How to plan a road trip

A distance on a map hides mountain roads, construction, and the forty minutes a scenic pullout will cost you, so add up the hours per leg before you commit to anything. That is the step that catches the day which looked reasonable and runs nine hours. The road trip planner puts drive time on the map for you.

Two five-hour days beat one nine-hour day followed by a short one, even when the total is the same. The long day takes your evening and most of the next morning's energy with it, since fatigue does not stay inside the day that caused it. Moab and Banff are where this lesson usually lands, because the drives between trailheads look short until you drive one.

Put the optional stops in a list next to the route and leave the route itself thin, because a day that runs short absorbs one of them. A day that runs long drops one and still feels like a success, so the list does the work a schedule cannot.

Park routes need one extra check, because several now run timed entry or shuttles in peak season, and those want reserving before the route is fixed. A Moab parks route and a Banff driving week are useful shapes if you want to see how the days pack.

Night one: land in Grand Junction or Salt Lake, drive in, sleep in town. Day two: one park loop, four to five hours including stops, back before dark. Day three: a different trailhead, or a rest morning and a short afternoon walk. Day four: a weather buffer, and then the drive out. That is a trip, whereas Arches plus Canyonlands plus a sunset drive plus a 9pm dinner is a day that dies at four in the afternoon.

Book the first and last night, and keep the middle hotel flexible if you think timed entry might shift the route. When to visit parks is the calendar, while this page is the driving math.

Lock the start, the end, and any night that sits next to a permit or a ferry, because those are the only pieces the route cannot bend around. Everything else stays optional: a scenic byway, a second trailhead, a town with a good lunch. Those live in a list beside the route, so the short day absorbs one while the long day drops one.

Six hours of driving plus a hike is a transit day with a walk stapled to it. If you think the map says it fits, add forty minutes for every scenic pullout you have no intention of skipping, then cut a stop. How many things per day on a road trip means one trailhead, because the driving already took the rest.

Gas, snacks, and a proper lunch stop belong in the hours you budget. Three of those turn a four-hour leg into five and a half, which is fine as long as you knew it was coming and did not also book a sunset.

The car is a place too, because some of the best hours on a road trip are the ones where nothing is scheduled and somebody has taken over the playlist badly. Leave room for those, since a route with no slack in it is a commute with better scenery.