Joe's Roadtrip

Sure it’s nice to think I’m going to hop in the car and just drive, itinerary-free, but having given myself a time limit of a summer I felt it’s necessary to plan out a rough route for this journey (keyword here being “rough”).  I want to be able to stay flexible to chase anything interesting that pops up along the way. And there lies one of the benefits of traveling solo with a flexible plan…if I find something that piques my interest along the way, I can simply just go there.

I wanted to be able to illustrate this somehow for everyone, but GoogleMaps and BingMaps limit you in plotting since they can only allow 25 or so total destinations on any given map. Then I decided I’d draw on a map the old-fashioned way (like so) using MS Paint, but drawing route lines based on existing Interstates and cities gets a little tedious, and probably more specific than I’d ever want to be.

But looking at the map of the US and Canada jogged my memory about those maps in history texts – the ones that showed how culture/religion spread across continents.  Those are approximations by historians, and I figured I could use a similar style to show my approximate route.  And here you have it:

A rough plan

I’m envisioning the trip in four distinct phases, hence the four colors of arrows.  The brown diamonds represent the start of the trip in Acworth, GA and the end of the trip in Endwell, NY. Here’s what the arrows signify:

• Blue Arrow = first leg of the journey – Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast
• Red Arrow = second leg of the journey – Midwest and West
• Green Arrow = third leg of the journey – Canada/Yukon Territory/Alaska
• Yellow Arrow = final and fourth leg of the journey – Northern U.S. and back home

It feels good to lay that all down and write it out.  Recently I only had an idea of what I was doing up through arrival in Texas, and the remainder of the trip was just a jumbled collection of ideas.  Though this plan is pretty approximate (doesn’t always exactly follow Interstate/major highway lines), it indicates the general direction of where I want to travel. Who knows, I may decide halfway along the way to shift things around, but the arrows still reflect what I’d like to see.

In another post, I’ll try to identify some of the planned highlights along these different phases of the trip.  The best part is I won’t be able to name them all, as I’m sure a lot of the highlights will be unexpected.

joe