Useful Items for Road Trip and Hotel Life

Anything that helps make road trip and hotel life easier is worth the investment. We’ve personally been using these enough to endorse them. If you have any ideas for other items, or any tips, please let us know in the comments.

Click on the text links or photos to see the item on Amazon. Yes, we are Amazon affiliates, so would get a tiny amount for each purchase.

1. S Hooks to use with hotel luggage carts so they can hold more items. These hold up with very heavy items on them.

2. Travel Router provides easy wifi setup for security and convenience. It allows me to connect to hotel wifi and set this wifi network to my home network name. Then, everything just connects to this network as if it was our home network. This saves having to enter the hotel password for every device, like our phones, laptops, tablets, Fire TV, etc.

3. With a one year road trip, we need a lot of stuff with us. Even paring down to essentials, we have to pack our SUV full, so I can’t see out the rear view mirror.

That’s why I bought a wireless rear view camera. It took 10 minutes to install and I love it.

4. If you’ve ever driven west at dusk, with the sun full on into your eyes, you know the pain. These over-the-glasses sunglasses help. I’ve even started wearing them on any bright day to keep the harsh sunlight out of my eyes. They are just so much better than my tinted glasses. And, as you can, see, they are a fashion must for the modern nomad.

5. Looking for every way to compress our stuff, we tried using vacuum bags. They work great on our pillows, throw blankets, and towels. We have two and get a lot in a small space.

6. Of course, to use the vacuum bags, you need a vacuum. We found a powerful, compact travel vacuum that works great. One tip – be sure to recharge it after each use as two bags uses up most of the charge.

7. We found carrying the full vacuum bags in and out of the hotel room can be awkward and unwieldy. We bought these straps and they simply go around the bags and turn them into a suitcase.

8. A quality cooler is a must for any road trip. We have some meds that require staying refrigerated, and there’s always drinks, snacks, cheese, etc., for the trip.

We searched quite a bit and are very happy with the cooler we chose. It’s a nice size and keeps everything cold for a long time. We put everything into the hotel fridge when we move in, then use hotel ice to get the cooler ready when we leave.

There are thousands of good options for coolers, though, so search for the one that fits your uses.

9. WD-40 comes in handy quite often. Hotels are not great at maintaining their door hinges and bathroom vent fans. A little WD-40 takes away the squeaks and squeals. WD-40 comes in many different sizes, including a compact 3 oz size.

10. Hotel rooms have varying amounts of power outlets, usually not nearly enough for today’s electronics needs. Extension cords and surge protector/plug extenders are essential. Here’s the extender I chose, but there are thousands of options. I bought some extension cords at a hardware store.

11. A sewing kit can be useful in a lurch. We learned the hard way that those cheap travel sewing kits are junk. We ordered this one and it’s good quality.

12. This suggestion is only for people like us who have streaming series that we try to keep up with. The FireTV Stick is portable, and hooks into any hotel TV with an HDMI port.

13. Driving for hours and hours can be rough on the butt. Also, most hotel room chairs have either no cushioning, or terrible cushioning, especially if they have a desk chair.

I’ve found this cushion to be a real butt saver.

14. Hotel rooms vary so much, but more often than not, there aren’t enough desks/tables. When we want to eat in the room, one of us might get the desk or table, and the other, well, has to balance our food.

While strolling around a Five Below store, I spotted this cheap, folding table. It fits easily in the SUV, taking up almost zero room. It’s light and easy to carry into the hotel. It’s kind of cheap, though, so I doubt will last a year. At the moment, Five Below is out of stock. But there are many folding tables online to choose from, most better quality than this experimental table we bought.

15. Finally, any opportunity to avoid delays while traveling is a joy. We have an item that has saved us hours while driving, and we already had it in our car. It’s an “NC Quick Pass Flex transponder.” It’s so good, I gave it its own post, here.

A few more months on the road and I’m sure we’ll have other suggestions. Let us know in the comments if these are helpful suggestions, and if you have any ideas of your own. And, thanks for following our adventures!