Road Trip to Omaha
Because of how far away my mom and brother live, we don't get to visit during the holiday season. Instead, for the past several years, we have used the NFL Draft (Go, Titans!) as an excuse to visit and get some family time in the spring when life tends to be a little less busy. It’s become a really nice tradition for us.
I've made the trip from Richmond, Virginia (previously Nashville, Tennessee) to Omaha, Nebraska both by car and by plane. Last year, I flew first class because I'm too old and too fat to squeeze myself into tiny airplane seats. Anywho, when I told Rachelle (after-the-fact) how much I spent on my flights for the trip, she thought it best that we drive this year and make an adventure out of it. So we planned a road trip from Richmond to Omaha. This would also give us a good opportunity to test out van camping since we want to road trip across the country in the next few years.
The plan
Outbound leg
According to our navigator, Google Maps, the trip from Richmond to Omaha is 1,254 miles–about 18 hours and 46 minutes. We decided to do the largest chunk of driving on day one so we could get to Omaha in the mid-afternoon with plenty of time to spare before the Draft started. We chose a more northerly route because neither of us have ever driven too much in the northern US (spoiler alert: it’s flat!). Plus, it would give us an opportunity to camp near Lake Michigan–Rachelle had never seen any of the Great Lakes before, so that would at least be some “excitement” after a long day of driving hard.
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Day 1: 758 miles (11 hours 13 minutes) to Indiana Dunes State Park.
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Day 2: 513 miles (7 hours 15 minutes) to Omaha NE.
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Total Miles: 1,270 (19 hours 9 minutes)
Return leg
Our plan for the return leg was a lot more flexible and casual, but we planned to follow the same pattern as the first part of our trip. We'd do most of the driving on day one, find a campground to sleep, then finish off on day two. We would return using a more southern route because it was shorter—plus, let's see some different interstate (arguably more scenic interstate?? Which didn’t end up mattering anyway–ooh, intrigue)!
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Day 1: However long we felt like it. ;)
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Day 2: The rest of the miles!
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Total Miles: 1,252 (18 hours 35 minutes)
Why van camping?
The idea of van camping popped into our heads because we want to take a cross-country road trip but want to try to do so frugally. Tragically, we are not independently wealthy. Using hotel rooms or Airbnbs for two-plus weeks would be expensive. We entertained the idea of tent camping, but we want something that is a bit more comfortable, sturdy, and convenient. (In other words, Rachelle really doesn’t like the put-up or tear-down aspect of camping, and she’s also not a fan of bugs.)
The goal is to have a no-build van camping setup that will allow us to convert our daily-driver minivan into a comfortable, poor man's RV.
Gear
Man, I love thinking about, researching, buying, and fiddling with gear for ANY hobby/event/job/etc. It's one of my favorite aspects of most of my hobbies, truthfully.
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2022 Chrysler Pacifica Minivan: This is our daily-driver and is the best car I've ever owned. Minivans are awesome, and I'm puzzled why so many people frown them out.
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Therm-a-Rest MondoKing 3D Sleeping Pad XL: I bought two of these using credit card rewards points from REI.
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Jackery Portable Power Station Explorer 300: I have sleep apnea, so I use a C-PAP machine to sleep.
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WeatherTech Sunshade Window Shade for Chrysler Pacifica: We wanted to have privacy in the van while sleeping. I saw these recommended over at Big Brave Nomad and picked up a set for us.
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SportRack Vista XL Rooftop Cargo Box: We bought this used from Facebook Marketplace for $250. Since we will have a bed in the main area of the van, we wanted to ensure we had plenty of space for our bags and gear. This thing is huge which gives me hope for future, longer trips!
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HOTLOGIC Mini Portable Electric Lunch Box Food Heater: I was skeptical of this purchase when Rachelle bought it, but it ended up working pretty well for warming up the food we brought in the cooler. We warmed up breakfast tacos, ham/turkey sliders, and Mexican leftovers.
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Hopper Flip 18 Soft Cooler: We use this when we go to the beach and we used it for this trip. It held our breakfast/lunch/dinner for the outbound leg of our trip.
Day one - Richmond VA to Indiana Dunes State Park
We were on the road at around 5:30 a.m., which meant we went through the DC area right as morning traffic was kicking off which was less than ideal. Next time, we'll probably avoid the EZPass fees by routing around the DC area.
After getting through the congestion, pretty much when we hit Maryland, it was smooth sailing. And another bonus, the scenery was nice until we got out of Pennsylvania. After the Appalachian mountains in PA had passed, it was flat, straight interstate and farmland as far as the eye can see with nothing but billboards advertising accident lawyers, anti-abortion BS, and, perhaps ironically, a considerable number of sex shop and stripper joint billboards as well. All that to say, there just wasn’t much to see for about the last 6-7 hours of Day 1.
One item of note are the travel centers along this route as you get into Ohio. I obviously don't get out much and am easily impressed, but these travel centers are neat. It almost feels like being in an airport terminal as opposed to a generic truck stop and I mean that in a positive way. The ones in Ohio we stopped at were clean and nice with lots of amenities available. I think that’s really all I can say for Ohio though.
~12 hours of driving makes for a pretty long day, and we were both ready to get out of the van when we finally got to the campground.
Indiana Dunes State Park
Once we arrived, checked into the campground, and found our camping spot, we ventured down to look at Lake Michigan. I've seen some of the Great Lakes before, but I still think they’re quite the sight to see. The water was calm and the sun was shining, but it was only in the mid-50s. We stuck our toes in and immediately back out, brrr!
We heated up our Mexican leftovers from the previous night using the little food warmer, then turned in relatively early as the sun went down and the temp was dropping.
Sleeping
Our sleeping setup was very basic. We moved the front seats all the way to the forward position then put our inflated air mattresses butted against the seats, directly on the van floor. We slept with our heads toward the back of the van because there’s a bit of an incline. I did have to scoot up a couple of times during the night, but it was bearable. We had a battery-powered fan to move some air. I was pleasantly surprised how well we slept by just using the air pads and the little fan. We were startled awake around 3 by a “yip-yip-yip!” that sounded like it was right outside the van–a fox, I presume.
The little Jackery battery ran out of charge, turning off my C-PAP around 2:30 a.m. Not great, but I'm already engineering a much improved power solution for the next iteration of our camping setup.
Rachelle and I both gave the sleep setup a grade of C. I feel reasonably confident we can improve the setup to a B or B+ simply by using a sleeping platform to make it level and adding a little extra padding.
Day two - Indiana Dunes State Park to Omaha NE
We hit the road pretty early, ready to be at our destination. We finished off the breakfast tacos for breakfast and had more of the ham/turkey sliders for lunch, both warmed up in the electric food warmer while driving down the road.
Nothing much to report on the drive for day two. The scenery was pretty flat and boring, but there were wind turbines today! And more travel plazas! We got to Nebraska mid-afternoon.
Day three - Family time
There's not much to report on this part that anyone other than myself would find very interesting. It was nice spending some time with my family. We ate food, talked about football, and just visited. With such a short window to visit, I wanted to spend time with my people instead of trying to figure out something to do around Omaha, so that's what we did. I think next year I will plan to spend more days visiting so we can finally go check out interesting Omaha-ian things.
My niece (Alice) and nephew (Jack) have grown so much in a year and we got to meet the new addition, Ella!
Day four - Hammer down back to VA
After having breakfast, we said our goodbyes and hit the road, eager to be back. The plan going back was to take a southern route to change up the scenery without any real destination for the end of day four. We thought we’d just find a campground as time drew nearer.
Lunch in Kansas City
We stopped at Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City for lunch thanks to a suggestion from our friends, Tessica and Kevin. Kevin’s from Missouri, so we trust his BBQ recommendations! The place had a legit, authentic vibe. This is not a fast-casual, hipster-wannabe place. These people know barbecue. That was evidenced by the fact that by the time we LEFT around 12:15, there were very few empty tables to be found. Rachelle and I shared some spare ribs and burnt ends plus several of their sides. While some of the sides weren’t our preference, (potato salad: meh, cheesy corn: needed a bit more seasoning), the MEAT was GOOD. And really, ain’t that what it’s all about? I would recommend checking it out if you're ever in the area or passing through!
The long drive
After lunch, we decided to camp close to Louisville, KY. Many campgrounds in the area were unavailable because of flooding. The campground we finally found didn't have a great website and we were not able to book a spot without calling them... and that's how we decided to just drive straight through.
Rachelle and I are both the type of travelers who really dislike the return leg of most trips. The adventure is over, thoughts of reentry back into the normal work schedule are intruding on my good vacation vibes, and I'm ready to be at home with the cats. So we stopped for our traditional Vacation Blizzard Treat around 5:30, and then set out for home--only around 12 more hours to go!
We did our first driver swap around 9 p.m. I dug out my C-PAP and pillow, got all set up in the passenger seat, and Rachelle took over driving. By this time, we were starting to go through the mountains of West Virginia. There was quite a lot of construction, so the roads were down to single lanes in many spots with the big concrete dividers on either side of the van creating a nice, tight tunnel-esque feel. The roads are bumpy, and combined with the mountains and curves, it was not the best recipe for good sleep. Still, I did manage to get a few hours of fitful sleep in. (Nevermind the fact that Rachelle was dealing with all of that in Mothman-laden, pitch black West Virginia all the while trying to keep her eyes open, too.) She gave me back the reins around 1:30 a.m. after passing the golden-roofed West Virginia Capitol building in Charleston.
With the help of a 5-Hour Energy that made me nauseous, I got us to within an hour of Richmond where Rachelle took over and brought us the rest of the way home to the kitties. We pulled into the driveway at 6 a.m.–the cats’ autofeeders just spat out their breakfast; it was an exciting time.
Final driving stats
When we pulled into the driveway, the odometer for the overall trip read as follows:
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2,616 miles driven
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25 MPG averaged
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40 hours 47 minutes of drive time
Trip Expenses
A big reason why we chose to drive and camp is that we wanted to be frugal. How did we do?
Here’s a breakdown of our expenses:
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Gas: $268
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Tolls: $98. The biggest chunk of this expense was the tolls as we went through the DC area. I took the express lane as much as it was available. We could have gone around and saved ~$50.
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Food: $140. We stopped at Arthur Bryant's in Kansas City was by far the largest food purchase at $55. The rest was road trip snacks/drinks. I think we can make improvements here by bringing more of our own snacks and drinks (but we’ll need a MUCH larger cooler.)
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Lodging: $42. Nice.
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Total: $548.
Improvements
We need to improve two main things with our setup:
- More power: I need to be able to use my C-PAP all night so we need a bigger battery. Or we must ensure we're picking camping spots with power hookups so we can bring an extension cord. My preference would be a larger battery that can be charged by solar power or the 12v socket in the van while driving. And we can bring an extension cord so we can hook up to shore power when it's available.
- Bed platform: Improving the bed setup is something we can do relatively cheaply and without much effort so it seems a no brainer. The goal will be to have a level sleeping platform and to add a bit more padding in the form of roll up foam mats to go under the air mattresses.
Conclusion
There's no way we could have flown for $548. But I guess a person has to decide how much they value their time and how much they like road trips.
For me, deciding to drive vs fly was worth it. We got to test out the camping situation, and we know now that a cross-country trip using the minivan as a poor man's RV to camp can work for us. I do look forward to doing it again and iterating on the process and the equipment to maximize our enjoyment. All-in-all, it was an adventure–and a good one at that.