What we're packing for our one year of traveling
It’s almost time for us to embark on our one year of travel! Five more days until we fly out to Santiago, Chile for the Patagonia adventure. So many thoughts and worries have been floating through my mind these past couple of weeks, hoping that we have everything we need and that we’ll be set up for a good trip. I think what’s helped my anxiety most is reminding myself that we can always find things we need along the way (except apparently bug spray in Argentina?! We heard there’s a shortage yikes!), and we’ve gotten a lot of advice to UNDER pack as much as we can. That makes a LOT of sense since we’ll be carrying everything in one travel backpack! It’s definitely gonna get heavy!!
There’s so much we don’t know at this point. We’ll do a packing video and post it to YouTube soon going over all the things we decided to bring along, and the goal is to check back in on that video in a few months to see how we did. My prediction is that we packed too much and that we’ll find we can really get away with a lot less things. That’s really been a consistent theme for me these past few years too as I tried to really dwindle down my possessions. I think after we’ve traveled for a few months, we’ll have a better sense of if we packed the right stuff or not, and we’ll come back and update y’all with what we’ve learned.
Regarding the travel backpack, we researched SO many bags and watched so many YouTube reviews for weeks, so I feel pretty confident that we chose the right bag. Before our research, we considered each of us having two rolling luggages and two backpacks, or having two backpacks and one rolling luggage to share. After all the research we did we ultimately landed on taking just one carry-on backpack each.
The decision to take just one carry-on came from asking ourselves what kind of travelers we wanted to be. We want to be quick on our feet, able to make last minute changes easily, and we didn’t want to worry about our luggages getting lost during flights. Also, the backpack we selected comes with a day pack already, which we LOVED because it meant we didn’t have to purchase a separate day pack. We can store the main bag in the overhead bin and the back pack under our seat.
We went with the Osprey 55L Fairview and Fairpoint carry-on travel bag (with a sweet holiday sale deal from REI! Did we mention yet how much we LOVE REI?!). So excited to travel with this bag and report back on how it went! There’ll be more pics of the bag and our packing process coming soon…
In the meantime, here’s some key items we’re bringing along with us:
- Bathroom bags with hooks to easily hang them up
- Compression cubes so we can maximize the space in the Osprey bag
- Electronics bag for all our charging cables, battery packs, Nintendo Switch and GoPro extras
- Camelbak Hydration pack for hiking and using with our day packs
- Hiking shoes, headlamps, UV protective clothing
- A journal _ for mental health _
- A Passport bag to hold all our important documents and cash
- An everyday carry sling bag (about 8L)
- 1 laptop, an iPad, Kindle, Sony SLR camera, GoPro, and a travel-sized tripod
- Queen-sized mummy liner so we can feel comfy in different beds
- 2 small microfiber towels
- Toiletries: Shampoo/Conditioner, Toothpaste, Sunscreen, Bug Spray, Lotion, Lip balm, Body wash, nail clippers, tweezers, comb and brush, diva cups
- 2 small shopping bags
- 1 small stasher for snacks
- Some emergency Kind bars and Liquid IV packets
- Medical: First aid kit, tiny pharmacy pill box, Traveler’s Diarrhea Antibiotics
- Clothes: ~6 tops, ~5 bottoms, swimsuits, 10x underwear, thick wool socks, athletic socks
- Teva water sandals
Let us know what you think and if we missed anything essential!!!
<3 Yella & Ash