How to Road Trip like a BOSS

What I learned from my first official road trip ever:

• Find a partner (in my case, a husband) who is willing to do most of the driving, because you have a weird undiagnosed case of Car Narcolepsy (I get sleepy within an hour of driving). 
• "Pack" your phone with lots of podcasts - we stuck with "Doug Loves Movies" this trip. 
• Take a pretty driving route, if possible; as we were going to the Oregon coast, we could have taken the famous 101, but we opted not to due to both of us not being fans of super-curvy roads. Go fig, taking I-5 instead was still fairly curvy - but also pretty freakin' gorgeous, too:
  
  
  

  Well, what I saw while I was awake. Seriously, I can sleep in a car like it's my own bed, and the motion/vibrations or something make me SO SLEEPY. Poor The Hubs, he must have been so bored.
• Bring snacks that aren't perishable. We went with fruit, and some 100-calorie packs of crackers and cookies. Next time I'm bringing nuts and beef jerky, 'cuz those crackers/cookies don't fill up your belly at all. 
• Make the biggest drive the one to the farthest-away destination, then work your way back - I think The Hubs would agree that having one big driving day, then two driving days that were half as long as the first day, was much less exhausting. Our main destination (Bandon, OR) was the farthest away point, then we drove halfway back and stayed in Ashland, OR for the night. It split our drive home in half, which was way less stressful.
• If possible, make the final destination a place with a hot tub. Man, that was nice when we got there - The Hubs was very excited to soak his tired bones in that mofo, I tell you what. 

Yes, I know I'm spoiled having a partner who is willing to drive the long distances. In my slight defense, I offered often to take over, and when we were driving in-town I took over (so he had a whole day where he didn't do any driving). Anyway, that's the reason for no blogging - went on vacay, came back and had to immediately jump into various job responsibilities for the last two days. (NOT COMPLAINING, actually nice to be so busy doing teaching-related stuff again!)

To finish, here's the gorgeous Pacific Ocean as seen from the Oregon coast: