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 our own dated photographs. Not from a database.

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, 298 places on the map, and 212 we have dated photographs from, 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 no dated record, 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.

If you would rather read than build, the same record is laid out season by season for the east coast, the mountain west and the Pacific coast.

Every way into the record, on one page

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 (212)

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

    Been, but no dated photos (36)

    We have been to these, but without a dated photograph we can't tell you the month, so we don't guess. They still count on the map and in the mileage.

    Places we can't date yet (50)

    Some we have been to without a dated photograph, some we have never been. Either way we can't tell you the month, so we don't guess. They still count on the map and in the mileage.

    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 212 places. If we say October for Shenandoah, it is because we drove Shenandoah in October 2019. Where we have no dated photos from a month, the planner says so instead of guessing.
    What happens if I add somewhere you have no dates for?
    It still counts in the route and the mileage, and it is labeled as a place we can’t date. Of the 298 places in the planner, 86 fall into that group. Some we have been to without a dated photograph, and some we have never been. 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, and a good deal higher 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.