There were a lot of reasons why I wanted to go on a summer road trip this year, and the Pacific Northwest was at the top of my life. To begin my research I first asked Microsoft Copilot for recommendations for a 2-week dog-friendly Pacific Northwest road trip and was surprisingly pleased with the preliminary recommendations. Then I read a few articles from Sunset, thrillist, and Trip Advisor on a few places I wanted to visit, to get some ideas. Finally, I went to the real experts, you guys! And asked my Instagram friends for recommendations on not-to-miss places in Oregon and Washinton. After that, I let the algorithm do its thing, and soon my ‘for you’ page was loaded with the top 10 lakes to visit in Oregon this summer, and ice cream shops in the Willamette Valley.

For each trip, I like to create an itinerary in a Google sheet with a correlating Google map for all our stops. I know this seems like a lot of work, but stick with me, it makes enjoying your trip a whole lot easier. For this trip, I had to create two maps because the driving directions within Google Maps only allow you so many layers, and I like to create one per day, but that’s just a personal preference.

I am a planner, but I also love to just explore a city on foot or on a bicycle and see what treasures are in store. My itineraries and maps allow me to ensure that I know where I’m going to be every day, and have an idea of how much I’m going to spend on the trip, but it’s not restrictive. I use my map as a guide and as we’re bumbling around I know when all the recommendations I’ve gotten from friends are nearby. This allows me to see and experience more, while still allowing things to be spontaneous and fun.

For my itinerary, I do the following categories:
A. Trip Length - This mostly helps me with my Instagram and Blog to track what day we’re on.
B. Day - of the week
C. Date - of the month
D. Transportation/Location - Where we’re driving to/from that day
E: Drive Time - How many hours of driving we’re tackling that day
F. Daily Activity - General outline of what we’re doing that day, a hike nearby, or the lake we’re visiting
G: Accommodation - Where we’re staying, whether it’s dog friendly, address, confirmation number and how many beds
H: Cost - Accommodation cost
I: Paid: A dropdown menu of whether I paid upfront or need to pay upon arrival.

I often try to pay some of my stays up front, especially if I’m planning a few months in advance. This allows me to spread out the cost of the trip over a month or two so it’s not overwhelming while we’re on the road.

On a separate sheet, I’ll usually keep track of expenses, although this isn’t necessary as I use Copilot and set tags for each trip so I can easily see all the expenses associated with each trip, even if they fall in multiple categories.

Google Maps is one of my favorite ways to plan a trip, and you can certainly make these are complex or simple as you’d like, but now that I’ve been traveling this way for many years, I can go back when someone asks for recommendations and share all the places I visited, liked etc.

I start by creating a new map for the trip, and the first layer has all the pins I’ll add to the entire map, in the order that we’ll run into them. They’re color coded and I use the icons to give a quick-look at what kind of stop it’ll be. For this particular map:

Blue pins are locations
Yellow hiking man are hikes
Red are all food related: restaurants, bars, wineries, ice cream shops or coffee shops
Purple are accommodations: airbnbs or hotels.
Green trees are parks or forests

Next I make a layer for the driving directions of each day ahead so we ensure we’re not driving too much on one day and not enough on another. By adding my locations to the map first, I can use my pins as locations for the driving directions.

Then you can click the 3 dots on each layer and select step-by-step directions for the total amount of miles between each stop, and how long it will take. I use this to populate column E on my itinerary.