The software we ultimately settled on for managing our trip is MyScenicDrives. We’ve built our trip in two sections: the trip from the Bay Area to Boston and the trip from Boston back to the Bay Area. It could have all been done as one trip but, since we are taking a one week break in Boston, we really see this as two trips. MyScenicDrives can give us advice on scenic drives along the way, which is a nice perk. It allows me to put in my estimated MPG and average gas price and then it calculates the cost of the trip. To date, the trip from the Bay Area to Boston is 7,179 miles, about 160 hours 7 minutes of driving, about 46 days, and $1,225.60 of fuel. The trip from Boston to the Bay Area is 5,678 miles, about 116 hours 48 minutes of driving, about 37 days and about $968.87 of fuel. In addition to this great information, MyScenicDrives allows me to download the trip into my Garmin and my trip is now available on our GPS (and we hopefully won’t get lost)!
We upgraded our Garmin to a nuvi 3590LMT after having purchased a nuvi 50LM and learning that the nuvi 50LM only allows for one waypoint. Clearly, one waypoint on a 7,179 mile trip is definitely insufficient! So, my advice to anyone buying a GPS device, whether it is Garmin or another brand, is to make sure the GPS will allow for multiple waypoints. A costly error on our part!
Then there is the blog. I stumbled a few times on this endeavor because, as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I was learning as I went along! And, WOW, is there a lot to learn and a plethora of choices to be made. I settled on WordPress as the blog foundation and have added a few Plugins to help me manage the blog. The plugins I am using are Akismet (to manage spam), My Calendar (for an easily maintainable calendar), Visitor Maps and Who’s Online (so I can see and share who has visited the blog), and WP Backup Plugin (so I have backups).
I wanted to be able to show the trip on the blog and that is the one “upgrade” I would request from MyScenicDrives: the ability to import the map into a blog would be an awesome upgrade! But, since it is not a current feature, I found Blogabond, which allows me to build a map and use their blog template (which is what you see when you are on this blog site). It is a fairly easy way to build a travel blog and, if you plan on blogging a trip, you should take a look at it.
We have 6 weeks until we leave and I’ll be blogging a few more times before then. However, once on the road, I’ll be keeping you up-to-date daily (when we have a connection).
Stay tuned!