Roadtrip Planning

  Atlanta, Georgia, United States
Sunday, December 1, 2002

Barbara doing research.

In planning our 50 state 5-month roadtrip Round America, Barbara and I reviewed a number of travel books. We didn't want to miss a thing that we might not have known was just around a bend.

We could have done even better with our research. There are no totally comprehensive travel books. We could have made better use of State Tourism information, and we could have spent more time on Internet research. That said, I did spend several months planning the trip, so I doubt that many will spend as much time as we did in research.

In charting the course, I created a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Each segment of the trip was listed with total mileage shown for that segment, and then each town we would pass through was listed, showing the highway that we would use. There were over 2,500 towns on the itinerary.

This was invaluable. This was our guide for the trip.

I contacted the Department of Tourism for every state, and I anxiously awaites the flood of brochures and maps. I planned to review each and add to the itinerary. We also emailed family and friends for ideas on places to go, things to see, and pie to eat.

Most states responded -- some faster than others. We didn't have enough time to review this info, so requesting this information further in advance is important.

Kitty B Kitty

Our home and our cat were major concerns. We wish Kitty B Kitty could be a road cat, but our one long trip with her proved otherwise. We aren't RV'ers, so it wouldn't be fair to keep her cooped up in a little car, and most motels don't welcome animals. Fortunately, brother Tony came to the rescue. He agreed to look after the house and take care of Miss Kitty B Kitty while we were gone. Barbara wasn't wild about interviewing and hiring a house sitter.

Thanks heavens for Tony. Kitty B Kitty was well cared for. In fact, she was spoiled rotten by Uncle Tony, who we need to get his very own kitty.

We prepared a list of things that we had to do before we left as well as things that we needed to remember to take with us on the trip. Haircuts, dental checkups, and prescription gathering were scheduled for right before we left. We rejoined AAA, and we made sure we had our AAA card, our AARP card, our passports, our drivers' licenses, registration, and proof of insurance. We planned to take just an American Express card and a MasterCard, some cash, and travelers checks. I got prescription sunglasses, and I planned to take two pair of glasses in case anything should happen to one.

This all went well. We didn't need to gather prescriptions; we learned that an out-of-state pharmacy can just call our Atlanta pharmacy. I broke both a pair of glasses and the sunglasses. I needed to buy a pair of clip on sunglasses.

Equipment-wise, we got a new cell phone with essentially unlimited long distance and no roaming charges for just $99 a month. I got the phone numbers of family and friends programmed in so everyone will be just a few keystrokes away. We also bought a gizmo at Best Buy that makes the cell phone hands free and uses the car stereo speaker system for the audio. I bought the latest and greatest SONY digital camera with a telephoto lens, wide angle lens, and various filters. I planned to my laptop and download the digital photos to the laptop, so we also bought a power gizmo to enable us to run the laptop off the car battery. That way, we could download photos from anywhere and even recharge the camera battery and cell phone as we drove. We planned to take our "old" digital camera as well. We purchased a small markerboard and markers, so we could create a sign with anything appropriate for certain photos. The only other equipment plkanned was a big powerful flashlight, two umbrellas, a fold-up hair dryer, and a tape recorder.

We chose Verizon as we believe it offered the widest coverage. Coverage area is important, since so much of a two-lane trip to small towns is spent in the boonies. We were surprised to be charged 40 cents a minute when out of Verizon's home territory, so this was an unexpected surprise that might have made us choose another service. The goal should be wide coverage but a plan with no extra charges for roaming and out-of-territory (whatever that means). A satellite phone might be a better option; I don't know enough about them to know, but we will look into it for the next trip. We used three different hands-free deals for the cell phone. I couldn't get the one that works with the stereo to work properly. We now have a car that uses Bluetooth to access our cell phone through the car stereo system with a hands-free speaker built into the car. This is the greatest feature ever!

The Sony camera was excellent for oiur needs as it has a powerful zoom. I had three 128 MB memory sticks, and this enabled me to take 150 highest resolution photos before I had to download to the laptop. We didn't use the power gizmo. We broke three tape recorders, so I planned to take two next time, as our trip had us in many places that did not sell pocket recorders. The recorder was the only practical way to record our ideas and information as we drove. We used our First Aid Kit a number of times, and I should have taken it to Hawaii as well as you always need what you don't have, and I have the drug store receipts to prove it.

We planned to pack light and hit a laundromat once a week. We bought a few clothing items from TravelSmith, the folks who specialize in all types of "travel easy" wearing apparel and accessories. Jeans or shorts, golf shirts, and tennis shoes will be about it. We are taking some hiking boots for use in the Northwest and as needed elsewhere.

Our clothes system worked out great. We each had two black nylon bags. The big bag could hold 7 days worth of clothes. A smaller bag could hold 2 days worth of clothes. We only took the small bag into the motel each night -- refilling it from the larger bag. Dirty clothes went into a dirty clothes bag. It worked fine to wash once a week. Comfort Inn, Marriott Courtyard, Hampton Inn, and the like all have guest laundries. I wore shorts every day but one on the April to August trip, and I could have worn shorts that day as well. Finding comfortable walking shoes with plenty of foot support is really important -- sand or dark-colored shoes look best as my white shoes looked a million years old after a few weeks. I ended up buying shorts from L.L. Bean and wore nothing but embroidered Round America sport shirts from Rod and the boys at Atlas Printing & Embroidery in Cleveland, Ohio.

We planned to get our car serviced just before we departed and get an idea when we would need to replace the tires.

We took a white Porsche convertible for the first half of the trip. It was great for driving, but it seemed to attract some folks who might have done us harm. It was definitely cramped, but we managed to make the very small storage areas work. The convertible was wonderful for seeing the sights and soaking rays during the southern loop Round America. We took a black PT Cruiser for the second half of the trip. The Cruiser was a poor choice as the car has a terribly wide turning radius, and many U-Turns are required daily. We were unable to do a U-Turn on normal streets. The Cruiser also gets poor gas mileage. The ideal car for us would be something that has a small turning radius that will enable U-Turns to be made on two-lane roads in one turn. Good gas mileage is a plus. We will require a GPS system and a hands-free built-in car phone system for the next trip. A compass is important. An odometer that shows tenths of a mile is a plus. A CD Player is a must, but even better is a car that plays your IPOD music through the car stereo system. A full-sized spare tire would be a plus. Digital gauges that can be read with sunglasses on would be a plus. White stays much cooler than black. Cup holders are essential as are really comfortable seats. Both the Porsche and Cruiser had really comfortable seats. I recommend testing any car on a day trip before you decide to take it on a long trip, as bad seats would make for a miserable trip.

We put together a notebook with the itinerary and allowed plenty of space to take notes as we traveled. We each carried a pocket notebook and pen so we would always be able to jot notes. We printed some business cards to use as we traveled. The cards had our basic information as well as a few sentence explanation of the trip, the trip web site address, our email address, and our cell phone number. We planned to give these to people we met along the way.

The notebooks were extremely valuable. We had dividers for each state, with photocopies of information about sights we wanted to see in each state. The business cards were perfect; we gave out 1,500. We used the pocket tape recorder for recording most notes -- the only way to handle it.

The Trip Round America was to be well-planned; we would be prepared!

We originally planned to drive around the border of the country, but the idea of visiting all 50 states in one trip was just too exciting to pass up. I was surprised when Barbara endorsed the significant expansion of the trip. The numbers now are 50 states and the District of Columbia, over 2,500 towns, and 19,631 miles! I knew we would pass through cities that weren't on the map, and the mileage would be much higher as we would be driving around towns that we visited, and the 19,631 was just a point-to-point calculation. We ended up doing 29,000 miles, so even with all the planning, I was waaay off.

I was very pleased with the research that we'd done. We had identified a significant number of attractions all along the route -- many things that we would have never known were there. Some state tourism offices came through like champs while others hadn't gotten a thing to us. The many books that we bought had been our best resources as well as the Internet. I wish we had done more research on hotels, motels, and B&B's to try to find more special places to stay. We will try to do better on this on future trips.

Neither of us has found the time to read the books that we bought about the trips of others. I planned to toss a few of those in the car in case I found any time to read. That proved laughable; we burned the candle at both ends for 149 days!

Tony did great with the cat and house sitting as well as business management while we were away. His help made the trip possible as I question whether we could have ever been comfortable hiring a house/cat sitter that we didn't know. Those who love cats will understand that we consider Kitty B Kitty to be like one of our children.

I believe I would have thoroughly enjoyed driving our 1955 Chevrolet Police Car on the trip, but Barbara vetoed that idea early on.

We logged over 29,000 miles driving around the United States.

Our planning proved to be excellent. We were very well prepared.

Boz prepared a first-aid kit as well as a bag of assorted things. Pocket-sized tissues, Handi-Wipes, hand sanitizer, Advil, screwdriver, blister-sized Band-Aids, eye wash, travel alarm clock, and additional tapes for the recorder were all very important. We needed to have Visine Tears as it is a product that can be used daily while some eye washes are dangerous if used daily.

We lost only one thing on the entire trip -- my favorite feather pillow. Many motels have only foam pillows, so if you are a feather pillow person, be sure to take your own pillow. Marriott properties all have feather pillows, so we chose Marriotts on some nights for that very reason. We were very systematic in what we carried into the motel each night and how we kept our stuff in the motel rooms. It would have been really easy except for all the electronics -- two cell phone chargers, the digital camera charger, the laptop and its power cord/charger, and the travel alarm clock.

We should take jumper cables next time and have a dashboard-mounted compass.

We should have purchased the National Park Pass at the first national park we visited.

The beads were a MAJOR part of the trip. It's great to have some type of gift that you can give to people when traveling, and the beads were a nice little gift¡­and so much more. We ordered 70 dozen beads -- probably would have used 100 dozen if we had them from the very beginning. We encourage everyone to take "lucky beads" when they travel. You can order them at www.mardi-gras-beads.net. We bought 33" 6-style assorted metallic beads for $6.25 for a 10-dozen bag -- $37.50 for a 60-dozen case. You¡¯ll meet far more people; you'll have more fun; and you'll have a nice, inexpensive gift to present to those you meet.

We kept the information received from each state tourism office in file boxes in the back of the Cruiser. We pulled the appropriate file for each state as needed. This worked well. We had to leave those files at home when we were in the Porsche.

We took the plastic laundry bag from each room each night and used it to transport our dirty clothes from the room to the laundry bag in the car. We then used the bag to hold all the travel brochures for the previous day. We tossed each bag of travel brochures in a box, and then we shipped a box back to Atlanta every time it got filled. I believe we ended up with somewhere in excess of 500 pounds of printed stuff...and all that hotel shampoo.

The signs on our car attracted a lot of attention and enabled us to meet many people we would not have met otherwise. The beads served a similar purpose, as I was asked again and again about the beads¡­and I met far more people that I would have met otherwise. We also had shirts and caps with the Round America logo, and those caught the eye of a number of people and added to the number of people we probably would not have met otherwise. The combination of the signs, beads, shirts, and caps made meeting people easy; more often than not, people came to us.

We weren't signed up for all of the frequent customer programs with the various hotels and motels, so Boz got us signed up during the trip. We earned a number of free rooms from all the room nights for which we paid. We also tried to use American Express everywhere we could as we are on a program where each dollar earns points toward air travel or hotels.

It certainly helped to have a toll-free number to call with people to arrange sightseeing tours and activities in the tourist destinations that we visited. It helped to have a son in the business!

For the first half of the trip, we made hotel reservations a week or two in advance. For the second half of the trip, we ceased making reservations more than a day in advance. The problem with reservations is that you are then tied to a schedule, and that kept us from spending additional time where we would have liked to do so. It also caused us to be driving late into the night way too much of the time. On the next trip, we will not make reservations in advance -- except in Maine (where we could not get a hotel room).

Expandable waist bands are invaluable if you plan to eat a lot of pie.

Bill Windsor - Round America

Copyright 2008, Round America and William M. Windsor