How I Planned My Cross Country Road Trip
If you were to do a lot of research on cross-country road tripping, you’ll find almost every resource from bloggers to you-tubers recommend NOT having a plan. They’ll say too many schedules and reservations will hold you back from a true road trip experience, And while I agree it is super important to be open minded and flexible, I’m not the kind of person who can jump in a car and just drive. I’m a planner. I NEED to research where I’m going. Mainly, because I don’t want to look back on the trip and realize I missed something amazing.
If you require a little more structure to your road trip adventure, I hope this post gives you some helpful tips on how to plan your own exciting sojourn across America.
As I may have mentioned in other posts, in late October 2017 I road tripped from Wisconsin to California with my two sisters. About a month prior, my youngest sister announced she was moving to L.A. She and I had always talked about taking a big, multi-state road trip, but we were never able to make it happen. After comparing schedules, late October was our only opportunity before colder temps and possible snowfall might challenge our trip.
Once we had decided on travel dates, the rest of the planning began.
I began by Google-mapping the crap out of the western U.S. We had some ideas on what we wanted to see and a few parameters on the trip. My sister was moving to California without a job waiting for her, so we wanted to make the trip as cost effective as possible. We also had limited time. I have a job, as does my other sister, so we had a maximum of 9 days to explore, and the last day would be spent flying home.
I also took safety into consideration. We would be three ladies driving through parts of the country totally unknown to us and far away from home. We were nervous about getting lost at night, the car breaking down, and any other scenario that might put us in a dangerous situation. We decided we would start each day early to cover as much ground as see as many sights as we could before dark. We also decided to find a hotel or at least a city/town we felt comfortable in before dark. I’ve heard too many stories of people hitting animals on lonesome highways to take any risks.
Parameters:
- Spend as little money as possible
- 9 days to travel
- Don’t drive in the dark
My sister also mentioned she wanted to stop in Fargo, North Dakota as our first destination. She went to school there and wanted to visit a few friends still residing in town. I have ALWAYS wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and while I’ve been west several times, I never had been able to make it there. We have a cousin living in San Diego and we thought this would be a prime opportunity to visit her and explore SoCal life. Finally, I’d been to Denver once before and thought this would be a fun opportunity to see it again.
Once these main points were set, the rest of the trip kind of just fell into place. I knew the best (and most cost effective) way to see the country would be by visiting as many National Parks as possible. I discovered we could purchase an Annual National Parks Pass for about $80 which would allow us access to almost every National Park, Forest, etc. Since we had time constraints, I knew we’d be able to stop for a hike (and photo op), have a picnic lunch, or just cruise through a park to see the sights depending on what our time allowed. We ended up seeing five National Parks on this trip.
With a rough idea of the parks and cities we wanted to see, I hunkered down with Google maps and Roadtripper.com to estimate how far we could travel each day, what other sights were along the way, and took hours of operation, sunrise, and sunsets into consideration. I came up with a rough, yet aggressive itinerary of all the hot spots we hoped to see and an idea of where we could end each day and find lodging. (Add itinerary?)
After the itinerary was in place, I began researching tips on road tripping in general, in order to make this as cost effective as possible. I realized that food costs is a variable we have the most control over and decided a picnic style menu would be the way to go. Stopping at restaurants would waste too much time and money. Eating fast food or gas station food would leave us feeling cranky and disgusting, a bad combo for 3 people sitting in a Mazda for 8 hours a day.
We chose to bring a small travel cooler and did some grocery shopping before the trip and along the way. We also brought reusable water bottles and invested in a few gallon jugs of water. Here is a short list of items we ate the most of on the trip. This truly saved us so much time and money. We were able to eat most meals in the car.
- Cheese sandwiches
- Peanut butter
- Clementine oranges
- Apples
- Granola bars (SO MANY)
- Homemade trail mix – 1 gallon
- Cheese curds (thank you Wisconsin!)
- Smart Pop Popcorn
- Water, water, water
In the end, we had the perfect amount of planning mixed with three open minds. We did divert from the itinerary a few times. I had planned to spend an afternoon in Denver when my sister suggested we head to Estes Park, CO instead and the Rocky Mountain National Park. We ended up shaving several hours off our drive time the following day AND we spent an unforgettable afternoon singing John Denver songs and marveling at the Rocky Mountains.
