You have a little stirring in your heart. Maybe it has crossed your mind a couple of times to do a road trip. Take your car and hit the open road. Or rent an RV and stop at National Parks along the way!

Because here is the deal, Matt and I love a good road trip. Two years ago we rented an RV and traveled the North and South islands of New Zealand with our three boys. It was magical. Read more about that trip here.

Traveling through the Western part of the United States had always been on our dream list and it was FINALLY going to happen this summer. The summer of 2020. Until, well, until, stay at home orders and quarantines came into play. Everything all planned out and week by week we check to see the status of what is to come. 

Originally we were set to camp in the RV and home swap for 3 months. We had 7 homes reserved where the owners would stay in our house and we would stay in theirs and then camp the rest of the time.

We are not sure how much of this trip we will actually get to take but the big question is always, how do you plan for something like this?

I am here to tell you…..planning is no biggie. I am not a fancy or complicated person. You will see! This is exactly what we did to plan for our almost year long trip around the world too. So it works.

In 2 weeks, we went from deciding to do it → to having our route picked out, home swaps confirmed and campsites reserved!

This is how:

1. Start a list. Right this very second, of all the places you have ever thought of that you want to visit. (I use the notes section in my Iphone.) Anytime someone tells you about a cool vacation they took or secret spot they camped at add it to the list. 

   * Matt and I have pages and pages of places we want to go. It helps your brain “not hurt” when starting to come up with where you actually want to go and devise a plan.

2. Narrow down your timeframe. Look at your schedule and decide (with as much flexibility as possible) how long you have. 

   *We planned on taking 4-6 months over the late spring, summer and early fall. 

3. Evaluate if that length of time is reasonable.

* Upon further discussion we decided that 3 months was a more realistic timeframe. It was our first time squishing all 5 of us in a 2 person RV for a longer period of time. It sounded more doable than 4-6 months.

4. Pick your stops. Look at all the places you want to visit from your list above and decide on an area that makes sense and that you really want to go to! I scan the list and decide on my #1 and try to plan around that.

*Based on the weather and scenery, the Western portion of the US made the most sense for us. Here were all the places on our list that fit the bill. See nothing fancy- just write it all out!

5. Use Google Maps. (This is my favorite part!) Go into Google Maps and start a multi-destination trip. I find this is easiest to do on a computer but you can do it on your phone too. Start by entering in your starting point and anyone of the destinations on the list. Then click the “…” in the upper right hand corner and go to “add stop.” Then pick another destination on your list and continue this until you have a general outline of what your trip could look like. Play around with it to eliminate back tracking and unnecessary driving by moving the stops around in the destination list.

6. Zoom in on the map and look at the places you want to go. Is there anything cool you are missing? We were driving right by Boise and didn’t have it on our list so we added it. 

*We brought the kiddos in at this point and all started dreaming and researching.

7. Critically think about what makes sense. Are there any spots that are so far out of the way it doesn’t make sense? How far is it in between destinations? If it a 500 mile drive you may want to break it up with another spot.

7. Grab a big, erasable whiteboard. Plot those destinations on it. Still using Google Maps determine the driving time from each destination and how long you might be able to stay at each spot to meet your timeframe. Add it all to the board. This is your semi-final route. YEAH! High fives.

8. Decide what your accommodations will be. We knew we wanted to use a combination of home swapping and camping in the RV. 

9. Plan for home swapping. We love home swapping. I have one short and sweet post about it here but will definitely be writing more as we do this frequently. We use homeexachange.com. At this point, I reached out to any home exchange houses available in the areas we had on our whiteboard and inquired on if they were available around the times we wanted. Within 10 days I had secured 7 homes that aligned with our route. (Homeexchange.com has a “points” component to it, which is why we use it over others. Feel free to use our referral link to automatically receive points when you sign up- click here.)

10. Fill in the rest with camping. Matt took over at this point and scouted out beautiful and off the beaten path campsites for the rest of the time. We chose to do it this way as there is more flexibility with the dates of camping than home swapping so it made sense. We secured those dates and were ready to go!

If you have never planned a trip like this the key is to just get started. It seems like a lot of planning and coordinating but once you dive in it always seems to work itself out! 

Obviously, in these times do what you feel most comfortable with in regards to travel. We are waiting for the world to open back up and are excited to share how it all plays out. xoxo- Jess