How to Plan an "EPIC" Road Trip

If you're one of the few people on the planet who hasn't heard about our epic road trip (#ERT_2015), let me tell you a little bit about it. We spent a grand total of 15 days visiting 13 national parks in two different countries, drove over 4500 miles, and basically had a fabulous adventure.
I spent over a year and at least a hundred hours planning this road trip, and I thought I'd share some of my insights on how to plan your own epic road trip, and have things go as smoothly as possible!

1. SELECT AN AWESOME "DESTINATION" (AKA YOUR MIDPOINT)
When I initially concocted the idea for #ERT_2015, our destination was Banff. Then I decided we should go to Vancouver Island as well (which we ultimately didn't, ironic...) and then hit up the Seattle area before heading home. Then I realized what a vast number of beautiful places there were along our route, especially National Parks. That led to the road trip morphing into an actual road trip, rather than "let's drive to Banff and spend a week there."
You have two ways to go about this - you can choose a destination and then decide how long you'd like to take to get there (and how much time you'd like to spend there, if you want to do that), or you can decide how long you want your trip to last, and choose a destination that would take about half of that time. Decide early on if you want this to be a road trip to a destination, or more of a sightseeing road trip, like ours was. Once you've chosen your destination you can move onto...

2. MAKE YOUR TRIP AS "ROUND" AS POSSIBLE.
Once you've chosen a midpoint, the best way to see the highest number of cool things in your trip is to avoid backtracking as much as possible. If your midpoint is say, due west of where you're starting, take a more northerly route on the way there and a more southerly route on the way back, or vice versa. Use a map to look for interesting waypoints that can give your route some structure.

Very round... bottom right is home. We saw a lot!

Occasionally this can lead to your trip being extended for cool things that are slightly off-route, but that also ties in with...

3. DECIDE HOW FAR "OFF TRACK" YOU ARE WILLING TO GO.
Is there a super cool place 5 hours off of the fastest route? How worth it do you think that place would be? For me, my limit was 3 hours, and it had to be cool. Like, National Park cool. Keep in mind that the fastest route is often not necessarily the most interesting or most scenic route, and allowing yourself to get off the beaten path can help flesh out your road trips. Don't forget to include scenic drives in your route! What also helps is if you...

4. PLAN YOUR STOPS AROUND CAMPING.
One thing we often did was camp somewhere that we arrived mid-afternoon/early evening, have a short evening activity/hike/etc, then camp, wake up, have a medium activity/hike/etc, then move on to our next camp spot. It gives you more time to spend in each place you camp, and especially in the National Parks campgrounds tend to be in very beautiful areas that allow for great exploring for those night owls or early risers.

5. DECIDE YOUR MAXIMUM NUMBER OF HOURS DRIVING PER DAY.
My maximum was 8 (except the last day which was about 11, but it was Nevada... so...), and I tried to break it up into as many short stints as possible. Usually we did between 3 and 6 hours of driving per day. Keep in mind that the more you drive the more you'll SEE, but the less you'll experience. And the more time you spend in the car, the more you'll hate it! I tried to balance long driving days to be before a day where we spent most of our time out of the car. Our longest driving day that didn't involve us returning home was between Yellowstone and Glacier (about 8 hours total), and I followed that driving day with an entire day of exploring Glacier National Park. (Unfortunately, my plans were slightly foiled by a massive wildfire in the park which closed a portion of the Going-to-the-Sun-Road, so we spent a lot more time in the car than I had anticipated, but that's life.)

6. ONCE YOU'VE DECIDED ON YOUR BASIC ROUTE, USE ROADTRIPPERS, GUIDEBOOKS, AND THE INTERNET TO FIND EVERYTHING ON YOUR ROUTE.
I love Roadtrippers, and Pinterest. (I'm a huge Pinterest fan! You can visit the road trip board here.) Knowing everything there is can help you balance out driving days, and you can choose something for everyone. There's also a possibility you might have only thought of one big thing, when could actually see 3 small things and break up your time in the car better, and "experience" more. Roadtrippers in particular has an option to show different 'types' of interest points - utilize them! (Include "services" in there to plan your gas stops as well!)

Why doesn't anyone call it "motoring" anymore??

7. REALIZE THAT YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO SEE EVERYTHING, OR EVEN AS MUCH AS YOU WANT.

You just won't. You won't. Think small here... stops always take longer than you think. Having a lot to choose from helps you decide what you really want to do with your time. This directly ties in to...

8. GIVE YOURSELF LOTS OF WIGGLE ROOM ON YOUR SCHEDULE.

You will get behind schedule. I can pretty much guarantee it. Unless you are my parents, getting behind schedule is inevitable. Give yourself plenty of time at each stop, and don't be afraid to be a stickler- but be prepared to be flexible and alter your schedule as needed. You may have to cut things out- decide what you're really attached to, and what you aren't. 

This also ties back in with #7. Knowing a wider variety of what options you have available can allow you to fill a big space with something smaller if you get behind schedule and don't have time for the "big" thing.

Ensure that you've allotted plenty of time for people to sleep- road trips are tiring! If you are consistently getting behind schedule, try getting up and getting on the road earlier in the mornings, but not so early that people are falling asleep in the car- road trips are also for seeing stuff!

9. BOOK EVERYTHING - ESPECIALLY CAMPSITES - AS EARLY AS POSSIBLE.

I cannot stress enough how important it is that you do this. Trust me, campgrounds fill up fast, and the campsites that are good get taken wicked fast. Especially if you are traveling with a group and have multiple campsites that you'd like to have adjacent, booking ASAP is crucial. In my opinion there is not much in the world that is more stressful than not knowing where you're going to sleep. If you want to really go all out on campsite booking, you can be like me and be very thorough- visit www.recreation.gov and look at all of the campgrounds you're staying in. Look at the map, and look at pictures of the sites to find a few you really like. Is being close to the bathroom important, or is having a pretty campsite more important? Decide what's important to you, select 2-3 total options for each site you're booking, and have those on hand when you're ready to book. It will speed up the process and make life a lot less stressful. It's also very important to find out when you can start booking sites for the date you'll be staying there, and book as soon as you can. Sometimes even missing by one day can result in a full campsite, and you being out of luck.

Close to the bathroom, and a pretty campsite! You can view pictures of sites by selecting the site from the "site list."

10.WHEN CALCULATING COST, OVERESTIMATE. 

Pick the lowest MPG for the car you'll be driving, as well as at least $1 over average cost per gallon, and use that to figure out your fuel costs. It's much better to overestimate and have money left over, than to underestimate and be scrambling. Round up at least 250 miles on your route distance as well, or even more. Overestimate costs on food as well- will you be in trouble if something happens and food goes bad in a cooler?

11. PLAN OUT YOUR MEALS.

When we road trip, we generally tend to eat a good breakfast, then snack throughout the day with a sandwich or two for lunch, followed up by a good dinner. Find meals that are quick and easy to prepare, and (especially for driving days) are easy to eat. We often do a lot of picnic lunches on hikes so that we can combine the time for lunch with seeing beautiful places!

12. HAVE A DETAILED ITINERARY.

Once you know where you're going and what you're doing, plan out each day in a detailed itinerary so you always know what's next, and where you can afford to fudge any time if you need it. Round up to the nearest half hour for each activity and driving time, and if you can get ahead of schedule, do it! Doing this will take some time, especially on a road trip as long as ours was, but it's worth it!

Here's an example of our detailed itinerary from #ERT_2015

13. GET EXCITED!