We made this insane decision to trek across the states in an RV on an Epic Road Trip with our teens. But now to the planning. Where to even begin?
We’ve been getting our RV registered, stocked, and prepped for this big adventure, but I’ve never planned for more than a week long road trip. And usually that’s just getting to one destination and back. I wanted to hand all planning over to my kids, but there are so many details to coordinate for such a long trip with so many destinations, we did most of it together as a family. I handed as much responsibility to the kids as possible, though.
Planning for a Long Road Trip
First, we came up with a time frame of 2 months and an overall budget. Then, together with the kids, we made a list of all the places we’d like to see (spent a lot of time on Pinterest and made a board for each state) and then narrowed it down to our must-see destinations. We narrowed that down by looking at our time frame and a general route to these stops, then coming up with a realistic route so we’re not zigzagging all over the place and wasting time on destinations way out the way. We do have to get to a wedding on a certain date, plus home at a certain date, so we can’t just meander all over the country.
We have a great big laminated map on the wall in our hallway, put up for our geography studies, which was perfect for creating a tentative route with dry erase markers that was easy to adjust as we added or removed stops while planning our final route.
Planning a Long Road Trip Route
We broke the route up into sections with a time frame for each to make it more manageable.
- Part 1: Heading East from CA to LA (11 days)
- Part 1b: Stay in LA for 6 days
- Part 2: North from LA to NY (14 days)
- Part 3: Heading West from NY to CA (18 days)
- Part 3a: NY to CO – 10 days: 6 days from NY to CO. Stay in CO for 4 days
- Part 3b: CO to CA – 8 days
The kids were given the undesirable task of calculating the mileage using Google Maps Driving Directions to estimate driving hours and mileage between stops. We don’t want to drive more than 3-4 hours at a time unless absolutely necessary so they also had to figure out approximately when and where we would need to stop for meals, interesting sights or for the night. We also realized, with this many miles, we’d have to plan for an oil change before heading west again, so had to fit that in the schedule and budget.
A white board calendar made it easy to schedule and revise our stops. Once we had a set plan, I transferred it to a small personal calendar to bring with us. I still prefer paper over an online planner; easier for me to jot down notes and revisions.
I also created a spreadsheet in Google Docs to keep track of the schedule, save links, reservation info, and expenses to keep a handle on the budget. This can be shared and edited by my husband and kids and I’ll have access to it on my trip with the Google Drive app. Here’s a sample Travel Plan and Budget Template if you are planning for a trip and want to see how I set mine up.
Budgeting for a Long Road Trip
Speaking of budgeting, we created categories for spending. I’ll share in my next post how the kids estimated gas, food, supplies, & lodging, plus how we found free and low cost camping and chose what extra activities or sites we want to to see. It’s been quite a process! A very exciting process!
