Our Subaru we lived in for 5 weeks in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.
We all know that the perfect road trip comes with lots of planning. As romantic as it sounds to pick up and leave for the open road when the travel bug hits, the romance will quickly end when you and your travel buddies are frantically searching for sleeping accommodations hours after the sun has set and the gas station snacks have been gobbled up.
This guide will help you plan your ultimate road trip, whether that’s a weekend getaway or a months long adventure!
How we did it
Before Tyler and I started our five week car camping road trip this summer, we (ahem… I) planned for months. While I may have spent wayyy too much time analyzing and cross-analyzing every free campsite and epic hike from New Orleans to Mt. Rainer, I learned A LOT.
Where to start?
Planning for a road trip can be overwhelming. Regardless if you are getting away for an extended weekend or hitting the open road for months, the amount of options can be paralyzing. You may ask yourself where do you even begin with planning a road trip?
Like any big project, planning a road trip should be broken into steps. I’ll break down my method of road trip planning step by step for you. This method is exactly how I plan all of my trips (from cross country road trips to overseas explorations) and it has never failed me. Get your notebooks ready!
STEP 1 – Location
Location is the motivation! It’s why we travel, right? Narrowing down may be there hard part!
Before planning can begin it is important to decide your general location or goal for your trip. On a bigger trip, I like to think of states or regions of the country I’d like to explore. For smaller trips I’ll plan around specific hikes or campgrounds.
You can’t do everything. Pause. Read that again.
In 2021 we had almost 5 weeks to explore. in our converted Subaru Forester. Our goal was “west” but I knew I wanted to see Yosemite and Glacier National Park. Tyler is a huge rock and mineral nerd so the Petrified Forest was a non negotiable for him.
The Petrified Forest was a must see for us.
As we were mapping out our trip, we realized pretty quickly Colorado was going to be awkward to fit in due to the other three “musts”.
We made the decision to cut Colorado out of our trip (as much as it pained both of us) it just wasn’t feasible with the other locations unless we wanted to spend more time driving than exploring. Prioritization is key in planning a road trip.
Knowing where you are generally going can help you from wander-lusting too hard and getting off track during your planning.
STEP 2 – Start and End
You can’t plan a trip if you don’t know when it’s happening…
If you only have a set amount of days to travel (a holiday weekend or week vacation) this may seem obvious. However, regardless of your trip length, it is important that you have a set start and end time.
I’ll break this step into two categories: short road trips and long road trips.
Starting and Ending Short Road Trips
Being a teacher, I have the luxury of having summers off to travel (trust me, we need it). However, this doesn’t mean I don’t travel during the school year. When planning a weekend or week long road trip around your work schedule there are a few important things to remember.
Even if you are someone who has a ton of energy and *feels* ok to jam pack your schedule, I promise you, your mental health with thank you for factoring in buffer time.
Make sure to always start and end your trip with a few hours (or days if possible) of buffer time.
Knowing when you trip will *actually* start and end will give you a realistic time frame of what you can fit into your adventure and help you prioritize later on. It will also save you from over planning on your last day and missing that hike you really wanted to do!
Starting and Ending Long Road Trips
Trips that are weeks or months long will typically have more leeway for scheduling. Because of this, it is important to give yourself a guideline for when you plan to leave and when you plan to return. Unlike a short road trip, you might not always hold steadfast to your timeline, but it is still important to have one.
If you are in the situations where you have weeks or months available to travel, you also likely have many days of wiggle rooms before you have to be anywhere.
Dealing with wiggle room
Since Tyler and I are teachers, we have the whole summer to travel. However, this doesn’t mean we choose to travel the whole summer. Deciding how long our road trips will be typically depends on a few things:
- How long do we have? Total available time.
- Are there any events we would like to be home for? Birthdays, holidays, etc.
- How many weeks do we want at home before school starts/ends?
- Are there any events we definitely want to attend? Festivals, concerts, etc.
Obviously all of those questions might not apply to you, but in general, just because you have the time, doesn’t mean you need to spend every second on the road! So, it’s important to figure out what amount of time you do want to spend traveling and go from there.
For our 2021 trip we had a hard fast “leave” date, while our “return” date was a bit foggier. We knew within a three day range when we would be home depending on a few different factors. This allowed us to plan our road trip within a time frame while also having the flexibility to change our minds on the itinerary.
STEP 3 – Highlights
If planning a long road trip (2+ weeks) I suggest breaking your road trip into multiple “legs” and completing step 3-8 for each “leg”.
When planning road trips, you’re going to find a TON of awesome activities and sites you want to see. Go ahead and accept now that you will not be able to see everything and that is OK! Know your limits. On paper, three strenuous hikes and a four hour drive to your next site seems like a day well spent… irl it turns out the human body is not a machine. Prioritization is key.
To prevent your trip from becoming exhausting or too rigidly planned it’s important that you decide what experiences are non-negotiable* for you.
*Disclaimer: I use the term “non-negotiable” very lightly. Flexibility is important for planning a road trip and sometimes even our most coveted experiences get canceled.
Choosing Your Highlights
These are what I will refer to as your “highlights”. Highlights can be a hike, a paid experience, or even a food joint. The number of “highlights” you can plan for in your road trip will depend on a few factors. Here is a general guide for deciding your highlights:
Angel’s Landing in Zion was a non-negotiable for me
- Start a list (paper or digital)
To keep track of your potential experiences on your road trip. Highlights are the fun part of your trip! This is where you are dreaming of all the awesome hikes you will take, adventures you will go on, and amazing new food you will try. A good rule of thumb is to keep your highlight list about 1-3x as long as your number of days. - Plan in Sections
This is more important for my long road tripper (2+ weeks). I suggest planning different “legs” of your trip. This could be broken down by travel region, state, or even park. - Categorize
I like to break down my highlights into three different categories: hiking, experience, and food. You can start with those three or adjust as needed! - Consider the Commitment
You don’t have to officially write these down–unless you want to–but keep in mind the time and energy commitment your highlights will take. - Record the Location
This will come in handy in step 4 when we cluster the experiences together. - Tier
Deciding what highlights are absolute must sees will help later on. When making my highlight reel I like to put a star next to the things I really want to do (like I’m willing to rearrange days around) and a question mark next to things that look cool but I’d also be totally ok with not doing (these work as great buffers)
STEP 4 – Localize
Now that you have a decent list, you can begin thinking about the “road” part of your road trip. Regardless if you are renting a car or have converted your own camper, no one enjoys driving multiple hours each day during a road trip.
Use the Resources Available
Personally, I am a huge fan of Google Maps for planning road trips, but there are other websites that do similar things. If you have a Google account, you have the ability to make your own maps. This is a wonderful tool for visualizing your road trip and figuring out drive times between stops.
In this stage of the road trip planning, I take all of my highlights and put them into a Google Map. This allows me to see each location relative to the others. I suggest you do this to get an idea of where you will be each day. Where your highlights are located will decide how many days you spend in an area and the path of your trip.
Length of Stay
Once you you have an idea of how much time you will need in each area, you should begin to form a rough outline of how many days you want to spend in each location. If something is really out of the way, this is the point where you can begin to cut things out of your trip or prioritize them.
As mentioned before, during our 2021 road trip, as much as Tyler and I wanted to visit Colorado, it just wasn’t worth it for us to spend so much time driving. However, we both really wanted to spend more time in Zion National Park so we decided to cut our stop in Austin, TX out completely and drive straight through Texas in one day.
Your road trip plan should begin to have a *rough* outline of daily location and driving route at this point.
STEP 5 – Sleeping
Depending on how you are traveling, sleeping arrangements can look vastly different. Nonetheless, whether you are sleeping in your camper van or AirBnB hoping, you want to know where you are going to lay your head at night. Not having a place to sleep–in my opinion–is the biggest stressor of a trip and can be a huge time suck if you are stuck without lodgings.
Deciding Where to Sleep
Just developing a list of ideas is ok for now, you will want to keep your itinerary flexible until you’ve completed all the steps.
If you are planning on sleeping in your car or van, you have more flexibility with this. In a pinch, you always have your trusted Walmart parking lot and rest areas (laws differ by state for rest area sleeping). However, making your morning coffee in a parking lot is not ideal, so having options is of utmost importance.
Where you will sleep each night should be influenced by step 4. Consider how many highlights are located in one general area and then go from there.
Drive Time in Mind
Another important factor to think about is when you will be driving from location to location. If you are a morning person, you might want to wake up and get on the road for a few hours to be at your next destination by the afternoon. If you are like me, mornings suck and I’d rather spend my daylight hiking then travel at night. This can be inconvenient for scoping out campsites, though, and I have more than once regretted not arriving to a campsite during daylight.
Whichever method you choose, know that you have flexibility with your days and can always stay in a place for more days than nights.
Finding Arrangements
When car camping, I’ve had the best luck using the FreeRoam app, Campendium, and FreeCampSites.net. Since our “shower” for these trips are just water in a bag, we like to treat ourselves to a real bed and shower roughly once a week.
Lodging can also be a great way to experience something unique on a road trip. When my grandma and I were road tripping around Ireland, we had the opportunity to stay at a monastery. The unique stay ended up being an absolute highlight of the trip!
I don’t recommend making any lodging reservations until your itinerary is finalized unless it is something you are willing to plan around and/or a hard to get reservation.
STEP 6 – Plug and Chug
At this point, you should have a pretty solid road trip coming together. In step 1 and 2 you decided when and where your road trip is happening. Your highlight reel for the trip should have been developed in step 3 and in step 4 you should have decided roughly how many days you will spend in each location. Lastly, in step 5 you should have developed a hefty list of sleeping accommodations. Now it’s time to put that all together.
Consider the Following
- The time and energy your highlights will take.
High time and energy highlights like long, strenuous hikes should be the main event for the day. Low energy and time highlights, like a restaurant, can be stacked with other highlights. - The distance between highlights.
Personally, I prefer to clump driving together to get it out of the way. Some people may like to break up the drive time with experiences. Either way, be aware of the drive time between events. - Drive time (if applicable for the day).
From experience, know that you probably won’t be able to drive 7 hours from Vegas to Yosemite to complete a 16 mile hike in the same day. Lofty goals, but the road trumps plans in this occasion. - You will need to eat and rest. If you are like me, sometimes you forget to plan for this.
Build an Itinerary
Begin to take your highlight list from earlier and plug it into your outline. Short and long trips can fit roughly 1-3 highlights per day depending on the “highlight” category (remember, this doesn’t mean you are not doing other things, your highlights are just what you are focusing on that day).
You should have plenty of options from step 3 to creatively schedule your trip. Be flexible and know what you are willing to leave out of the trip and what you definitely want to see!
STEP 7 – Fine Tune/Extras
This step may come natural to you when plugging in your highlights for the itinerary. If not, you will want to look over your outline and see what extra things you can add to your schedule. I think of my “extras” as toppings. It is not the meat (or tofu) of the day, but it can add flavor if needed.
If you have some down time in a day or still have a highlight you haven’t been able to fit in, this is where you go through and make small* adjustments to your itinerary. If you are really spontaneous and enjoy having a decent amount of free time to explore the area, you might not want to add many extras at all. The beauty of this itinerary is that it is yours!
*see step 8
STEP 8 – Be Flexible!
Sometimes small adjustments can lead to huge adjustments like adding or removing a whole leg of your trip. If you find yourself thinking about needing to make a big adjustment like this, I recommend making multiple mock versions of your trip.
When planning our Arizona/Utah road trip, we originally planned to visit Zion and Bryce Canyon. However, as I was fine tuning, I realized just how much drive time it would require. Instead of immediately cutting out Bryce Canyon, I made a second (rough) itinerary so I could side-by-side compare the two. In the end, we went with the second itinerary that cut out Bryce Canyon but provided us way more time in Zion.
Plans Are a Guide, Not a Tether
During your trip, it is important to remain open to plans being canceled due to weather or rearranged when you discover something awesome! It is convenient and stress relieving to have a solid game plan for what you are doing on your road trip, but know that it is totally ok to go off script. The goal is to not be stuck at a gas station googling “cool things to do in _________” not to stick so strictly to your schedule that everyone is exhausted or you miss an awesome spontaneous opportunity.
Now, fly little butterfly, and make your amazing road trip come true! Let me know in the comments if these steps worked for you, if you do something similar, or if you have tricks of your own!