The road trip checklist

Do you have a road trip checklist? If not — maybe you should! It’s easy to forget things … I should know better, but these things happen to all of us, I guess.

Let me tell you a little story of woe. My hubby and I recently went for a drive out and about with our cameras. It wasn’t even really that far — it was just nice to get out of the house after so many lockdowns, and enjoy some fresh air and sunshine.

We got to our chosen location, parked the car and grabbed our gear. We walked to the entrance, queued up to get in and started wandering around. I grabbed my camera and went to take my first shot. OH NO! That’s when I realized I’d left the SD card in the card reader at home!

So now what?

Apart from being extremely annoyed at myself, I could have walked back to the car, driven home, grabbed the card and driven back to retrace my steps, but I just couldn’t be bothered. Like I said I wasn’t that far from home and it was a spot I go to often. But if I was further afield, what could I do? I was lucky and had my second camera with me. Same make, model and setup.

The dumb thing is my camera (Sony a7R III) actually has dual card slots, but of late I have only been using a single card. So I ended up switching the one card between cameras. If I had dual card slots I could just use one card in each camera.

That’s not always an option. There is the good old smartphone, or many places have a gift shop that sells SD cards (at really terrible prices). Failing that, I guess you just have to go without. The horror!

The gadget bag

We have a gadget bag we take when we go away on a trip, cables, card reader, chargers, etc. But we don’t take it on day trips. Perhaps we should!

It’s actually a small tripod bag and it’s jam-packed full of all the techno goodies we need, including chargers for cell phones and toothbrushes. There are HDMI cables and a spare media player and a backup hard drive. I have now packed a few extra SD cards in there as well. I have a spare card in my camera bag now, too.

Forgotten items

So let’s do a little random check, on what items have been forgotten on some of our trips:

• SD card (or even a backup) — more trials while traveling
• Battery
• Spare charged battery
• Tripod (try this hack)
• Tripod mount
• Filters
• Camera strap
• Card reader (while on holiday)
• Battery (charger while on holiday)

I guess the moral of the story is to be prepared right? As I write this I am actually scribbling down a road trip checklist of everything to take on another adventure we are heading off to shortly.

I’d love to hear your tales of woe too. What have you forgotten on a trip? Misery loves company, right?