The first trip (by trip, I mean more than 2-hour drive, which excludes San Francisco, point Reyes, etc.) we did together was to 17 miles. We didn't do any homework before going there. We drove along the sea with Strongy. It was freezing. The biggest discovery on that trip was Gang's infatuation with almond. I brought a can of nuts to snack on the way, and Gang kept asking me to feed him with almond when he was driving.
The next one was much longer. When my mum visited us in the summer, we went on a road trip to Las Vegas and then Los Angeles. This was the first time that I actually did plan a trip before setting off. The first step was to read other people's traveling blogs and to figure out where we would like to go. After determining the route, I started bidding hotels along the way, making sure each hotel was no more than 300 miles apart to avoid fatigue driving: for example, we stayed in Bakersfield in central California after visiting the Hearst Castle and left the rest 200 miles to Las Vegas for the next day. It was a great trip. I served as a tour guide with my cheat sheets which included highlights of scenic sites, attractions and restaurants.
After this nine-day trip, Gang and I took several other road trips to San Diego, Mono lake, Seattle, Grand Canyon and Arizona. Last summer, we stayed in Geneva and took several trips to our little neighbors - Lyons, Marseilles, Interlaken, Zurich, Lucern; and a longer train trip to Amsterdam, Bruxelles, Schloss Neuschwanstein, Munich, Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan. This year, we also rented a car and drove to Gettysburg and Lancaster in PA from Princeton, and later took a 10-day trip with mum and Joop to Niagara Fall, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and DC. I printed a 16-page trip agenda with two appendixes for my family, but I think only Joop was patient enough to read it.
Trip planning helps avoid some unnecessary spending. Even the same hotel can be priced differently on different websites, and some hotels have good promotions during a certain season while some overcharge customers during weekends. The prices of renting a car also vary across companies and pick-up/return locations. Booking things in advance reduces costs and saves time. When we were traveling in Vatican, I felt so lucky to have reserved tickets for the Vatican Museums and avoided queuing up for hours. Trip planning also provides a general flavor of the places I'm about to visit. Cities are more or less the same, but the stories behind them are quite different. If you're more interested in history and culture, trip planning can be very helpful in revealing the stories behind and spice up your journey. For national parks, you may want to better arrange your time and make sure you won't miss some highlights.
It's true that trip planning can take a long time. But I also find myself getting part of the joy in traveling from planning the trip. All those introductions about new places arouse my curiosity and make me more excited at the coming trip. Sometimes it's annoying to decide between too many choices when facing a limited time (like in Rome). Hum, maybe I should make this my job.
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