Images captured on iPhone 11

This past Summer I had the amazing opportunity to go on a one-month long road trip with my best friend around the Southwestern United States. It was something we had both talked about doing for multiple years during College and something we were determined to make happen. And it did indeed happen! My friend Cole Kinser (Check out his Website here) and I met in Denver, Colorado. He lives in South Dakota and I was coming from Indiana. We dropped my car at a hotel for long term parking, packed up his truck, and headed forth on our grand adventure. First stop, Pine Colorado to camp and ride the famous Little Scraggy Loop. From here we went to Colorado Springs Colorado, Salida Colorado, Crested Butte Colorado, Fruita Colorado, Moab Utah (including Arches and Canyonlands National Parks), Bryce Canyon National Park, Zion National Park, Death Valley National Park, Yosemite National Park, back to Crested Butte, and lastly back to Denver/ Colorado Springs. I have individual itineraries for each location linked as well if you want a more in depth look to each location. New locations are being added regularly. 

The goal was to take as many pictures as possible and ride as many trails as our legs could handle! To make this a bit easier from a driving perspective, we split the trip into 2 sections. The first half of the trip was mountain biking focused and the second half photography focused. Of course, we slid each in throughout the trip, but this made planning each day a bit easier. We also agreed that since we were not on any real, must hit timelines, we would adjust our plan as needed while on the road. This way if we decided we wanted to stay somewhere longer or leave early, it wouldn’t be a big deal. 

After some amazing times, new experiences, and an amazing appreciation for places I had never experienced before, I want to share my thoughts on the road trip. All with the intent of helping plan your own road-trip.

This is the first part of a 3 part series. It is broken down by Preparing for a Road Trip, American Southwest Road Trip Destinations, and Post Road Trip Thoughts.. This part will discuss the planning side for a road-trip. Everything from choosing your locations to plotting a route to packing the gear.

Planning 

We spent hours trying to decide where we wanted go and what we wanted to do. So, we each started off listing off some of the trails we wanted to ride and locations we wanted to photograph. We then looked at the lists to see what we had that was overlapping. This then helped us narrow it down to the Southwest. From here we were able to determine what States had the most stuff we each wanted to see and do. We now had the general areas we wanted to go. From here we went to https://triptik.aaa.com/  to start planning out a route. There are numerous sites to plan a road trip, but we liked this one the best. It is free to use and allows you to add as many destinations as you want and save the route. This helped us narrow down the route significantly more by being able to see the driving distances and times from each location. Below is a screenshot of a few destinations along the route including mileage and driving time. The second image is a picture of the map showing the route itself. 

The next step for us was to document all this information somewhere that could be read a bit easier. We also wanted to be able to add additional information such as sleeping arrangements. We used the Dyrt Website for this and had decent success. Where it did take a bit of time to do this, using this method made planning each destination much easier. Below is a sample of what that looked like:

The final piece of planning for us was what to do with my car? We were planning to meet in Denver and transfer everything to my buddies truck to use for the trip. But that meant that figuring out what we were going to do with my car became the question. What was the answer? Long term parking is the answer. I learned while researching that many hotels offer long term parking in their parking lots for a small fee. This also means your car will be in a monitored parking lot and you typically get a steering wheel lock for a bit of added safety. These steering wheel locks are also registered with the Police which means if something happens, the Police will get an automatic report of the incident. To be specific I made reservations through Way to park my car at Towneplace Suites in Denver. It was $4.75 a day. My total ended up being $137.47 including taxes and fees. This seemed relatively inexpensive compared to other options. I highly recommend this method. It was super easy to do and I never had any concerns about my car.

Packing

Knowing what activities we were planning on doing made planning what all we needed a whole lot easier (obviously). Since 2 of us were going to be living out of my buddies' pickup truck for the duration of the trip, space was a significant factor in what we could bring. We decided to create another excel spreadsheet divided by category and labeled with who would bring what. This way we weren’t doubling up on all different sorts of gear and also keeping the truck as organized as possible (crucial when living in a tiny space). Below is a screenshot of an example of the spreadsheet we used to do this. Green dictates it is packed and no name assigned means both people bring if they want it. Obviously, pack for your own trip and for your own personal style. Some people may be able to get away with much less and others may need much more.

Once we met in Denver, we split the truck down the middle and kept our personal stuff organized in bins. We chose bins in order to ensure our stuff was protected from any potential water as well as making it easy to stack and organize. This made getting stuff in and out of the truck constantly very simple and worked very well overall. Dividing the bins based on their use was great too. For example, putting all camping gear in one bin so you can pull just that bin out to setup camp rather than digging through tons of different places, made the process much easier.

If you are using a truck as well for a road trip, I recommend placing all the “things” that don’t matter (or at least matters less) if they get wet. For example, keeping bike stands and tools, pots pans, and other cooking items, and items of the sort in the bed of the truck. Then keep more sensitive items such as your photography equipment, clothing, sleeping bag, computer, and other similar items in the cab of the truck. Since everything is in bins, everything in the bed of the truck should still be fairly resistant to water. Especially if there is a cover on the bed. But if it has been raining heavily, it isn’t a bad idea to open things up and let it air out when possible just to avoid potential damage to your belongings.

I hope you feel ready to tackle planning your first road trip now! I would also love to hear about how you plan for a road trip!

Click here to learn about the destinations we visited on our road trip!

For a full List of the Gear I use for adventures like this, check out My Gear page HERE

Happy Migrations Everyone!