Planning a cross-country trip, start to finish

A cross-country trip is really three trips stacked together: getting there, the wheeling, and getting home. Plan it in that order and it stops being overwhelming.

1. Pick the anchor and the dates

Start with the one thing that's fixed: the destination and the window. Everything else hangs off those. "Moab, second week of September" is enough to start building.

2. Build the drive out as its own segment

Lay down your home-to-destination route and break it into day-sized legs. Drop waypoints for overnight stops so you're not hunting for a motel at 11 p.m. Let the per-rig fuel numbers tell you where the long gaps between stations are.

3. Set up the basecamp

At the destination, switch to a basecamp segment: one place to sleep, daily loops out and back. Put the rental or campsite on the plan, let buddies claim beds, and add each day's trailhead as a waypoint.

4. Plan the daily loops

For each wheeling day, build a loop from basecamp. Keep them honest about distance and time, and remember there's no fuel on most trails, so top off in town first.

5. Build the drive home

Copy the shape of the drive out, reversed, as its own segment. A "return leg" seeds the endpoints for you, so you're not rebuilding from scratch.

6. Share it and roll

Invite the crew so everyone has the same plan, export the routes to your nav app for offline use, and you're set. The next time you think about logistics is when you're pulling out of the driveway.