Built from the road

It started with a road trip

Planning a road trip, in particular is both very exciting and, sometimes, stressful. Every trip involves the same routine — pasting destinations into notes, figuring over which stops to prioritize, and hoping the driving times added up. Sitting in the car for 6-8 hours every day, sometimes unexpectedly, sucks after a while. Hours of plugging locations into Google Maps, removing locations, adding them back, etc. can be a painful experience, and plans need to change on the fly.

Wait, when did we go to Moab?

On top of all the planning and taking the actual road trip, it's hard to look back and remember exactly what you did. Relying on photos and old Google docs to retrace your steps is doable, but it's rarely something you go back and update after the fact. Days constantly change and those docs soon become inaccurate and confusing for future use.

Surely, someone has already built this

Good news, they have! It's got all the bells and whistles, the ability for you to plan the entirety of your trip all in one service. From hotel reservations to plane tickets to leaderboards on travel history, there are extensive options depending on what you might need.

Wanderlog was the overwhelming recommendation from folks, and it did have everything we could possibly need. We tried using this to plan both future and "older" trips, just to see how it went. Strangely, it just felt overwhelming. We didn't really need to book hotels, enter in flight data, and basically plan the entire trip in this one app. Nice, but just too much for us.

What actually matters on our road trips?

Trips through national parks, winding coastal highways, and volcanic landscapes in Iceland all shaped what we needed from an app. Day-by-day stop planning because some days are short hikes and others are all-day drives. Travel times, traffic status, and easy organization options because plans constantly change. Photo uploads because it's nice to look back and see our experience at each stop. A history of these incredibly important memories that we can maybe relive again someday.

So we built what we needed

Road Trip Planner is the app that came out of those experiences. It's built for people who like to plan their trips with some structure but don't want to wrestle with overcomplicated tools. Map out routes, organize stops by day, invite others to collaborate, and keep everything in one place. Plans change, it doesn't need to be a stressful experience.