Formal clothes , a wedding and a holiday. It can be done. Part one.

It was so exciting to receive a wedding invitation. And better still , the wedding was in South Australia.
No question, we were going.
Now just how to organize our few days away.
A caravanning holiday would be so wonderful.
But what about work. It always seems to get in the way.
So we looked at flying, hiring a car, and motel accommodation. That would give us a couple of days to attend the wedding and catch up with family.
But that option was quite expensive.

So no ! We have the caravan ! Let's use it and enjoy a longer holiday.

Our next step was to try and coordinate travel times and places to stay.

When travelling with a caravan,  you need to factor in a few stops along the way, so you can be calm and relaxed when you arrive at your chosen destination. Mind you that does not always happen as sometimes tempers can become very short. Oh yes, we have had our moments !

Our South Australian family recommended a caravan park at Nuriootpa in the wonderful Barrosa Valley, but because of all our very slow decision making it was booked , out so we had to think again.

After looking at maps and working out time frames we chose stays at Renmark and Blanchetown, both towns in South Australia.

Our little Roma van  does not have a big fridge or a large amount of storage space so we needed to think long and hard about what we would take.
We knew that we would be away for about nine days . And we also knew that supermarkets would be close and handy so food was easily accessible. But on the other hand it would work out cheaper if we took as much food from our own cupboards.
Fresh fruit and vegetables were a definite  no, as they would be confiscated at the border. But a few frozen meals , pasta and soups and our meals were all sorted. It is not difficult to create a few easy meal ideas to have whilst travelling. 

We have an oven in our van, which has proved to be very useful. The other cooking appliance is a 3 burner portable gas stove which we set up outside under the awning. So we do our stove top cooking outside. When grilling is required  we use our cast iron grill plate , ( an Aldi purchase )  over one of the burners. As yet we have not bothered to add one of those nice fancy barbeques to our cooking collection, but that may be a purchase down the track.

I have found that choosing the clothes that you need to take away has caused the most problems. And this was going to be our longest holiday. So choice of clothes and shoes would be a challenge
Also we needed clothes to wear to a wedding. And the invitation said "formal "
Right ! I knew I could work this out.
In our wardrobes on either side of our bed, we installed shelves, a great Bunnings find, rather than use the hanging space. So I tend to fold all my clothes, and hubby also does not wear clothes that need to be hung on hangers.  
Our shoe storage has been a bit of a difficult one to work out. The gap between the bed and window is not very wide and I am not very flexible , so getting down on my knees to access this annoying little space is not the easiest of activities. The shoes were constantly sliding to the back of the cupboard and I was using a long handled grabber to try and drag them out.
But I needed another way.
After some contemplating how to fix this issue we went hunting for plastic bins. Eventually we found the right size to fit in these bottom cupboards. So we purchased three, one for each cupboard. The third one was cut in half and added to the end of the other one. The centre wall was removed and now we had a very long bin with our shoes held securely and so much easier to retrieve from the cupboard.

I leave some clothes permanently in

the van.  And my hiking boots always stay in as well

My choice for wedding outfit was a black double layered chiffon skirt and a red lace top, neither of  which would have any problems folded up on a shelf. And footwear was just simple sandals.
But a suit for hubby. This took a bit of thinking.
But all we needed was a  good quality suit bag with suit , shirt, tie and belt all safely zipped inside , and into the storage area under the bed they went.
So there are ways that special clothes can be carried in the caravan , without it causing too much stress. It just needs some planning and thinking.
From our home in central Victoria we  headed towards Mildura to cross over the border into South Australia.
Our biggest problem was coordinating toilet and food stops with fuel stops. This will be something that we will give more thought to next trip. Our sat nav does show petrol stations but  in some towns the information was incorrect ,  and also we were travelling on a Sunday so some businesses were not open. We spent a bit of time driving around Sea Lake looking for the petrol station , as there was one listed , but it wasn't until we drove to the outskirts that we found a very busy and very friendly servo where we could replenish our diesel tank.

After what seemed a very long days travel we were very glad to pull in to our first stop.

The Renmark Big 4 was a welcome sight.

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