How to Plan a Road Trip: The Checklist I Wish I'd Had

When I was 12, we drove up to Turner Falls in southern Oklahoma to go camping. My strongest memory of that trip is waking up to find our coolers turned over and all our food gone. We blamed a raccoon.

Nobody had planned for the raccoon.

Fast forward 28 years and I'm the one doing the planning. I've learned that a good road trip is mostly a few decisions made early, written down somewhere you can actually find them. So here's how I plan one now, step by step.

Pick the route and the pace

Start with where you're going and how many days you have. Then decide how many hours a day you're willing to sit in the car.

How many hours a day should you drive on a road trip? There's no official number. Most people are comfortable with somewhere around 4 to 8 hours of actual driving, and less if anyone in the car gets carsick. Add time for gas, food and bathroom stops, because a "6 hour" day is never really 6 hours.

Be honest here. If you plan 9 hours a day you'll arrive tired and cranky, and so will everyone else in the car. Ask me how I know (actually, don't).

Plan your stops and where you'll sleep

Once you know your daily range, mark roughly where each day ends. That's where you'll sleep. Then look for the stops in between: fuel, food, a park where you can stretch your legs for 20 minutes.

How far ahead should you book hotels? It depends on where and when you're going. Busy places like national parks, beach towns in summer and anywhere near a holiday can fill up months out, so book those first. Quiet stretches of highway on a weekday usually give you more room. If a place matters to you, book it early and keep the rest flexible.

If you drive an electric car, charging changes this step a lot. I wrote a separate guide on EV road trip planning for that.

Build a day-by-day itinerary

Now turn it into days. For each day, write down:

1. Where you start and where you end up
2. Roughly how long the drive is
3. Where you're sleeping, with the confirmation number
4. One or two things you actually want to see

That's it. What's the best way to plan a road trip itinerary? Keep it simple enough to read at a gas station with someone yelling in the back seat. A plan with 14 tabs and color codes is great until you need it in a hurry.

Leave some gaps too. Some of the best parts of any trip are the stops you didn't plan.

Set a road trip budget

How do you budget for a road trip? Break it into the big buckets and estimate each one:

• Fuel or charging (distance divided by your car's mileage, times a guess at prices along the way)
• Places to sleep
• Food, which is always more than you think
• Activities, entry fees and parking
• A little extra for the stuff that goes wrong

Then track what you actually spend as you go. It doesn't need to be fancy. You just want to notice on day 2, not day 7, that the snack budget is gone.

The road trip packing list

What should you pack for a long road trip? Beyond clothes, the stuff people forget is the stuff that saves you:

• Phone chargers and a car charger for everyone's devices
• Snacks and water within reach of the driver
• A small first aid kit and any medications
• Paper copies or screenshots of bookings, in case signal drops
• A pillow and a blanket for whoever isn't driving
• A trash bag. Seriously.

And if you're camping, lock up the cooler. Trust me on that one.

Keep the memories

This is the part I care about most, which is why I build what I build. The drive itself is half the story: the songs you played, the diner nobody wanted to stop at that turned out to be the best meal of the trip, the town with the weird name.

I made JourneyDeck for that. It's a private road journal for iPhone that keeps your drives and the music you played. It's a road journal, not a navigation app, so use whatever you like to get there and let it keep the story.

If you want everything, get the All Trips Bundle for $25. It's all four of my trip packs in one bundle: Road Trip, EV, Camping and Holiday. Bought separately they're $42, so you save $17. That covers this trip and probably the next three.

Or if you just want the one, my Road Trip Templates are 24 Canva designs for Instagram, $12 on my studio site. There's a trip cover, a countdown, a day-by-day plan, a route map and a trip recap as Stories, plus Posts for your favorite stop, best photo and the road trip playlist. They work in a free Canva account.

Free and paid templates to plan with

If you want somewhere to put all of the above, I made a free Notion trip planner. It's one Notion page for one trip, with a trip overview, itinerary, packing checklist and budget. It's free, and you can import it in a couple of minutes.

Then, when the trip is planned and you're actually on the road, the Road Trip Templates are there to help you share it.

Road trip planning FAQ

How many hours a day should you drive on a road trip?

There's no official number. Most people are comfortable with around 4 to 8 hours of actual driving a day. Add time for gas, food and bathroom breaks on top of that.

How far ahead should you book hotels?

Book early for busy places like national parks, summer beach towns and anything near a holiday, since those can fill up months out. Quiet weekday stretches of highway usually give you more room.

How do you budget for a road trip?

Estimate fuel or charging, places to sleep, food, activities and parking, then add a little extra for things that go wrong. Track what you spend as you go so you notice early if you're over.

What should you pack for a long road trip?

Chargers for every device, snacks and water the driver can reach, a small first aid kit and medications, offline copies of your bookings, a pillow and blanket, and a trash bag.

What's the best way to plan a road trip itinerary?

Write one short entry per day: where you start and end, roughly how long the drive is, where you're sleeping with the confirmation number, and one or two things you want to see. My free Notion trip planner works as a road trip itinerary template if you want one.

It's been a long time since Turner Falls, and I still haven't figured out how to plan for raccoons.

Where are you driving next?