Pre-planning a major road trip is a thing of beauty. Done well, every day is planned out for routes, managed travel distance, stops along the way, tickets for whatever you might need tickets for, each meal (of particular importance when food restrictions are in play), and accommodations. We started planning vacations this way when we visited New York City, mostly in fear that our group would not be effective at making “what should we do now” decisions when standing on the corner of 92nd Street and Broadway. So, we created a daily plan. We then expanded this approach to a 2016 West Coast Odyssey that took us from Seattle, down Highway 1 along the Oregon Coast, through the redwood forests to San Francisco, through Big Sur as far south as Los Angeles, out to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon, and then back through Death Valley, Lake Taho, Napa Valley, San Francisco, and Crater Lake in Oregon before returning to Seattle. A three-week 2000-mile journey for which each day was fully scripted. And executed flawlessly except for a failed Pacific Coast Highway exit off the 101 as we approached Los Angeles, causing us to miss the coast through Malibu. Instead, we got to experience LA traffic through the San Fernando Valley. And one other timing error about dinner at the Streamliner Diner on Bainsbridge Island across Puget Sound from Seattle that we won’t unbox. Not now, anyway.
This year, we planned an Atlantic Odyssey that originated in Montreal, Quebec, took us up the north shore of the St. Lawrence River to Baie Comeau, through New Brunswick, a quick visit to Prince Edward Island, the Cabot Trail, as far as St. Anthony’s at the northern tip of Newfoundland and then back through Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. We covered something like six thousand kilometres over twenty-three days. When there was a secondary route available, usually twisty roads between towns, we took it. If there was a hiking opportunity or other point of interest (including gift stores), we made allowances for it. When motel-style accommodations were available, that is what we booked. For each day, we knew where diet-friendly restaurants were and weren’t and had a default plan for each meal. The result was a vacation where all the decisions and preparations (such as booking accommodations and purchasing ferry tickets) were made beforehand. And we visited a lot of places and saw a lot of incredible stuff as a result. And didn’t miss a thing.
Speed-dating applied to cities, towns, and points of interest. This sort of vacation is not for everyone. Who knows, we may be the only people who do this. If only because it takes considerable pre-planning and documentation. The good news is that there are enough online resources to meet every planning requirement. Map applications (we use the one that rhymes with “boogle”) are a great example, where the ability to explore, determine routes, set destinations, identify restaurants and points of interest, and locate and evaluate accommodations is literally at one’s fingertips. In our case, for example, we used saved route links to load that day’s navigation. We also carried links to restaurant menus and accommodations on our phones. Every detail nailed down. As an integral part of the planning, a guidebook is created that documents everything in the plan, including pictures and descriptions of the places we would be visiting and staying, allowing the travellers a detailed look at the days ahead. All the stuff to look forward to because we know what that stuff is.
The planning investment, something like ten hours per travel day, is undertaken for two reasons. The first is to optimize our vacation experience, keeping in mind both the purpose of the vacation and that there may only be one shot to visit these places. The second is to remove the burden of figuring out stuff on the fly, allowing the driver to fully enjoy the drive while keeping the car on the road.
Then there is the issue of all the pictures that are taken during the trip sitting on our camera phones. Our approach, using online services, is to create a photo book that captures not only all the images, but the story of what we discovered and our experiences along the way. A significant undertaking, but one that burns the detail of our adventure into memory. And it will be brought out many times, the way photo albums used to tell the story of our lives before they became digital files on our phones. Keeping the memory of a memorable Atlantic Odyssey alive and joining the photo book that captured our West Coast Odyssey.
