Planning for that perfect road trip could get overwhelming and daunting.
Sharing 7 road trip hacks to turbo-charge your next road trip –
• For accommodation, I would highly recommend vacation rentals from Airbnb or Vrbo, the later being less expensive mostly. If you value experiences more than the opulence of a X-star hotel, look no further than the vacation homes. I would stay at a hotel only due to lack of options.
Backyard of the cottage I stayed at Hot Springs, AR
Tip: Pay a lot of emphasis on liberal cancelation policies during the bookings, in respect of Murphy’s law.
• Create curated road trip checklists for themes like camping road trips, winter road trips, long road trips so that you don’t have to re-create the list *each time*. Use Google Docs or similar collaboration tools to coordinate with other fellow travelers. For each road trip, just duplicate the last document and get a huge head-start.
Sample road trip essentials document
• Never trust a cellphone network!
Download the maps offline, I use Google Maps for the same.
• Ever face trouble remembering that cool restaurant you visited?
You can use Google Maps’s hidden Timeline feature to automatically log your travel into a digital diary.
• Tolls giving you stress?
Check TollGuru and make sure you have the right car tag (I-Pass/EZ Pass etc.) to breeze through the tollways without worrying about the fines.
• Don’t be like your parents and call your friends in other car, asking where they are!
If you are going in multiple cars, enable Location sharing to efficiently share your road trip progress. I use Google Maps for the same and find it the most reliable.
• Don’t lose your way during hikes!
If you are doing trails/hikes, I would highly recommend AllTrails. Losing your way during a trail could be very harrowing/frustrating experience. I have been using AllTrails Pro (which gives you ability to download offline maps) for many years now and would call it an indispensable tool. It helped me immensely in places such as the Endless Wall trail in WV, Cherokee Falls trail in TN, Lover’s Leap trail in AR, Wanatee Park trail in IA, Trail of the old Oaks in IL when I was looking for directions and there was no one to ask.
As a bonus hack, here is the best emergency essentials checklist.
Leave a Reply