Seeing as it’s less than six months until we start our 50 state road trip, Shae and I sat down last week to do some more planning for the first year of the trip.
And you know what? It’s really hard!
We’d already planned the order of the first ten states we’d be visiting in year one, but even that’s had to change after some of our research.
Here’s what happened and why it can be so hard to plan for full-time travel.
When To Visit States
There are all kinds of factors we’re taking into account for planning when to visit each state. We don’t want to be in Florida in the height of summer, nor in North Dakota in the depths of winter.
Avoiding states like Kansas and Oklahoma during tornado season would be ideal, while there are other states we want to visit at a certain time of year due to activities that’ll be going on (e.g. the Goat Derby in Ohio in May).
There are other states we want to visit twice at different times of the year. For example, we’ll be visiting Colorado at the end of year one to experience some winter activities. We’ll also be heading back at another point during the trip when the weather’s nicer for hiking, whitewater rafting, etc.
Cost
Speaking of when to visit states, one of the changes that came about last week was where we’ll spend a few weeks in May 2018.
The original plan was to spend three weeks in Rhode Island. It’s a small state, so we’d be able stay in the same place the entire time as everything’s within a two hour drive. That’d be nice as we’ll have been moving nearly every week of the road trip prior to that.
When looking at accommodation though, visiting Rhode Island in May is expensive. Whether staying in hotels or somewhere booked on Airbnb, we’d have more than blown our daily budget on accommodation alone, even before taking into account gas, food, activities, etc.
So Rhode Island was out, but we still wanted a small-ish state that could be done in three weeks.
Enter Vermont.
Doing some research, there are plenty of great cabins available for renting off Airbnb that are reasonably priced. Plus it means we get to visit Ben & Jerry’s in the first year 🙂
Serendipity vs Planning
As an INTJ, I like to have everything in order and plan stuff so that I know what’s going on.
At the same time, there’ll be so much on the road trip we won’t know about until we get there. We’ll see road signs for random activities, find Mom & Pop restaurants, get recommendations from locals, etc.
We therefore need to try balancing our planning with serendipity.
Other Events
There’ll be other events that crop up during our road trip that might mean our plans need to change, which is also something that happened last week.
February in year one (2018) will be spent in Georgia, but Shae will be coming back to Virginia the weekend of February 23-25 for the 3rd annual Hampton Roads Mom Prom. We’d been due to spend a few days in Savannah over that period, so it’d mean she’d miss what would likely prove to be a fun city to visit.
We’ve therefore rearranged the order of the places we’re visiting in Georgia that month. We’re now planning on staying in Atlanta from February 11-26 – that way we’ll still get to spend more than a week there together and Shae won’t have to miss out on stuff.
When To Book Accommodation
This is one of the hardest parts of all. We’re on a tight budget, so we need to reduce our accommodation costs as much as possible.
Sometimes that’ll mean booking Advance Purchase rates to save money, but those are non-refundable and so aren’t helpful if our plans change. Booking refundable rates or at the last minute will provide more flexibility but it costs more.
Other times, hotel category changes mean that we’ll want to book hotels sooner rather than later. For example, I’d booked us into a TownePlace Suites in Atlanta from February 3-18 using points before Marriott changed it from a category 2 hotel to category 3, thereby requiring more points.
I’ll need to cancel that reservation now that our Atlanta dates have changed. However, that means if we want to stay at the same hotel it’d now cost more points due to the category change.
Then there are other factors like special promotions such as IHG PointBreaks. This is a list of hotels that only cost 5,000 points per night and the list gets changed every three months.
We’re planning on staying in a lot of hotels on the PointBreaks list as we’ll have ~400,000 IHG Rewards Club points at the start of the road trip. The ever-changing list makes it harder to plan, but it provides such great value that it’s worth waiting for.
The Solution
So what’s the solution for all these challenges?
Unfortunately there isn’t one.
We’re therefore going to have to strike a balance between trying to plan things while also being flexible. We’ll no doubt make mistakes along the way, but that’ll hopefully provide lots of interesting stories for you to read!
Your Experiences
How do you prefer to travel? Are you someone that likes to plan everything in advance? Or do you prefer to make no plans, allowing serendipity to take over or to take advantage of last minute deals?
We’d love to read about your experiences and preferences in the comments below.
Caryl Dotson says
I just started following your journey but I am really enjoying your blog and excited to follow your 5 year trip!! I see you have really racked up a lot of IHG points. Do you have any tips on how you were able to acquire so many points?
stephen says
Hi Caryl,
Thanks for following along! There are a few ways we got so many IHG points:
1) Shae and I both have the IHG credit card. Although we don’t use it for regular spending, I think we both signup up when it came with an 80,000 point bonus.
2) IHG frequently run the Accelerate promotion which can earn you a ton of bonus points – more on that here https://nohomejustroam.com/hotel-hacking-how-a-54-dollar-hotel-stay-earned-us-seven-free-nights/
3) They also ran a promotion last year where you could mail in postcards and earn 500+ points for each one. For less than $50, you could earn almost 50,000 IHG points – more on that over at Frequent Miler http://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/2015/11/13/more-than-47000-ihg-points-for-more-than-46-and-a-cramped-hand/
4) We also sometimes stay in IHG hotels which earns us points in the “normal” way!
Caryl Dotson says
Thank you so much!! My husband and I both have IHG cards. I am going to be paying a lot closer attention to their accelerate challenges with all this great information.
Lisa says
And now I know about the goat derby, I must find a way to get there. You may already know, but Cincinnati has a huge Oktoberfest (largest outside Munich, but still 1/100th scale). We went a few years ago and it was a lot of fun.
Have you considered staying in cabins in state parks? They have some pretty nice ones that usually rent by the week, but often cheaper than a hotel (not necessarily cheaper than points and cash, but cheaper than an outright paid stay) and many allow pets. Vermont, for example: https://vtstateparks.com/cabins.html
stephen says
I didn’t know about the Cincinnati Oktoberfest – we might have to swing back through Ohio in the fall one year for that.
We’ve thought about staying in cabins in some places. Vermont’s one of the first states we’ll be visiting; we’d already found a couple of great places on Airbnb but I’ll take a look at their state parks too in case there’s anything better – thanks!