Planning a Road trip
Planning a road trip can be a daunting task, but not if you have the right mindset and the right tools. I want to talk to you about how you can plan your next family road trip. There are a few essentials things you should do during the planning process. I'll list them below.
1. Set a goal
What is your goal for this trip? Is it to see a specific location? Is it to create new experiences for your family? Is it an educational trip? Maybe you just want to spend quality time?
Whatever the reason may be, it’s important that you know why you’re planning your trip. Trips, especially with kids, can be challenging and it’s good to remind yourself that if you’re meeting your goal, then that’s what really counts. If you’re not meeting your goal, evaluate why that is and set up an action plan to change it.
Our biggest goal for our cross country trip was to create memories as a family. So even when things were rough and we had challenges, we reminded ourselves it was about creating memories. So we started new traditions like telling stories around the campfire and having smores each night we camped.
2. Create your itinerary
This is probably the hardest part of the whole planning process. Everyone plans trips a little differently, but this is how I planned our 3-week cross country road trip. I’m also going to include our exact itinerary with this video.
My workflow
So when I’m planning the itinerary, I start by taking pen to paper and look at a map of where we'll be traveling for a general view of which direction we might want to take. I list down some of the top places we may want to see and go from there.
I start by mapping out my start location to my end destination. In this case, I started in San Jose, CA to Brockton, MA. I knew that we'd have to stop overnight after about 7 hours of driving. We knew 7 hours was doable and we'd done it on previous road trips before. So I started mapping places I thought were about 7 hours from San Jose. I knew we'd always wanted to go to Joshua Tree National Park. It was about 8 hours away, which was longer than we had wanted, but we knew it was going to be the first day of driving and we would have the most gumption at the beginning of our trip.
Next, I looked at Joshua Tree and tried to find something that was within a 7 hours drive. We mapped a route from Joshua Tree to the Grand Canyon National Park which was about 5 hours away. I continued doing this for each destination until I eventually had a complete route from CA to MA. I did this twice, once for a southern route and secondly for a northern route.
These are the tools I used to plan the trip and keep track of changes:
A) Pages/Word
B) Numbers/Excel spreadsheet
C) Google Maps
3. Account for the weather
This may feel like common sense, but seriously, check the weather before your trip. Once I have my itinerary set, I like to look up the average low and high temps for each location and add it to my itinerary. This will give me a good idea of what temperatures we could be facing and how to pack accordingly. We traveled from warmer states to colder states and in the month of October, so temperatures were dropping. The coldest place we stayed was in Niagara Falls and the warmest in Death Valley.
4. Get specific
Now that you have your route and itinerary, it's time to focus on the specifics. If you looked at the example itinerary I provided, you'd see just how specific I get with my itinerary. I accounted for lunch breaks, bathroom breaks, and any unexpected contingencies.
I found that our sweet spot was stopping for a break every 3 hours or so. I also knew that we wouldn't want to camp every single night so we had a ratio of 3 nights camping and then 1 night in an AirBnb or Cabin. That ratio seemed to work well for us. Every family is different and what works for us may not for you. It's important to know your family and take your family's needs into consideration.
5. Take inventory
Taking inventory not only saves you money, but it helps you keep track of everything you're bringing along with you on the trip. It's important to take inventory of what you have and research anything that you may need along with your travels.
For example, in CA, most places that get snow in the winter require tire chains on your vehicle. So if you were planning a trip to see Yosemite in the winter, you'd be required to carry tire chains in your vehicle even if the conditions didn't demand it.
6. Be flexible
Don't forget to be flexible. When planning your trip, account for some delays, extra brakes, sleeping past your alarm, or anything else that could happen. We accounted for what we knew we needed, like bathroom and food breaks, and tried to be realistic with how much time we were driving each day.
Accounting for some flexibility in your schedule will allow you to stay longer in some locations and enjoy the time versus always worrying about getting to your next destination. Plus, I guarantee there will be times you want to stop to grab an unexpected photo!