Road Trip to Yellowstone
The Trip
The number one item on my bucket list is a cross country road trip to Yellowstone. This trip includes a stop at the Badlands, Black Hills, Glacier and the Grand Tetons along with several days in Yellowstone. I plan to camp in the back of the CRV for up to a third of my nights of the trip. whenever I can and the weather is permitting.
Planning
In planning this trip, I have used several different tools for the road trip route and itinerary. I did not found any one tool that does everything that I needed. The tools that I used are:
Roadtrippers This site lets me lay out my route on the map with different stops, overnights and way-points. I used this site extensively as I was laying out my route and scheduling of the miles I would drive in a single day. I really liked that I could see my entire route on the map and then drill down to each days route. One of the nice features is that it will show me points of interests along the route. For example, I can see all of the tent camping spots within 15 miles of the route. I can see the itinerary as a list or as a route on the map. I did not use this tool for booking any reservations, as I was more comfortable with other tools. I wish this tool had some of the features of Tripit.com so that I could use it as my main site.
Tripit.com I used this site to upload my bookings for accommodations. This site is run by Concur and is extremely easy to use. One of the nice things about this tool is that you can forward a copy of your email confirmation and the system will automatically add it to your itinerary with all of the details of the booking. You can add extra details if needed and can print out your complete itinerary.
Excel I also used excel to generate a concise one page itinerary that I could share with the family.
VRBO, AIRBNB , Bookings.com, and Tripadvisors.com: I used all of these sites to research and reserve accommodations. Once I had a confirmation email, I would forward it directly to Tripit and it would, in most instances, automatically update my itinerary with all of the accommodation details including contact information and confirmation number.
AllTrails : I used this app to find good hiking trails near the area where I will be visiting. The app shows the ratings of each hike along with a description and difficulty level. You can also download a copy of the trail map and record you hike as well as document the hike with pictures. This is useful as you can view pictures of other users.
AllStays : I used this app to augment RoadTrippers to find the best campgrounds along my route. This particular app also shows places such as Walmarts and Costco where one can set up an RV/CRV for the night.
P
Hank Edwards
The Value of Experience 