road trip itinerary planning website

April 25, 2010 3:55 PM

Looking for a road trip itinerary planning website...

Mr. Booksherpa and I are planning a 3 week road trip this summer (coastal Maine/Atlantic Canada; see this question to help us out with that) and I'm looking for a website where we can enter our itinerary, plus some other features.

Here's the features I'd love to have: (Bold/italicized points are higher priority)

• ability to enter all of our individual stops
• time/distance between stops
• associate hotel/restaurant/shopping/event info with stops
• suggestions of places to visit at our stops as well as in-between
• keep trip private, but be able to share URL with specific people, preferably without them needing to make an account

I have looked at TripIt, and it appears to be completely useless for my needs. I couldn't see a way to enter multiple stops, and I don't need the website to gather my booking info in one place - I've got a spreadsheet for that. TripIt seems to be geared towards "fly to one place, do stuff, fly home from same place" trips, near as I can tell, not driving trips with multiple stops. Google Maps does some of what I need, but not all of it.

Anyone know a website that does what I need?

I recognize I am an anal and obsessive trip planner - but planning and anticipation is half the fun!

posted by booksherpa to travel & transportation (8 answers total)

Google Maps does all of your bold/italic items.
posted by Houstonian at 4:01 PM on April 25, 2010

Why can't you just enter all that information in plain text and share it with friends via Google documents?
posted by halogen at 4:06 PM on April 25, 2010

Houstonian, it does, but I've used Google Maps before for similar things and just found it clunky. It also doesn't print particularly pretty maps, which I should have mentioned in my list. It'd be closer to a gotta have than a nice to have.

Halogen, I could, but I'll need to use a website to figure out time/distance anyway, and it'd be nice to see what's nearby my route, if possible. Believe me, I have plenty of offline documents. :)
posted by booksherpa at 4:13 PM on April 25, 2010

AAA's TripTik might be useful.
posted by euphorb at 6:40 PM on April 25, 2010 [1 favorite]

Yeah, TripTik.

Used it last October to help me plan a driving trip from Long Beach, CA to Fort Collins, CO. When, on the morning we were to depart, the weather in the Rockies went to shit, and I needed to reroute through Arizona and New Mexico, TripTik made the re-jiggering quick and painless.
posted by notyou at 8:02 AM on April 26, 2010

Grr, unfortunately, TripTik doesn't do that last one.
posted by notyou at 8:03 AM on April 26, 2010

I used RandMcnally.com in 2003, and it did all the things you ask for except the sharing. I would not be surprised if they have added sharing by now. Check it out.
posted by soelo at 8:57 AM on April 26, 2010

TripTik proved to be what I was looking for. It handled multiple stops, and offered tons of suggestions for food and lodging nearby. My only complaint was that I entered all the stops, tried to save, and only then found out I needed to be logged in to save. Made an account, logged in, but couldn't update my trip page with the fact I had logged in now, and had to start over. Small complaint, though, overall. I decided the usefulness of the nearby places feature of TripTik is enough to overcome the lack of a sharing option.

RandMcnally.com was decent, but maxed out at 10 stops. I've got about a dozen, not including side trips and such.
posted by booksherpa at 2:46 PM on April 28, 2010