How to Plan a Road Trip in 10 Easy Steps

When I tell others about some of the crazy road trips I’ve been on, I often hear that people are intimidated by the thought of planning a road trip. Driving in the middle of nowhere, switching hotels every single night, and putting together a puzzle of information can feel extremely overwhelming if you’ve never done it before. 

Badlands National Park, South Dakota

I’ve been to all 50 states and 34 of them were in good ol’ fashioned road trip style and I’m here to prove that it isn’t so scary and that it’s VERY achievable!

I’m going to break down the Road Trip Planning Process into 10 easy steps so you can start knocking off your bucket list destinations without having a panic attack, breaking the bank, or waiting until retirement. 

Step 1: Choose your primary destination 

Where do you want to go?! Are you trying to visit your dream National Park? Are you trying to visit family that you only get to see once a year? Do you keep seeing pictures of a city that you’re just DYING to go to? Is your favorite band skipping your hometown AGAIN and you’re just tired of missing out on the opportunity to see them? Let’s make it happen. Without thinking of ANY other logistics, I want you to choose your dream destination. It can be a rural place that no one’s heard of or a city that’s known worldwide. It can be near you, or it can be on the other side of the world. Choose this destination wisely - because that’s what we are revolving the rest of our road trip planning around! 

Step 2: Choose your length and budget

Your length and your budget run hand in hand with one another but are not necessarily reliant on each other. A higher budget usually means you can make your trip longer. However! There are ways to work around this. Just like your day-to-day life, it’s not necessarily about how much money you have. But it’s about what your priorities are and where you choose to spend your money versus where you choose to save. If as you’re planning your trip, you believe you might need more money, here are your two options:

• Start cutting. The first thing I typically cut out is sleeping arrangements. Obviously, you have to sleep somewhere. But I’ve become proficient at car camping or tent camping and this can save SEVERAL hundred dollars for your trip. I also love the outdoors and can usually find some great low cost or free activities that help me save money as well.

• Start adding. Yeah, I get that this sounds a bit backwards. But income is fluid. Just because your 9-5 job isn’t giving you the money you need for your dream road trip doesn’t mean that you can’t find that money somewhere else. The amount of trips I’ve had DoorDash pay for for me is unreal… Whether you deliver meals, babysit, or walk dogs, never hesitate to grind for a few weeks to make your trip even more extravagant. 
  

Step 3: Choose Your Route and Rough Itinerary

• This is the BEST part! Well, besides actually traveling ya know. You might have your dream destination and have NO idea what else to see. And that’s totally fine. My recommendation for you is to get your starting point (whether that be your home or an airport which I’ll discuss further in the next step), get your dream destination point, and look at them both on the map. Then, I want you to simply scroll out and look around. What other cities do you see? What other parks do you see? Now, I NEVER go to and from a destination the same direction. The goal would be to make a circle-ish shape so you can see as much as possible without backtracking. Now sometimes, you might be required to backtrack some but you should still be moving in a general “forward” direction. Once you start noticing different things, click on “Add Destination” on Google Maps and type that in. To the left of the destination names, you’ll see dots and you can use the dots next to a certain destination to drag it up and down and change the order of the trip. You can keep doing this until you’ve made a full circle. After you’ve made your circle, you can scroll down towards the directions that Google Maps is giving you and hit “Details.” This will show you how long it will take to get from stop to stop. If the driving distances make you comfortable, great! You’ve got your route. If some of them seem too long, that is perfectly ok. Look between the two points where the drive is too long and find a pit stop somewhere in the middle. You can always split the drive and sleep in that “pit stop” destination and finish the drive between the two locations in the morning. NEVER drive while you’re tired and ALWAYS prioritize safety. 

• Once you have your route, choose how many nights you’d like to stay in each location. A stop can be most of your trip, or a stop can simply be an hour for lunch. It’s up to you!

Step 4: (Optional) Choose your airports

Anchorage, Alaska

• Fun fact! Your road trip DOES NOT need to start in your driveway. Some of the best road trips I’ve ever been on started and ended with a flight. Now, yes. This has the potential to add several hundred dollars to your trip which may require you to cut in other categories. However, there are also tools that can help you find cheaper flights. One of my favorite tools is Google Flights. From a computer, simply enter your home airport and hit Explore. This allows you to scroll all the way around the world and see what flight options are the cheapest for you. If your dates are flexible, Google Flights will show you which dates are cheapest for which destinations. Or if you have set dates you have to travel for, you can input those and see which destinations are cheaper for your given dates. I will warn you though, just because the flights are the cheapest, doesn’t mean they are the best. If I were you, I’d avoid airlines that rhyme with Pirit and Rontier because they often charge you for every single bag (including your carry-ons) and they’ll charge you to pick your seat. Typically after all of their fees add up, they end up being the same price as competing airlines but they’re much sneakier with their approach. When you scroll around on Google Flights, you will see several different flight options so if you initially see Pirit or Rontier, you’ll be able to see the other airlines options as well. 

• Besides cost, it’s important to choose the airport's locations wisely.  If your road trip covers a pretty large geographic area, consider starting and ending in the city with the largest airport rather than starting anywhere else on your route. You’d rather change the order of your activities and get cheaper flights rather than be stuck on a certain itinerary and fly into a smaller and therefore, more expensive airport. Bigger cities will also have more rental car options that can help you save money as well. 

Step 5: Secure your Activities 

• You are typically traveling because there is somewhere you want to go or something you want to do. Now, there will always be cars to drive and places to sleep. But tickets to your favorite events or activities WILL sell out if you don’t buy them quickly. Especially if you are on a road trip and you’re only in a specific destination for a small period of time, your ticket windows might close quickly. My favorite places to look for experiences are Viator and AirBNB! But a simple Google search will show you some amazing options as well. (If you can’t tell by how many times I’ve said “Google” in this article, researching will be your best friend!)

Step 6: Secure Transportation 

• If you’re starting and ending your road trip at home and you’re using your own vehicle, great! You can “kind of” skip this step. And by “kind of,” you don’t have to book anything. But be sure you get your vehicle checked out prior to leaving for a road trip. Make sure your tires are looking good, your oil has been changed recently, and any lights you have on your dashboard that you’ve been ignoring for a few months have been addressed or taken care of. 

• Now, if you aren’t using your own vehicle, I discovered a travel HACK when it comes to transportation and that’s a little app called Turo. People call Turo “the AirBNB of vehicles.” People own their cars and simply rent them out to the public. Now, here’s the two magical parts of this app. One, it’s a LOT cheaper. I mean, like, a LOT cheaper. Especially in 2024, the rental car companies are still recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic. Once COVID hit and people stopped traveling, rental car companies were forced to sell their fleet to keep up with bills and since there was a lower demand for vehicles, it never really affected them back then. But now that people are actively traveling again, rental car companies have a higher demand and a lower supply. This has skyrocketed the cost of rental cars in general, as if they weren’t high enough before COVID-19. Turo can save you several hundred dollars and I keep proving this time and time again as I use them every chance I get while I’m traveling. The second magical part of this app is that some drivers include a plethora of extra options. I’ve had car renters offer camping gear, beach gear, strollers, you name it. Every single listing is different so it’s important to read each listing carefully. This has saved me a lot of money and effort in items I don’t have to pack and lug through an airport and makes my trip ultimately so much easier. 

• Now, just because I’ve had great experiences with Turo doesn’t mean that everyone does. I’d be cautious of hosts that either don’t reply to messages, don’t have any reviews, or have poor reviews. Everyone has to start somewhere. But I always feel best if I read a plethora of positive reviews prior to booking my vehicle. And be good to their vehicle! They rate y ou too and one bad rating can make drivers not want to offer you their vehicle. 

Step 7: Secure your Sleeping Arrangements

Guadalupe Mountains, Texas

• You can get pretty creative with sleeping arrangements that end up costing little-to-no money. This is a topic my husband and I argue about because I’m always trying to find the cheapest place to stay so we can spend our money elsewhere. But my husband craves the nice big hotel bed at the end of the night and the more amenities he can find, the better. As far as hotels versus rental apps like AirBNB and VRBO, this varies drastically per city. Some, you might have better luck with hotels, some you might have better luck with short term rentals. I’ve said it once, I’ve said it twice, and I’ll say it again. But research is your best friend here and always make sure to compare options before choosing which route to go. 

• Some non-traditional sleeping methods that I’ve done include car camping and tent camping. Now, people always say “oh, car camping is so dangerous.” But it cracks me up because at least cars can lock. People sleep in tents all the time and no one asks any questions and that’s simply a fabric that people could cut their way right through. Funny how that works! Now, car camping doesn’t mean just leaning your driver’s seat back and closing your eyes (unless that’s what you want it to mean.) But believe it or not, this is an actual industry that people have created products for. One of my favorite products is a back-seat air mattress that’s designed to fit in the back of your car and it comes with an air pump that simply plugs into your cigarette lighter outlet. I also get black out covers for my windows that also serve as a bug net so I can crack my windows down and get a breeze. I also get a snow cover for my windshield for some extra privacy. If you have an SUV, you could even get a sleeping pad that is typically used for tent camping and lay it out in your trunk if you have the space for it. The options are truly endless! You can usually get away with parking your car at a hotel, any retailer that’s open 24/7, a truck stop, or any other location you can find where you feel safe. Be sure to look out for “no trespassing” signs and stay away from those.

• If you do enjoy tent camping, it’s a LOT to pack but can save you a LOT of money! You can find free places to camp like land owned by the Bureau of Land Management or established campgrounds for as low as $15-$30 per night. If you don’t have any camping gear, look up “camping gear rental” in your starting and ending city and see if you can get lucky finding something there. 

Step 8: Pack wisely

• Your packing is going to look extremely different whether you are taking your own vehicle from home or whether you’re flying and renting a car. The main perk of flying is you typically get to go somewhere further for longer but if you fly, you have to adhere to all of TSA’s rules and guidelines including staying within a certain luggage size and weight for carry ons. This usually isn’t too bad as long as you plan ahead and aren’t bringing anything crazy with you. 

• If you’re traveling from home in your own vehicle, packing might seem easier to do since you have less rules and guidelines to adhere to. But if you have a lot of people or plan on sleeping in your car, you could find yourself running out of space pretty quickly so you might feel like you can only bring a little with you anyways.

• Moral of the story - pack light! You’d be amazed how “little” you truly need. I spent 13 days in Portugal and Morocco and made it with this carry on specific backpack and a small day pack.
  

Step 9: Create a document 

• Now that you have all your ducks in a row, it’s time to put all of that information all in the same place! Ideally, you’d like to make this as you go. But if you didn’t, that’s ok! This document needs to include the following:

  • Flight information (flight numbers, airports, times, etc.)

  • Itinerary (times of reservations, reservation numbers, addresses, etc.)

  • Sleeping Arrangement information (reservation numbers, addresses, check in/out times, balances, etc.)

  • Rental car information (company, host, balance, etc.)

Step 10: Document your Trip 

• One day, your trip will be a memory. Take photos and/or write about it so you have plenty of ways to look back one day!