Tips for Road Tripping in a Dodge Grand Caravan to Newfoundland from Ontario 

As someone who has owned a dodge grand caravan for many years now and road tripped across Canada multiple times, I have a few points I’ve learned and wish I knew before leaving.

BREAK CHECK

The first time travelling through mountains with my dodge caravan, we learned really fast how to use the manual shifter on the van instead of the breaks constantly. They started to smell and burn, we had to pull over and start down shifting down the mountains. I didn’t know break pads on dodge caravans needed replaced more often so on our way to Newfoundland, we got the break pads replaced before we left to ensure saftey. 

ORGANIZING ALL THE TIME

Depending how many people your travelling with, find an organization system that works for you and pack smartly. I use plastic tote bins to ogranize all our camping gear, clothing, snacks and any extras so everything is easy to move and find. 

AIR IT OUT

Dodge caravans can hold smells really easily! Especially on long drives with mutliple people, foods and drinks the van can get some weird smells happening. Its best to air it out when you can, cracking a window in town, opening the doors at campsites or limit what you do while driving. 

STOW AND GO STORAGE

My dodge caravan has the stow and go seats which comes in handy for easily storing the seats under the floor or using that floor space for storage when the seats are in use! If you arent needing the seats, you can unbolt them and take them out completey and still have all that extra room for storage!

TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE HATCHBACK

In events of rain, quick lunch breaks or somewhere to chill; turn the hatch back into an awning to hide out under. We spent an entire day playing cards in the rain dong this in the bed we built in the van with the back open to enjoy the warm summer rainy air

FUELING

After a recent 10 hour road trip with my friend and her nissan car, it humbled be how much a dodge caravan acutally costs in fuel compared to a car. In canada her car was $40-50 to fill from empty, where my dodge caravan takes $80-100 to fill from empty. The trans canada highway is generally pretty efficent for gas and that is the fastest (more boring) drive to the east coast from ontario. 

USE THE BACK SPACE

It’s so easy to built a bed frame for a double or queen mattress for your caravan. We made ours a little fancier as I took it to the states as well, but you can make a simple platform for a 4-6 inch double matress and make it so you can have storage underneith and an entire bed to sleep in at nights. It makes it a lot eaiser to pull into a walmart pakring lot late at night for a sleep rather than tenting and finding somewhere to set up. And its comfy as heck!!

In conclusion, just double check everything is good to go on your dodge grand caravan before you leave for you trip like breaks, tire tread (you’ll be on the road for a lot of kms!) and oil changes, you enjoy the space the van provides and expect to have an epic (hopefully avoid a smelly) van trip!!