What’s a Road Trip Without a Stop at Ikea

Share this Post:

Road Trip Preparation and Free Camping

Before we left Fred’s to hit the road again I got an opportunity to do one of my favorite things…go to a grocery store in another country!  I was not disappointed as we were able to stock up on all those lovely sliced cheeses and cold cuts, beautiful loaves of bread, organic veggies and plenty of beer and wine.  We firmly believe that you should never ‘rough it’ in an EarthCruiser.  I think we’ll be pretty right for those times when things may be a bit sparse in some parts of Africa.

Our drive was mostly highway/autobahn so we really didn’t see too much, as we wanted to make a mile but I can say that nearly every large European city has an Ikea on the outskirts.  And from what I can tell the ‘stuff’ is nearly the same!  It’s always nice to be able to get those little, easy to install, organizational things that you realize you need the more time you spend on the road.  We’re pretty minimalistic but we like to have everything put in its place.

 

Tips for “Free Camping”

We’ve always heard that it’s harder to ‘free’ camp in Europe so we were concerned with finding places to stop.  Since there’s not much public land, e.g., BLM or national forest you’re essentially camping on private property which can be a problem.  There’s an app iOverlander which we’ve started to use that is helpful.  It’s all user input content and allows you to pull up places within about 100km of where you are.

 

On the road to Ikea
Michelle is making Pork Schnitzel inside… Yum!

Outside of Dresden, we started looking and those closer to the city seemed to be more ‘streets’ where you could park or carparks that let you stay.  We decided to cross the border into the Czech Republic and headed to a ‘car camping park’.  It was in the middle of nowhere down some very narrow forested roads and it was closed for the winter which was not noted in the app.  No problem, as it was so isolated we stayed in the carpark next to a bubbling brook and had a very nice night.  It’s great to know that even off a major highway you can always find a place to stay so we’ll be using iOverlander more (it works worldwide).

find more inspiration

More Articles