Road trip planner?

My apologies if there is a thread about this. I looked for one, but couldn't find anything!

Here's the deal... I'm planning a yearlong road trip of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in about a year. I would really like to find a good tool to create a schedule for this. I want something that will let me plot points on a map of potential spots. Then I want to be able to associate dates with locations and then see where the conflicts are and reconcile them.

All I'm seeing so far is things to help you find the best driving routes and places to stay. At some point, I will want to determine the best driving routes, but that's too far out right now.

Any ideas?

This site reviews some web-based road tip planning tools. Perhaps one of them does what you need.

TripWiser also has a road trip planning tool.

To go super simple, you can also create your own google map (click on 'my maps') and put pins in a map of locations you want to visit, add notes to those pins so you can remember what you wanted to see there, how many days you might want to spend there, etc. Then you can join the dots and get driving directions later once you decide which way you want to go.

I wasn't aware of Hydro's first two links so I'll have to check them out later. My recommendation was going to be Google Maps 'My Map' feature which he pointed to as well. Making notes on there is great. Supposedly it will save a route you enter, I haven't had luck with that, but it does save all the points and notes every time. Its also handy to look for things to do in an area. Zoom in on the area you want the in the map section click the tab at the top saying 'More' then click on the 'Wikipedia' box. This will show you all the Wikipedia pages tagged for the area. Click on one and you get a summary and link to the full page, very handy in my opinion. This is obviously a good way to get travel distances and times as well.

You may need to make a separate spreadsheet to sort out the days/schedule on your own. I don't know of a site that can help you out with that especially when its so open ended at the moment.

Here are a few more links that may be of use.
Two guides to unique and interesting attractions
http://atlasobscura.com/ - this site has set all their points of interest in Google Maps so you can easily find what you're looking for in a certain area
http://www.roadsideamerica.com/

One for free campsites in the US
http://www.eugenecarsey.com/camp/default.htm

I plan to start on a long trip this spring going from Texas to Alaska to California and then into Mexico sometime in 2011. Maybe we'll get a chance to see each other out there or at least share some highlights to look for. If the AmazingJulesVerne doesn't reply to this thread send her a PM as she is the Queen of Americana Roadtrips and a cool person to boot ... Although she hasn't given out an illustrious 'quote of the day' award in over a year ... just saying.

Good ideas! I actually just started using Google Maps, but I have a feeling I'm going to outgrow that as soon as I plot my points! I'll most def checkout Hydro's sites as well and post my feedback in the next week or so as I am desperately trying to avoid using a spreadsheet.

Minerguy, I'm also in Texas and am planning to make it Alaska and Mexico at some point on my trip so yeah maybe we will see each other! Until then we can share tips, ideas, and what-not.

Let me rephrase my original statement of "show conflicts and reconcile". Really, I just want something to show me the dates and locations in a tabular format and allow me the move them around.

I checked out both of hydro's suggestions. One of them only allowed you to plan up to a month and the other seemed to just link to Yahoo's trip planner, which I previously tried. So I've ended up with a spreadsheet. If I upload it to google docs, then at least that will allow me to drag/drop rows.

<sigh>