On a longer trip, there is always that moment when it seems like maybe you ought to do some laundry. Some clean shirts and socks and towels would be a nice thing and keep you from scrounging through your bag looking for something “clean-ish” to wear.

Often this time coincides with the need to “recharge”. We usually plan to at least once a week to stop somewhere for a couple of days that we can: recharge the camper battery, the big Duracell, the laptop and restock our groceries. To do this, we usually check into a private campground for a couple of days somewhere in a town with a decent sized grocery. We get a site with water and power and give ourselves a chance to hose things down if we need to.

Usually, a campground like this will have a laundry room where you can cash in a few dollars for some quarters and run a load or two of wash. We try to keep quarters handy in case we need them for showers, but it also helps to keep some one and five dollar bills around if you are planning on laundry.

For supplies, we keep a small bottle of detergent and a ziplock with dryer sheets in our cleaning supplies in the camper.  That way we never have to worry about using an unusual detergent or not having any handy. We always travel with a mesh laundry bag that we can use during the trip to stash really dirty clothes so they don’t go back with the clean ones in our bags.

Occasionally we’ll check into a hotel for this break, which is especially useful if you want to wash sheets and blankets and get the dog a nice bath.

And sometimes you get lucky and there is a nice Adirondack chair to sit in and blog while you wait for the dryers.