MOORE MOMENTUM 2024

Trip Planning By Don Alley

We’ve all watched our favorite YouTubers on the road, with scenic vistas around every bend and drone footage rivaling the best Hollywood movies As the day fades to evening we’ve seen 5-star meals cooked and shared with great friends over an epic campsite view and an amazing campfire. The night rings out with emotion filled stories of the day’s exploits and the laughter marking their camaraderie. Not able to make these trips our full time occupation, we nonetheless long for that sense of exploration, that feeling of discovery, the company of minded friends, and the bonds formed with new people as the anticipation of our travels are unerringly replaced with our sense of accomplishment. Many things go into planning a trip so we can make all this happen, so let’s talk about that transition from dadchair to driver’s seat: Trip Planning

Where do we go?

The first thing we ask ourselves is “Where should we go?”. The reality is we’ve all seen hundreds of cool places in these videos, and want to go there ourselves. Sometimes we see interesting destinations in a news article or in different genres of media. We have many avenues of input for information. We just need to accumulate it in a meaningful way before it slips into the march of our day

Make your to-do & must-see list

The trick is to simply write down the things we see, the places we want to go, and the experiences we want to have, as we are introduced to them. How we write them down is key, though. My preference is to use my usual To-Do List on my phone We probably all have such a list in one form or another. An old Franklin Planner, the task list on our phones, sending a text to ourselves, whatever. Just make sure it's easily accessible and there are no “laziness barriers'' to adding to it. Post It notes on your desk or the dry erase board on the fridge isn’t good for this; you’ll forget to add it Whatever the mechanism, make a spot where you can start to accumulate these ideas.

After a time, you’re going to have quite a list That’s the goal Now we need to turn our list into usable data. Since most of us aren’t doing adventure travel full time, we are working within a budget and some time constraints In other words, we’re using vacation days that we need to maximize.

Turn your list into useable data

The way to turn our list of destinations into usable data is to represent them geographically. So, take that list, and make a Google Map, or a Gaia folder, or similar. I use Gaia for this because of its versatility. The important thing is you can see where these are. During this step, if you have absolute must-do favorites, using a waypoint marker system with priority helps Red for “I definitely want to do that” and blue for “That’d be cool”, for instance. This doesn’t have to be anything more than a set of waypoints right now. The important thing is they are in a single folder that you can turn on and off as needed.

Once you’ve accumulated some ideas, there’s a good chance you’re going to see some destinations clustered on the map. Whether it be trails in Utah, mountain roads in Colorado, or backcountry travel in the woodlands of Michigan, you’re likely to have enough destinations to fill that 2 week vacation you’ve got coming to you. And, if you’re fortunate enough to have made adventure travel a full time endeavor, you already know that exploring clustered points of interest gets you maximum content with minimum travel.

Read the full article here for more travel planning tips and to get access to Don's spreadsheet and graph.