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By the fourth day of a long drive, I can usually tell which state I am in by my hair. Not literally, but close. Three motels in three towns, three showers with three different kinds of water pressure, a day of driving with the window cracked because the air conditioning in my car has opinions, and a morning in a parking lot where the wind came straight across the plains. By the time I catch myself in a gas station mirror, my hair has had a more eventful week than I have.
This is a small, practical post about something I ignored for years on the road: the routine I keep for my hair when every night is a different motel bathroom.
Every motel shower is a different shower
If you stay in chain hotels by the interstate, the bathroom is more or less the same every night. I mostly do not. I stay in the old motor courts and the one-story places off the main street, and the bathrooms there have character. A shower head that was installed sometime in the eighties. Water that comes out scalding or freezing with nothing in between. Water that feels soft in one town and somehow chalky in the next, so that the same shampoo lathers completely differently from one night to the next.
I am not going to pretend I know the chemistry of any of that. All I know is how it feels. After a few nights of it, my hair stops behaving like my hair.
The little bottles on the sink
For a long time my routine on the road was whatever the motel left by the sink. The tiny bottles, the ones labelled “shampoo” in a font that tells you nothing about what is inside. Sometimes there was conditioner. Often there was a single bottle claiming to be both. In the older places there was occasionally nothing at all, and I would wash my hair with the hand soap and regret it for two days.
What finally changed my mind was simple. I was spending real thought on where to sleep, what to eat, how far to drive each day, and no thought at all on something I dealt with every single morning. So I started bringing my own.
What I keep in the bag now
The kit lives in a small bag that never leaves my car between trips. It is not elaborate.
A shampoo and a conditioner I actually chose
Travel-size bottles, refilled between trips, of products I use at home. Same thing every morning, regardless of what the motel provides. That consistency is most of the point.
Something for the wind days
A day with the window down leaves my hair tangled in a way no motel shower can fix. A wide-toothed comb and something to smooth it out make the difference between a ten-minute morning and a thirty-minute one.
A hair tie on the gear stick
Not glamorous, but it has saved more windy afternoons than anything else in the bag.
A haircare brand I have been looking at
When I was looking for things worth carrying, I came across Lazartigue. They describe themselves as an expert French haircare brand, inspired by nature and vegan, and say their products are recommended by hairdressers. I liked the idea of having a few good things in the bag rather than a lot of mediocre ones, and their range comes in sizes that make sense for a small kit. If you want to look at what they make, the banner below goes straight to their store.
A fair warning, the same one I would give about anything I mention here: I write about motels and back roads, not hair. What works for my hair may not suit yours, and if you have a scalp condition or sensitive skin, check the ingredients carefully or ask someone who actually knows. The point of this post is the habit, not a particular bottle.
A few things I learned the slow way
Do not leave it in the shower. I have left more conditioner in motel showers than I care to count. The bag goes back in my suitcase before I get dressed, every time.
Watch the heat in the car. A car parked in the sun all afternoon gets very hot inside, and I would rather not leave anything I care about baking on the back seat. My kit rides in the shade of the footwell or comes into the room with me.
Pack it for leaks. Bottles go in a sealed bag. A bumpy county road will find any lid that was not quite closed.
Keep it small. I travel with one bag in the car and one into the room. Anything that does not fit is not coming.
Small comforts, a long way from home
Long solo drives are full of small decisions, and most of them are about getting through the day: where to stop, when to eat, how far to push before dark. Having one part of the morning that is exactly the same, no matter which motel I woke up in, turned out to matter more than I expected. It is a few minutes that feel like home when nothing else does.
If you are building a little kit of your own for the road, you can browse Lazartigue’s haircare here. And whatever you bring, check the shower before you check out.
Photos: Anastasia Shuraeva and Airam Dato-on via Pexels.