Unless you’re singularly focused on a final destination, a Teardrop trailer road trip will be made up of some combination of what I call on-the-move (OTM) and stay-in-place (SIP) days. An OTM day is one that involves relocating the trailer (i.e., packing up in the morning and pitching camp later that day) while a SIP day is when the trailer doesn’t move. Though I might unhitch it and drive off on a day excursion, generally I just remain wherever I am.

Everyone is going to have their own preferences for balancing these two types of road trip days. What’s important is to be aware of the dynamics between them and your experience of road-tripping. For me, I have found that I seem to be fine doing up to 3 OTM days in a row but by the fourth I am feeling like I want to set down somewhere for more than one night.

This is just a matter of my own experience and preferences, but there is a type of exhaustion that comes from being on the move. I don’t necessarily mean a tiredness kind of exhaustion so much as that it can get to be a lot of inputs (whether it be the constantly changing sights and sounds of awesome scenery or even the monotony of long stretches of the same scenery) as well as the decisions and attention to traffic required while driving. An SIP day can be a welcome recharge, and perhaps help make the coming days safer and more gratitude-filled.

On longer, multi-week, road trips I have also found that about once a week there is need for a SIP day that includes time to “reset” the trailer. Maybe you are more disciplined than me but over the course of several days on the road I find there gets to be a gradually increasing state of disorder inside the Teardrop trailer and amongst the various storage boxes and gear in the back of the car. It’s good to, literally and metaphorically, shake out the dirt, sort things into order, and repack it all a bit closer to how it was when I cast off on the journey.

That kind of pragmatic SIP day is also a good opportunity to do laundry, properly clean cookware that may not have given full attention, or whatever else would help make the experience of camping with a tiny trailer a pleasant one. The what and when of it all will be different for each person but my point here is to be mindful of the need for an occasional maintenance day when on long road trips and to work one in before you start feeling frustrated with the state of things.