I just drove 12 hours to Iowa. It has been a long time since I’ve done an old fashioned road trip. I miss my days of being adventurous and knew I had to give it another go.

I used to car-camp and truly loved it. Since getting my beloved dog, Luna, I don’t travel as much as I used to. Both her and I are finicky sleepers… I prefer/need as much darkness as possible, cool temps and as little noise as possible. Luna is the same way.

We car-camped years ago when she was a puppy and if she looks out the window and sees a car’s headlights miles away, or a person walking, she will bark. She is not much of a barker but if she thinks she’s protecting our “territory” then she must bark at the “monsters” outside. Also, she will stare out the window the whole night.

One time on a road trip, we camped in a tent, deep into the Colorado wilderness. She sat up the whole night staring out the window of the tent. Her doing that kept me awake because I could sense that she was up staring out into the wild.

Car Window Covers

There are window covers made specifically for my car that you put on the inside of the windows that block pretty much every inch of the light. I bought some and didn’t have time to try them out before my trip.

Thursday, I worked 7 hours and drove 30 minutes home. I rushed like a mad-woman to finish my packing in about 30 minutes. Then I hit the road at 4:10 pm. A week prior, I found an excellent camping spot that was right about in the middle of the drive to Iowa. I typically do the 12 hour drive in one day but since I couldn’t leave until 4:00 pm I was not going to drive through the whole night with no sleep. I was already low on sleep so knew that I would be needing as many Zs as I could get.

Campsite

When I arrived at the campsite I quickly realized that it was perfect! It was quiet but not too quiet that it seemed “murdery”. There were lights but not too many lights. And the best part was a public restroom.We were right by the woods which was awesome. The woods we were next to weren’t too deep and dense but just enough to feel “one with nature”.

Car Setup

The hardest part was setting up my car, using the window covers that I wasn’t exactly sure how they worked. My car is small but when I put the backseats down I can lay down and extend my legs fully, which is another sleep requirement for me. No bent legs please and thank you.

It was getting pretty late and I was very tired. It took me a while to get my car fully set up and the temperature perfect for both of us. I brought both a little mattress and my thick yoga mat for comfort. During the entire drive my lower back was kind of killing me. Even the right side which was new, normally it’s only the left. When I laid down after my car was all set up, there was a bump directly where my lower back was… oh joy. I ended up moving the yoga mat in just a way that made that annoying bump unnoticeable.

The window covers were amazing except that there are two separate back windows, and the coverings didn’t include the smaller back window… oh joy again. It was still pretty dark but that one open window still made it too bright for me and Luna sat up staring out the window, transfixed on the outside world. I thought of an excellent solution for this using a towel and a bar that usually goes on the trunk. This worked to hold up the towel, effectively blocking the light. I also brought my white noise machine. Since I use it every night I figured it’d be good to use the same one rather than a white noise YouTube video through my phone. This worked very well for us finicky sleepers.

It took a while to fall asleep but once I did, I got some good sleep. When I awoke in the morning Luna was up and raring to go. I wanted to fall back asleep but she was staring at me like a psycho and sometimes I can feel her intense, crazed staring. That was it, I was awake and ready to hit the road asap to finish the rest of our journey.