I love Road Trips! The more exotic the location, the better.
I’m afraid that’s the way it is for most people. After a lifetime of working at a job many of us aren’t really knowledgeable about how to plan and budget for a long road trip. We’ve been dreaming about it for a long time, but never done it. Some of us took some Road Trips when we were young, and they were wonderful, but now that we are older we would like to do a little more planning than when we were young and wild. Otherwise, we’ll just kind of haphazardly hit the road and go wherever the wind blows us. While there is nothing wrong with that there is another way that may work better.
To me, the open road is the true pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!
Looking back on our recent Alaska trip, we did some things right, and we did some things wrong. With my experience from the Alaska trip fresh in mind, let me tell you some lessons we learned and things we would do differently so you can avoid my mistakes and still have a great time. In today’s post I’ll summarize the facts and figures of our recent Alaska trip in this table and give you some tips on planning your own trips. I’ll begin with something we did right.
Here are the basic facts and figures from our Alaska trip. I’ll use these to draw lessons we learned on the trip. There will be multiple posts on this topic.
Lesson Number One: Break the Trip up Into Stages for Planning Purposes.
As you can see from the above table, it was a jam-packed trip–almost 9000 miles in 65 days! It was so big we couldn’t really get a handle on the whole thing, so we broke it down into stages and planned them individually. We looked for logical breaks, and this was what we came up with:
- Stage 1: We drove north to the Grand Tetons NP, stopping for six days in Zion National Park and 7 days in Grand Teton, NP. That took 22 days. We had two things we wanted to do, spend time in Zion and Grand Teton NP and we did both of them.
- Stage 2: We left the Grand Tetons and drove through Canada to the Alaska Border. That was 8 days. Our goals for that leg were to stop at Judy’s favorite hot springs in Idaho and to take pictures at Banff and Jasper National Parks in the Canadian Rocky. We did see the hot springs and enjoyed it a lot. But when we got to the Canadian Rockies we found them still snowed in so we adapted out plans and just moved on.
- Stage 3: We were in Alaska for 30 days and drove 2100 miles there (it’s a big state!). We ran into some problems in Alaska and we didn’t get everything done I wanted done but we did the three main things of seeing my son, fly-in bear viewing, and flight-seeing Mt. McKinley.
- Stage 4: After all that we were ready to get home so we blasted our way back through Canada and officially ended the trip in Jackson, Wyoming. On that leg we covered 2,790 miles in 6 days. I had originally planned to stop at the Canadian Rockies on the way back but we were tired of traveling by then so we skipped it. When we were planning the trip we both thought that was likely to be the case so it came as no surprise.
So when we were planning the trip we looked at the route and searched for the things that interested us along the way. We searched all the things in the Continental US, then Canada, then Alaska. We didn’t have time to get all those things done, but at least we were aware of them and then set our priorities for the time we had. In a later post I’ll give you some ideas of things you might be interested in seeing and doing on your Road Trips.
Anchorage has the largest and busiest seaplane base in the world. We went and sat in a little park and watched the planes coming and going and were rewarded by this very cool blue-sky rainbow.
Lesson Number Two: Use maps, guide books and the internet to plan and find all the interesting things along your route.
You’re going to spend a lot of time and money on this trip so you want to get all you can out of it. Who knows, maybe this is a once-in-a-lifetime trip and you will never be that way again. It would be terrible to find out you were just a few miles away from something you would have loved to see or do and you missed it because you didn’t know it was there. So spend the time leading up to the trip to do lots of research on the entire trip route. I didn’t just study Alaska, I studied the whole route along the way.
- Have good maps. I know, GPS has taken over the world but I much prefer a good old fashioned paper map. Too many times GPS has simply led me the wrong way so I don’t trust them. That’s especially true of back-country roads. My every experience with GPS designed for autos in the National Forests has been a disaster! Both Judy and I have one, and every so often it is a life-saver but I mostly use real maps. We never used a GPS on the whole Alaska trip. Here are the maps I recommend
- First, find maps specific to your state or region. In our case that was the Milepost which nobody should ever go to Alaska without.
get it from Amazon here: Milepost 2014
Next, I recommend either Benchmark Atlas or a Delorme Atlas and Gazeeter for each state you will spend any amount of time in. I prefer the Benchmark but I got the DeLorme for half price so I bought them instead for Alaska, Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. Get it from Amazon here: Arizona DeLorme Atlas & Gazetteer
They were essential to finding campsites in the National Forests along the road. Then, I recommend a single fold out map of the entire region: this is the one I used and it was my number one tool! With it I can see multiple states and get the big-picture at a glance. I find that indispensable! You might ask “Every Atlas has a map of the whole US, why get this one?” Because it’s big enough that it not only shows you the freeways, it shows you most of the back-roads you are likely to take. Every road we took on this trip was on it! What I did to make it easier to use is I opened it up and folded it flat in such a way that I could fold and unfold it and see big regions at a glance. Here is the most important thing I did, these maps are cheap and will fall apart so I use clear, 1 inch wide package tape to cover the main seams. I still have the one I used on my first 2006 road trip and it is still perfectly usable! I keep it because I wrote all my notes and campsites on it and it becomes a visual diary. But it from Amazon here: Rand McNally Western United States Regional Map - Buy guide books covering your interests. Whatever your interest, Amazon.com has a guide book covering it and wherever you’re going there is a guide book covering everything interesting in it and on the way to it. Because my favorite interest is photography I search Amazon for guides to photographing the states I visit, especially it’s National Parks . On this trip I had them for Zion, Grand Tetons, Yellowstone, Glacier, and the Canadian Rockies. Get it from Amazon here: Photographer’s Guide to Yellowstone & the Tetons:
Here is a Guide to Off-Beat places all over the country: Road Trip America: A State-By-State Tour Guide to Offbeat Destinations
Here is the Reders Digest Guide to the most Scenic drives in the country. Highly recommended: The Most Scenic Drives in America, Newly Revised and Updated: 120 Spectacular Road Trips
Here is a link to the search “Road Trip America”. It has many wonderful books you will find very useful: Take this link to see many Great Road Trip books on Amazon.
I also have books covering camping in Canada and Alaska, the National Wildlife Refuges and Birding locations. Whatever your interests and hobbies are, chances are there are books covering where, when and how to do it across the country. I try to get them for my Kindle first, but if they aren’t available for it I try to buy them used. Oddly, many of the books I want are only available used.
- The internet is a wonderful source of information on all kinds of things on a road trip. Whatever you’re interested in, and wherever you are going in the country, somebody has written about it on the net! It’s especially good for camping and boondocking locations. For that I highly recommend freecampsites.net!! http://freecampsites.net/
- Stop at the Visitors Centers and Ranger Stations for the states and Parks you visit. I always find valuable literature in them. Each state offers lots of literature to entice you into visiting it, I strongly encourage you to get it. They tend to be shallow and full of stuff you don’t care about, but I’ve always found some things I didn’t know and was glad I had it. Most states has a website you can order it from or can download it, usually on a .pdf.
Well, this post has gotten long enough so I am going to stop here and I will start up on more lessons and more advice on how to plan for your Road Trips in the next post.
A plan is very good along with a budget. As I see it when I travel, it will be OK to travel a long way quickly as long as I stop and “smell the roses” when I get to the region I am aiming to visit! You guys drove roughly 465 miles a day when you returned to the lower 48, that was quite a clip!
I’m only first because the rest of you folks are asleep at this time.
Thanks jonthebru! Yeah, I am the same way, I usually just blast through to my goal unless there is something very compelling along the way. That’s what we did on the way back. But, I still do the research to know if there is something I will miss along the way.
Bob
Another good source for guidebooks is secondhand bookstores. The books may be somewhat out of date but there are phone numbers that are usually still good for current information.
Thanks for this! Wonderful photos too.
Very good point MJ! Plus, generally, the ones along your route will have many more books on that local area.
Bob
Oh no, planning and budgeting, two things I really suck at! Oh well, I’ll give it a try when I hit the road. Thanks for all the recommendations, Bob!
Peggy, believe me I suck at it to. I make it sound very organized but it is really pretty haphazard. It gets done but not in a very neat way.
Bob
Great advice, Bob. Thanks! Silly question: Why are there red lines through some of the links?
Naomi, I don’t know! It’s odd that it’s in some and not in others. I’ll have to look into that. The link still works so no real harm done, it just looks weird.
Bob
“The pen is BLUE!” Lol. (From Liar Liar with Jim Carrey.)
right!!!!!
Bob
Blue lines. Duh.
This is really good information! I am one that drove many miles my first year too!
That makes you normal Sameer! You had all that pent-up need to travel that just had to be let out! I’m sure you look back on it very fondly, I know I do! Now I assume it is slower and probably more rewarding, right?
Bob
In another week I will have been doing this for a year. I think I have the travel-around-and-see-everything virus out of my system. (Except I need to do a little more time on the coast before I hunker down for the winter.) I now have a good idea where I want to stay for long stretches of time and where I don’t need to go again. I wasn’t as frugal as I should have been, but the experience was a lot cheaper than most non-vandwellers’ way of doing it.
Al, you are no longer a neewbie!! It seems like you were born for this life! Looking forward to seeing you again the winter!
Bob
I’m still in my first year and most of my travel has been for family emergencies, not the way I planned at ALL. So I haven’t got the travel bug out of me yet. I want to head up the West Coast to Vancouver this fall but the combination of money and time may defeat that plan. By the time I save enough for the trip, probably October, the weather might make it unworkable. How do you plan for weather?
LaVonne, I just make my best educated guess!! I know that is simplistic but with the weather that is all you can do. Do your research and then play the odds. From what little I know going into fall is normally not a good time to be going to the Pacific Northwest. But any given year anything can happen.
Good luck!
Bob
I would give Vancouver a miss in October weather wise unless you are equipped for rain. My last reliable weather camping trips of the season are usually in September. In October, I have to look at the near term weather reports to see whether or not to go. Last year was very good. This year, who knows?
Just before we sold our home to move into an RV and continuing on into today I made a spread sheet for each state. I add whatever looks interesting to me whether it be sights to see or places to camp or places I want to eat. Then when I head out I can look at the sheets for locations along my route to be sure I don’t miss any number one ranked spots. It frees me up to wander at will without fear of missing something I will be sorry about later.
Linda, that is a very good idea! I’m not organized enough to do it myself, but I wish I were!
Bob
thank you for the great idea!
Ming, you are welcome!
Bob
This is a great idea. I suspect my wife (the spreadsheet maker in the family) would be all over this one. 🙂
Great Walt! I’m glad it may have helped you plan!
Bob
As someone who’s feeling the sting of losing the connection with his kids as a result of an ex departing with them, I must ask you how was the experience of meeting up with your son again? Is he attuned at all to your life goals and does he read your blog?
Man on the Run. I divorced when this son was young but after an initial problem my ex and I worked hard at keep me in touch with them. I was as close to them as a divocred father can be so we are not in any way estranged.
When we got together this time it was actually better than ever because he is an adult now and we had more to talk about. It was a very good meeting.
He has no interest at all in my way of life but I think he is accepting of me in it.
We are a long ways away from each other and we are both busy and have full lives, so we don’t stay in touch well. But he knows how much I love him and he knows we will see each other again.
Bob
Bob, I love your how-to posts!
Ming, glad to help!
Bob