state of going on a cross country drive – I told myself and with that, my mind was made up.

The planning

Route - Reading all the blogs online gave us a rough idea of what to expect and how to plan, but all of them, at least all the one I had stumbled upon online, were only during the spring-summer time. Overall, the take away was not to get into the nitty-gritty of daily plan and just to have a brief initial plan and enjoy the rest along the way deciding what to do upon reaching each location. That is how I and Vijay have almost always traveled and in the remaining cases, just gone out without any plans altogether and have always enjoyed that. So, Golden gate to Brooklyn and back, with Christmas in Chicago and New Year in New York, was our goal. Talking to JC and others, we came up with the initial plan of San Francisco, CA – Salt Lake city, UT – Badlands, SD – Madison, WI – Chicago, IL – New York, NY. On reaching NY, we would decide on taking the south route or come back straight through the same route to SF through Chicago. All of this in 18 days from Dec 19th, 2015 to Jan 6th, 2016.

Budget - We were keen on saving as much $$ as possible. This wasn’t the kind of trip you go with your fiancé, lavishly enjoying & expecting comfort throughout the trip. Rather, a proper backpacking kind, out in the open. Camping in the car instead of tents. We didn’t mean to be cheap and not enjoy anything much. We just didn’t want to spend on some things that we didn’t really need, like beds for sleep, 3 time meals…etc. We wanted to see the country, the different landscapes & weather, the people and culture. We were clear on that. 800-1000 $ each was the max we had decided. After all, we expected to spend only on fuel, food, accessories, entry fee for places and stay if any, for the most part. The rental car was anyway given to me from office, Vijay had free internet provided by his office, we had friends studying at Chicago and New York and we could stay at their homes. For places in between we thought of camping in the car itself or decide to book an AirBnB room if needed. We also borrowed sleeping bags, tents and a cooler from JC. We already had rest of the needed camping/survival materials & accessories we could take along.

Just before take-off

I feel it is important I mention this part of the trip as it affected us dearly. Just a few days before our trip, we decided it would be good to prepare food and pack it along for the trip. Considering the cold weather, the food would last for three days at least and it would save (3 x 3) x 2 amount of food cost. So the plan was to finish office on Friday, come back home and start packing. We would make puliogre & chapathi in the night, pack everything and sleep and then leave early morning as we had around 13hrs of drive the next day.

That Night - What happened in reality was completely different. It was late in the evening by the time we both came back from office. We then had to go and get needed groceries to prepare the food and since it was already late, had dinner at a hotel. By the time we started cooking, it was already 11pm and we hadn’t even started to pack our bags. We had bought 20 plastic food packing boxes and intended to pack food in them. 1 box would do one course of meal. In the next one and half hour we ended up making so much of puliogre that it concerned us if we’d be able to finish so much or would it end up going as a waste. He was cooking and I was packing and he had inhaled so much of puliogre aroma that he already started saying he didn’t want to eat much of it and would eat only chapathi. To have some variety we made lemon rice and another dal based dry dish, along with some dry roasted peanuts. By the time we finished, it was already 1am and slept without doing anything else since we had to wake up early. We hadn’t even packed our bags!

What a start!

Morning - As expected, I woke up late at 8 am. Quickly got ready and woke him up to get ready. It was a good to have made a list of items we wanted to take with us. It helped to pack quickly. The home was in a mess from previous week and the kitchen especially from the previous night’s cooking. When I come back home, it’d be a new year and I definitely didn’t want to be welcomed into a messy home, so we started cleaning up. It was already late and I didn’t want to start in a hurry. Cleaned up the whole house, packed everything I wanted and double checked it all until I was satisfied. I had learnt from my previous trip to not start hastily. It was 12:30 noon by the time we were ready to leave.

Our Gear - We finally had these items with us

Trunk - 2 backpacks each, 2 sleeping bags, 1 tent, a cooler with red bulls and coke [courtesy of his office ;) ], a cardboard box with our packed food, another card board box with our snow boots and camp light, a volley ball, tool kit, snow brush, tissues & toilet paper rolls, duct tape, tripod and a small gardening shovel

Back seat – a cardboard box with peanuts, bread, jam & other eatables, another cardboard box with our water cans, Vijay’s blanket and our jackets

Other – a pair walkie-talkie, a power inverter for charging gadgets, h and sanitizer, tissue papers, his DSLR camera, our laptops, all sorts of cables & converters,  my spare shoes, monocular and camping knives. We had decided to buy snow chains for the car along the way as it wasn’t available at our local Walmart.

And with that, we were all set and confident to embark on our longest road trip ever, although late by 6 hours!