How to Plan a Road Trip in 6 Easy Steps

You can spend A LOT of time developing a plan for your road trip!  While envisioning what is possible can be fun, it can also be stressful. Your research reveals the abundance of adventures that you can have, yet you know that in your limited time, you will only be able to scratch the surface. So how do plan a road trip?

What stops should you make? How should you allocate your time? How do you ensure that you will actually be able to see the “one thing” that you have your sights set on?  In my opinion, the answer to these lies in the art of developing a solid road trip itinerary and knowing the goals of your trip.

Benefits of Having a Well Laid Plan for Your Road Trip

Having a solid plan for your road trip has many benefits.  For starters, you can prioritize in advance the things that you want to do and see while traveling.  Planning the logistics of your trip can save you valuable time on the road and make it so that you can explore more and hit activities that you truly want to do that might require some planning and coordination.

Comfort and Peace of Mind

I like to know where I am going to be on what day when I travel.  Additionally, I appreciate the comfort of a reservation and a clean room and shower.  I love having the knowledge that I will get to do the “one thing” on my trip that I have my sights set on… but planning (for me) is a necessary task that I do in order to make the adventuring smoother.  The fun for me is being on the road and exploring some cool places!

Avoiding Low-Value Experiences / Being Intentional

When you look up many of the places that you will want to explore, you will find that there are many sites that will tout the best of the businesses and entertainment that you will find in their area.  If you try to get to each of those places, your time will simply be sucked up, and you will find yourself hitting up all of the touristy sites.

It is important to be judicious and fit in what you truly want to do and see in the places that you will be visiting, especially if there are a lot of cool attractions, and the time that you have available for your trip is limited.  That being said, this approach will help you to cut out the noise, and focus on the places that you want to focus on in your next road trip.

Streamline Your Road Trip Planning With These 6 Steps

Follow these 6 steps to streamline your next road trip plan.  Once you know where you want to go, all that you need is a good spreadsheet or document writing application, a bit of time, and an outline of what your road trip could be!

Step 1: Create Trip Anchors

The first step in the process is to create trip anchors.  I talk about this briefly in this article, but in essence, a trip anchor is a hub of activity or a key expenditure of time on a road trip.  This can be (but is not necessarily) where you will sleep.  It is usually the primary city (or cities) of your stay or a target destination that you build your time around (even if you don’t “sleep” in that place) – a “must not miss this place” so to say.

For each trip anchor, you will want to determine the geographic location / address of the “must do” items on your list.  For us, this would be hitting up National Parks Units along our path or at our target destination.  We often will have ideas of “other” things to add to our trip in the general vicinity of where we are going as well.  For example, we wanted to visit Clear Lake, Iowa on our trip to the Badlands to see the Surf Ballroom, the last place that Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens performed.  This was also the place where they met their ultimate end when their plane crashed in an Iowa field on a cold winter day.  Even when that is “en route” to our final destination, we will add it to the list of “must do” things, and it becomes a trip anchor.

Step 2: Map Your Trip Anchors

This step involves getting on Google Maps.  Taking the list of addresses for your trip anchors that you compiled, type each one into Google Maps.  You have the ability to drag and drop stops along your route.  At this point, you want to order your trip anchors such that you are minimizing the distance between each one.  In essence, you are mapping out the backbone of your trip.

Step 3: Create a Must Have List, and a Nice to Have List of Stops

Looking at your route outline, do some research in each of the anchored areas that you are visiting to create a must have list and a nice to have list.

Are there other things that you would like to do in these areas?  Are there places along the route that you would like to explore.  I have seen other folks suggest making use of roadtrippers to get ideas for things that you can do along the way.  I have never used this resource in my planning because we typically have a solid idea of the places that we want to go that takes up more than the time that we have allocated before we even add extra places.  That being said, do what works for you.  Chances are, you will see some sites where you want to stop at along the way.  Leaving a bit of time to take advantage of these opportunities is always a great thing to do.  In any event, write down any places that are of interest to you.

Add any potential items that you’d like to explore to your list next to the related trip anchor.  Make notes about the estimated time that you would like to spend in each and things that you would like to look out for.  I typically will note open/close times, reservation or ticketing requirements, cost, phone numbers to call with questions, and any other significant points.

These places are the “nice to haves” on the list.  It would be “nice to visit” them, but you know that making that a reality is dependent upon time and energy available to you when you get there.  You would not be heartbroken if you didn’t get to stop there (but you would be disappointed if you missed your anchor location).

Step 4: Fit Your Trip Into Time Boxes

Plan Your Trip Anchors First

Once your outline of anchors and things to do is in place, you will want to think about the schedule a bit more.  You now have the outline of your trip, but need to “fit” your trip into boxes of time.  The first box of time that you will want to consider is the day.  Let’s say that you are planning a week long trip with three trip anchors.  That would mean that you need to fit your list of anchors and activities into 7-days.

This is similar to how we planned our South Dakota trip.  We had one anchor on the way out (Clear Lake, Iowa), and two anchors in South Dakota itself (Rapid City, SD, and Wall, SD).  These were our hubs of activity.  Now, we also had must do items on our list.  For example, visiting each of the National Park Units in South Dakota was what we wanted to do.  We knew that we would visit Custer State Park, and that we wanted to see Deadwood and visit the Mount Moriah Cemetery where Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane are buried.

Plan Your “Nice to Haves” Next

There were also some “nice to haves” during our trip.  We wanted to find a good place to fish, check out some local restaurants, visit Sturgis, and see what the locals recommended (like Spearfish Canyon that wasn’t even on our radar).  We wanted to potentially check out the wildlife encounter that we had read about.  These experiences, however, were all on the nice to have list.

Given the three trip anchors, we distributed our time, such that we were able to allocate the most time in the anchor location that had the most “stuff”.  We allocated less time to the anchors that were en-route to or located next to less of our “must see” destinations.

Next, after planning the days, think about what you want to do each day.  This doesn’t have to be strict, but should consider geography in order to minimize distances in the daily routes that you plan.  I believe that days in your anchor can be interchangeable so long as you are not subject to an availability constraint.

Step 5: Book Your Accommodation

There are a variety of places to stay on the road.  Whether you prefer a hotel, an Air B&B, an RV Park or campground, you can never go wrong with booking where you will stay.  My primary tip is to make sure that the location that you book serves your desired plans.

Read reviews (I use trip advisor, and hotel websites to get reviews).  Depending on your budget and how you travel, your options could range from camping to economy hotels, to luxury in many of the places that we have visited.  Staying closer to a populated area or city often means that you will have more options.  You also will want to consider your travel budget when it comes to booking where you will stay.

Step 6: Organize Your Road Trip Itinerary

This is the part that I think is the most important when it comes to optimizing your logistics.  You will want to make sure that all of your reservations, locations and logistics are well organized, especially if you have planned a high-action, low-down-time excursion.  Being organized about where you are going, and the constraints that exist in visiting your desired destinations means that you waste minimal amounts of time figuring out what you are doing at any point in time.  You have quick access to your route and the resources that you might need to make decisions about stopping or passing by a “nice to have” place, and will build in assurances that you will get to experience your “must have” destinations.  This is what my final itinerary includes:

• Date
• Anchor
• Where We will sleep
• From and to addresses
• Tentative times between places where we are driving
• Stops along the way with estimated times that we can spend in each place
• Details about the destinations (i.e. place closes at 5pm – will miss out if we don’t leave prior destination by 3pm)
• Any costs associated with a place (and any reservation details if applicable)
• Any other noteworthy comments

One Additional Consideration: Flexibility

When planning a road trip, one final consideration that I would offer is to be flexible.  Nothing ever seems to go 100% smoothly while on the road.  You may experience traffic that will delay your time to your next stop.  You could encounter car trouble.  An unexpected restroom break or wrong turn could take you off of your desired path and/or cause you to have to turn around.  Any number of things could derail your best efforts to stick to your plan.

Fear not.  Just prepare yourself for being flexible.  Build flexibility into your itinerary so that you won’t be completely thrown off if you don’t hit all of the marks in your plan.  Think of this as a little bit of buffer time.

Especially when you take a trip with a longer duration, I suggest keeping an entire day (or two) completely open in your itinerary to revisit a place that you didn’t get to see fully, or take an unplanned excursion that you might have overlooked in your planning or that a local suggested that was not on your radar.

Try this approach, and let us know what you think.  Happy exploring!

If you’re still thinking about where you’d like to go, visit our travel brainstorming post for some actionable techniques.