An artifact of master-planning a 5 day road trip with JZ, JM, and JC

Pre-plan

• Choose friends that are easy going
• Call everyone in the group and get the information you need. For the most part, more constraints are actually helpful to narrow down the scope of activities
  • Top 1-2 destinations to visit
  • Food restrictions/preferences
  • Icks, pet peeves, fears, dislikes
  • For drivers, how much they're willing to drive in a given day
• Jot down the archipelago of destinations and start mapping

Plan

• Share the planning document with everyone early for transparency
• Source pre-planned road trips from various blogs for location inspiration and useful warnings. Read 3-4 extensively for the best big picture idea of what is most suitable for your group
• Find fun things to do using these websites and asking friends
  • Atlas Obscura
  • Make my drive fun
• Predict a few things throughout the day
  • Energy levels - Critical to alternate between intense, packed days and more relaxed ones
  • Hunger - You're not you when you're hungry
  • Cleanliness - Especially relevant for outdoors enjoyers and beach goers
• Sketch out a daily itinerary. Budget for driving AND parking time. Also consider at what points you will need gas
• Make key bookings for hotels and car rentals first. Inelastic goods first, or your wallet will experience the worst
• Book non-refundable hotels with absolute caution
  • Background check by appending "reddit" onto your search and reading reviews - both about the area and hotel itself.
• Pointsmaxx while making bookings, also look into credit card specific deals you may unknowingly have access to
• Make a packing list and delegate who is packing what. Things you'll likely need are:
  • Health-related - First aid kit, sunscreen, bug spray, baby wipes, and hand sanitizer
  • Food-related - Utensils, cooler, ziploc bags
  • Misc - Garbage bags, sitting towel, waterproof speaker, cables

Experience

• Snack run with whole group at beginning is great for morale boost
• Let different people take aux. Music fatigue is also possible. In that case, passively playing a podcast or listening to the sounds of the road can be nice
• The person sitting shotgun should aim to be awake as much as possible. Swap out people if necessary, but really nice to keep the driver company
• Very fun to have people take turns giving deep dives on their life, or lessons on things they know a lot about
• Hide important things in the trunk. Even when you think you don't have to
• Save your receipts and add them to a communal Splitwise at the end of every day. Bookkeeping is infinitely easier when all expenses are recent
• The itinerary is ultimately a guide. Following it to the tee for the sake of it will result in less fun and more stress for all

Post-Experience

• Get everyone to dump photos into shared album. If it isn't done in the first week it'll likely never happen
• Start thinking about your next :)