The Longest Road Trips We Can Make Currently

Summary

The author describes their short road trips from a travel center to Batavia and Darien Lakes State Park, highlighting the benefits of staying at the state park campground.

Abstract

The author describes their short road trips from a travel center to Batavia and Darien Lakes State Park, highlighting the benefits of staying at the state park campground. They explain that the drive to the travel center is a 15-minute drive each way and that while the travel center has food and snacks, showers are expensive. They also mention that they discovered the campground at the state park, which is a short drive from Batavia Walmart Supercenter. The author notes that the drive is pleasant and easy, and that staying at the campground is cheaper than staying at the travel center. They also mention that they have better access to a dumpster at the campground, and that they don't have to spend money on gas for their generator. The author concludes by sharing some pictures from their road trips and inviting readers to donate to their Ko-Fi page.

Opinions

The author prefers staying at the state park campground over the travel center.
The author enjoys the short road trips and finds them necessary and satisfying.
The author appreciates the benefits of staying at the campground, such as cheaper showers and better access to a dumpster.
The author finds the drive to the state park pleasant and easy.
The author invites readers to donate to their Ko-Fi page to help them while they are on the road.

The road from the travel center to Batavia to Darien Lakes State Park

Image was made from Google Maps by Author using Snipping Tool

The drive to and from the travel center to Darien Lakes State Park was a 15-minute drive each way. It is such a vast difference though when it comes to what we get when we’re at both places.

Sure, the travel center has food and snacks along with a franchised Denny’s restaurant. But the showers are $17 every time we go in there. There is also laundry available at the travel center for $3.00 a load to wash and $2.75 a load to dry. We enjoy parking at the travel centers on the weekends as the crowds are mostly during the day and the nighttime is the best time to go on when the store is nearly empty to do our business.

We had been relying on this place and other places like it for months. But then we discovered the campground at the state park this last week. We took a short road trip after driving over to the Batavia Walmart Supercenter to get food and supplies since our closest store when we got to the state park would be further out in the town of Alden, another 7 minutes in the opposite direction of the travel center but relatively close to the state park.

On our way on the short drive, we saw the Six Flags Darien Lake location and just mostly rural and farm areas all around us. It was a very pleasant and easy drive on our road trip. The drive to Batavia isn’t even this easy.

Image of drive to Batavia, NY from the Flying J Travel Center snipped by the author from Google Maps

These are the short drives we’re currently experiencing as we attempt to save a little money before we decide to make bigger plans in the near future. We can’t really afford to do much more than this right now and we are perfectly content in the situation at the moment.

What the road trips have brought us is closer to civilization and different benefits than just staying in place at the travel center. We would be paying for food and snacks at Denny’s or the PJ Fresh display instead of at Walmart or Dollar General which is much cheaper.

Driving to the campground from the travel center also gives us an advantage on the cost of showers. They’re basically free and included with the price of the campground.

We also have better access to a dumpster where we can throw away any food waste and other trash that we accumulate while traveling on the road. It’s not like we have dumpster service at a physical location, to begin with, so it’s nice that they are on-site at the campground.

The campground is quieter and we also don’t spend money on gas for our generator which is a big help. We just stay plugged in the entirety of the stay and then unplug when we’re ready to go.

The short road trips have led to necessary stock-ups, interesting adventures, and picturesque sights. Here are more pictures of our continuing short road-trip triangle area and from the campground. The trips are necessary but also very satisfying every time we make them.

I wish all road trips could be this easy. Although, sadly, I know that they can’t be. But we’ll definitely enjoy some of these sights while we still can. More from the road to come, Globetrotters.

The back of the solar farm near camp after sunrise (Photo by author)

Photo of nature and another campsite around campgrounds (Photo by the author)

One more campground shot around sunrise (Photo by the author)

If you’d like to donate a few dollars or anything for us to get snacks and supplies while we’re on our continuing road trip through Genessee County, New York. You can check out my Ko-Fi. It’ll have some more travel updates and pictures uploaded on occasion. Remember, I don’t make any money publishing my stories on Medium so every little bit helps us while we are on the road in our tiny home. Hope you enjoy my Ko-Fi page and future stories.