A Good Way To Plan The Best Road Trip Of Your Whole Dang Life
HOW TO BE AN ADULT
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The call of the open road. Few can resist its charms. Thanks to a full century of books, films and music romanticizing the act of just getting into a car and going somewhere it might be tempting to just do that.

And you certainly can! Far be it from us to deny your autonomy as a grown adult person. But after chatting with Joe Tonelli,1 Dante DeFelice and Alyssa Mazzeo, three friends who went on a two-week cross country road trip last September and lived to tell the tale, it's clear that flying by the seat of your pants is not the smartest way to go about things.

With their help and hard-won knowledge, we've assembled this humble guide to recreational rubber tramping.

Pick The Right People

It sounds obvious, but bears repeating: Going on a road trip requires you to sit in a car for long stretches of time, so you want to make sure the people who are in that car are ones you're very comfortable with.

"You don't want to be stuck in a car with people you can't tell off, or yell at or scream at and get that release," says DeFelice. "You want to be with people who have your back, and know your tics and know what's going on."

"I would not go on a road trip with anyone you have reservations about," says Tonelli. "Oh you just made a new friend at college? Maybe don't go on a road trip with them. They may seem nice, but you need to know you can be open with this person."

Just as quality of companions is important, so is the quantity. For Tonelli, DeFelice and Mazzeo, they found that three people was kind of perfect. "If I got in a tiff with Joe, I could talk to Alyssa or if Joe and Alyssa got in a tiff I could intervene," says DeFelice. "I really liked having the tricycle throughout the trip."

Figure Out Where To Go

It's easy to plug in two addresses on either side of the country and have Google Maps figure out a route; it's much harder to find cool and interesting places along the way.

"Each of us had a few places that we definitely wanted to go to and then we kinda filled in the blanks from there," says Mazzeo. 

To keep track of all this, the three set up a Google document to keep track of places they wanted to see, and to start sketching out a rough itinerary — organizing the various spots into a list and working out the driving time in between each.

As a general rule of thumb, Tonelli recommends keeping driving segments to under 8 hours at at time, while also just automatically adding in at least two hours to that driving time for pit stops. If you have any gaps larger than that, consider adding in another stop — breaking one 16-hour day into two 8-hour days, or slotting in larger breaks for bigger drivers — turning a 10-hour driving day into a 12-hour day. 

"You're not in an airplane, you don't have everything there," says DeFelice. "Someone is going to want to go to the bathroom, someone is going to want to stop somewhere."

Nailing down the itinerary early will also help with booking time-sensitive stuff, like a nice Airbnb or popular camping spot. "We knew we wanted to camp at the Grand Canyon, and we knew spots were going to fill up, so we got that stuff done early," says Tonelli.

Additionally, and again this might sound obvious, but don't go back the same way you came. That's a surefire way to really dread the whole second half of your trip.

Lastly, the trio recommends hitting the road in late Summer or early Fall. "We went in September, which is like a sweet spot for road trips," says DeFelice "It's right after the summer rush, and it's not too too hot and you don't have to worry about snow — the worst driving condition was rain. "

Set A Budget

How much you can spend will dictate where you stay, what you're driving and what you'll be eating. You can drive across country on the cheap — the trio spent around $1300 each for their cross-country trip — but you'll just need to be smart about it.

One way to save money, oddly, is to look into renting a car. All three agree that renting a car was an extremely good decision, compared to driving something that was already available to them.

"You don't wanna have to worry," says DeFelice. "If you're renting a brand new car, everything is going to work in it."

Outside of the peace of mind, renting conceivably saved them money in the long-run. "We were getting such good mileage and we couldn't fricking believe it," says Tonelli. "The amount it cost to fill up the tank versus how far we were going, it was so much better than driving a 5 or 10-year-old car."

Outside of the transportation, lodging is the biggest cash drain. On the cheap end, you have camping. "If you like camping, then you should camp," says Tonelli. "There's always grocery stores and camping is like $20 a night."

A step up from that is a hotel room, which with the going nightly rate somewhere between $50 to $100 per night, can add up over a lengthy trip. That said, they aren't without their benefits: Chief of which, the continental breakfast.

"We did a lot of Airbnb's, but hotel rooms were the better option, because they have the breakfast in the morning," says Mazzeo. "You can take some of that with you if you're sneaky, and save a couple bucks."

This brings us to the third cash sink: Food. While you can sleep in parking lots and drive your own car, you still have to feed yourself. Sure, you can just stop at restaurants and rest stops and the infrastructure of American's Interstate Highway system will probably be enough to sustain you, but it'll be costly, and you'll probably feel awful. The trio found that just stocking up at a local grocery store was a cheaper, and more healthy option.

"Instead of paying $10 for lunch at a fast food place, you just pull over and make a sandwich," says Tonelli. "We weren't eating crap-ass burgers the whole time. We had vegetables and fruit and it saved us a lot."

Enjoy The Ride

So you have your pals, your trip route is set and you've got enough cash socked away to keep you going. Now you just have to enjoy the ride. Sometimes this is easier said than done. Sitting in the car for hours at a time day after day can get tedious, but there are a few things you can do to make it enjoyable.

"You want to get into the mindset that this is it. The road trip is the trip," says DeFelice. "It wasn't like, 'Can't wait to get to California.' You're on the road. This is it."

"In some ways, the car is your home," says Tonelli. "You're spending, potentially, 8 to 10 hours in there per day. You want to be as comfortable as possible in your home." 

So clean out the car regularly. Make sure you always have enough water and snacks. Ensure that everyone has enough space to stretch out. Put on a podcast.

"Even if you've never tried out podcasts, or even if you hate them, when you're on the road and there's nothing else to do, podcasts just make the time go so fast," says DeFelice. "Music is great and everything, but listening to music for 8 hours straight is just rough."

While road-tripping demands long hours in the car, Tonelli strongly suggests that you avoid driving through the night. "Driving straight through the night takes a lot more out of you," he says. "There's nothing to look at, you're obviously getting tired, and it takes more mental energy to just drive."

To that end, even when driving during the day, the trio had a rotation going — someone would drive, someone would be a co-pilot and someone would just be chilling in the back seat. 

"We kind always tried to have a conscious co-pilot," says DeFelice. "Someone who was in the passenger seat that I could bounce off of or navigate for me."

You should also try and record your journey in some way that's not Instagrams. Mazzeo collected things from every place they visited and assembled them into a scrapbook. DeFelice recorded daily audio logs. 

"Don't be afraid to buy a souvenir," says Tonelli.

"Yeah you'll be in California and you'll wish you bought the thing in Tennessee and now you're not there anymore," says Mazzeo.

To find those weird roadside attractions Tonelli used the Roadside America app, which is just basically a huge database of things to see and do tied to a GPS map. You have to pay for it — $2.99 for the app and $1.99 per region, or just $5.99 for the whole country — but hey, don't be afraid to buy a souvenir, right?

Lastly, don't do anything illegal. "Drive the speed limit. We didn't get any speeding tickets," says Joe "Obey the law, for a fun time."

More How To Be an Adult

Buy Nice Clothes

Go Birding

Make Coffee

For more important guides on being a grown-up, check out our archive.

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Full disclosure: Joe works at Digg and when he got back from his roadtrip he shared a photo album of his journey with the Digg staff. It was very delightful.

<p>Steve Rousseau is the Features Editor at Digg.&nbsp;</p>

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