The Planner

Plan Your Route

Build a road trip across the States and we'll tell you the month to drive it — from eight years of dated photographs, not from a database. Real stops, real seasons, and an honest answer where we have never been.

Most trip planners will recommend anywhere. That is what makes them useless: a tool that has an opinion about every road in America has never driven any of them.

This one only knows what we know. Eight years of photographs, 287 places on the map, and 163 we have actually stood in — with the month and the year we were there. Build a route and it will tell you when to drive it, which of the places we rate fall along the way, and roughly what you have taken on. Where we have never been, it says so, and you can decide what that is worth.

Add a few places and it starts working. Nothing is saved anywhere but your own browser, and the link at the bottom carries your route so you can send it to whoever is coming with you.

Map of the United States with all 48 continental states highlighted as visited

Or start from one of ours: the canyon run, the coast, the mountains.

Your route

    Nothing on it yet. Add a place from the list below.

    Places we have been (163)

    Every one of these carries dates. Add one and the planner can tell you when we were there.

    Places we have not been (124)

    On the map, in the mileage, and carrying no opinion of ours. We would rather show you the edge of what we know.

    Questions we get asked

    How do you know the best month to drive a route?
    Because we were there. Every recommendation comes from the dates on our own photographs across eight years and 163 places — if we say October for Shenandoah, it is because we drove Shenandoah in October 2019. Where we have never been in a month, the planner says so instead of guessing.
    What happens if I add somewhere you have never been?
    It still counts in the route and the mileage, and it is labelled as somewhere we have not been. Of the 287 places in the planner, 124 fall into that group. We would rather show you the edge of what we know than quietly recommend a place on somebody else’s say-so.
    Is the mileage accurate?
    It is a floor, not a figure. Distances are straight lines between stops, so real road miles always run higher — usually 15 to 30 percent on a mountain route. Use it to spot a 400-mile day you did not mean to plan, not to budget fuel.

    The eight years this is built on are on the map, drive by drive, and sorted by season on month by month.