Several of you have wondered how we plan our trips. I need to say I enjoy the planning but as soon as we get on the road I wonder why we even try to plan. People tell us about places to visit, roads are closed, weather changes our plans etc. I still plan.
The first step is to determine where we want to go. OK, this year Alaska. Next is when we are going to leave and when do we want to be in Alaska.
Next, we think about a general route. For Alaska, we felt we had 3 routes: West coast, straight up through Utah and Idaho or a little east through Wyoming and Montana. Initially, we were going through Wyoming and Montana. Since we were delayed a month those plans changed. Utah and Idaho it is. As a change of pace, we will go up the west side of the Rockies vs. the more traditional Icefields Hwy and through Banff and Jasper.
I have collected thousands of articles over the years and have put them in Evernote(a database program). I am able to ask Evernote to give me all articles on Utah(as an example). I then lightly scan each article to see if there is anything of interest. If there is I make note of the town and interesting point on a spreadsheet.
Next step is to clean up the spreadsheet(lots of duplicates). I then sort by town and start marking a paper map where each town is that we might be interested in and each scenic drive.
Once everything is marked up I have a good idea where we might base camp so we can see an area. We will generally spend 4-6 days in one location and go in a different direction each day. We always need to plan a day for food shopping and laundry at least once a week.
No comments:
Post a Comment