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Take five days, three states, two girls, one Jucy camper. Add in two national parks, one state park, one historic driving route, and countless natural wonders (and a few man-made ones, too) and mix well. The resulting road trip is likely to promote extreme happiness, encourage wild wanderlust, and inspire a love of the RV lifestyle.
When Jucy approached me about trying out one of their rides last summer, it seemed like serendipity — my girl Zoe and I were already in the process of planning a road trip to the Grand Canyon to kill time between Britney and Burning Man. The whole camper thing was brand new for this perpetually curious travel blogger — so why not?
Our Ride
We picked up our Jucy at the Las Vegas office, one of three in the United States alongside Los Angeles and San Francisco. While the brightly colored campers are a staple in their native New Zealand as well as in Australia, they are rapidly gaining popularity stateside as well. We quickly understood why.
Jucy’s are essentially retrofitted minivans. They give you most of the features of a traditional RV at a fraction of the size and cost. With a full kitchen in the back, a pop-up sleeping pod on top, and a table and chairs that converts to a second bedroom in the middle, this little guy takes reveals we drove about 11.5 hours and 700 miles in “big drives.” I wrote a post about each of the individual days of our road trip, and I’d be hard-pressed to pick a favorite among them.
We built our itinerary from the starting point of visiting the Grand Canyon, which we then more or less drove in a big circle around. Originally we assumed that meant going to both the South Rim and North Rim, for which five days seemed like plenty! Though the more research we did (including posting an incredibly fruitful status on Facebook asking friends for suggestions) the more we realized we had other priorities and decided to save the North Rim for another trip. Once we started to grasp the breadth of our options, we started to go a little crazy — suddenly we were aching to see Zion National Park, Monument Valley, Bryce Canyon! Suddenly five days seemed like next to nothing, and we had to seriously reel ourselves back to what we could realistically enjoy in our time frame.
Once we’d slashed our list to the bare minimum and picked where we’d sleep each night, we used the app : While there is a USB plug built-in to the dashboard, if you want to charge larger electronics like a computer or dSLR camera, I recommend packing a charger that plugs into the cigarette lighter. This model, which I bought specifically for this trip, was noisy but got the job done.
• or helped me make Alex in Wanderland what it is today — a financially successful and creatively fulfilling travel blog that just celebrated its fourth anniversary. It’s the first thing I recommend to those who write to me for blogging advice, and was instrumental in getting me to where I am now! Our secret member’s Facebook group gives me daily inspiration, feedback, and hearty laughs. Yes, the warmest community in travel blogging is on sale now!
Source: alexinwanderland.com