5 Tips for Planning Your Next Road Trip Adventure

If the first thought that comes to mind when road trip planning is where to begin, then you are not alone. Over the years, we have taken several longer family road trips, along with many shorter ones, and initially the planning was overwhelming. With so many cool places to visit in the USA, it’s hard to even know where to begin. Now with many miles under our belts, I can say that we definitely learned a few tricks along the way. Here’s 5 tips to use for planning your next family road trip.
*This post was originally published in 2015 and updated in 2024

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1. Create a Pinterest board.  With millions of users, this is one of the fastest ways to gather information, find road trip ideas and get motivated to plan a trip. Create a free account, and start gathering pins of places you want to visit and add them to your virtual bulletin board. Visit my Road Trips Made Easy or Cool Places to Visit in the U.S boards to get some travel inspiration, road trip tips, route suggestions and sanity saving tips. The stunning photographs found on Pinterest are enough to make you want to jump in a car or plane and go!  If you prefer low-tech planning, create a travel binder and let your kids decorate the front and back covers with all the things they want to do.  It’s a great way to get them involved.

2.  Select two or three national parks or major attractions and plan a trip around them. As my kids got older, our trips became a blend of outdoor activities at National Parks mixed in with urban activities in the city. Out west in particular, it is easy to visit several national parks in one loop. In the northeast, it’s fairly manageable to drive between two major cities like Boston and New York, or Philadelphia and Washington, DC, all filled with family-friendly attractions. One of my favorite family road trips to Florida was one where we combined Universal Studios in Orlando with beach time in Siesta Key, along with a snorkeling adventure with manatees in Crystal River. With tweens and teens, stopping for a picnic lunch on college campuses while on the road is a fun way to expose them to different schools without having to make a special trip. Wherever you go, it’s easy to customize a road trip with the activities that your family is most interested in.  ​

3. Consider flying to a destination, then beginning your journey. Although it’s common for people to travel up and down the east coast of the USA, for most, the thought of driving east to west or vice versa across the USA is not always appealing, or practical for a two week road trip vacation. For our family, flying from the DC area to destinations like Seattle, Los Angeles, and Albuquerque, gave us an excellent starting point for some spectacular road trips, some which took us over 2,000 miles once we started driving. Check out Get Up and Go - Road Trip Ideas and Itineraries to find all the details from our big road trips.

​4. Take advantage of a road trip planning website. There are so many helpful tools now for planning a road trip. Last summer, when I planned a short road trip to Niagara Falls, I was searching for some fun places to stop along the way. I found the Roadtrippers Road Trip Route Planner to be a helpful tool for finding several cool stops for our route. Just enter your beginning and ending destinations, and then search for various categories of stops. Types of places include everything from hotels and food, to things like attractions and culture, outdoors and recreation, and points of interest. For me, it was helpful to plan out the trip on a desktop computer, then download the app to have with us on the road. Read more about 4 Interesting Stops on a Road Trip to Niagara Falls to see what cool stops we found along the way.  

5. Get off the beaten path. Think about finding at least one or two places or activities in each of your travel destinations that are hidden gems or local favorites.  Maybe it's taking part in the sunset drum circle in Siesta Key, Florida or a quiet afternoon having a picnic by the Rogue River in Oregon, but you will appreciate it when you are there. Some of our best travel memories are from time spent in the small towns we stayed in between destinations, like Kanab, Utah, and Boothbay Harbor, Maine.  Before planning a trip, head over to your local library or bookstore and browse the “off the beaten path” travel books. In this day of e-readers and book apps, I still enjoy browsing through books to gather ideas.  Finally, don’t forget about sites like Roadside America, which list offbeat attractions by state. After being in a car for hours, it’s fun to surprise the kids with something different and unique.

Read 7 Helpful Tips for your Next Road Trip​

To me, the excitement of planning the trip is half the fun.  
​So what are you waiting for?