Before we plan any trip we have a general idea of where we want to go but in all honesty, we look at the entire world as a possibility. This probably sounds crazy, wild and highly unlikely, but it’s true.
From Dream Destination to Real Itinerary: How I Plan Every Trip
Where to begin? Before we plan any trip we have a general idea of where we want to go but in all honesty, we look at the entire world as a possibility. This probably sounds crazy, wild and highly unlikely, but it’s true. We use kayak’s explore tool and put in our home airport as the start and the month we are looking to travel and then the tool brings up a world map with prices pinned all over it. You can narrow the cost amount down to what you are comfortable spending, which might be my favorite attribute for this tool and then start exploring the options. Of course our wanderlust brains can get lost and we will catch ourselves saying things like but did you see how cheap it is to fly to Japan next week? But we get back on track and narrow down to our top picks and start looking at flight details. We will watch flights on kayak explore for a couple weeks and when something really peaks our interest we do as all millennials do, we go to social media. We’ll watch travel vlogs and reels and read blogs about the locations to see how many days we want to be there and what all interests us in the area.
When people ask us what is on our bucket list I always say, everywhere or that the list is shorter for what isn’t on it. This tool helps us find places we weren’t even thinking of going to. For example, national parks have always interested us and when we were looking at kayak explore a few months ago we found incredibly cheap flights into Durango, CO and immediately looked up how far the national parks in Utah were away. A few we days later we booked the flights and started mapping out our national park road trip(more to come in another blog). One thing we have learned in planning is when you are open to destinations it also allows you to travel during shoulder season, which means cheaper flights, cheaper accommodations and less crowds, that’s a win, win, win for me.
What’s next?
So you have your flight, next is thinking about what your are going to do when we get there. As mentioned before, we love researching travel. For each trip, we start a family sandbox on Google Sheets and as we learn of things we add them to the sandbox. We try to put as much info in there as possible while still keeping it organized, links to activities or excursions, costs, hikes with distances and if they are stroller friendly, if it’s better to go somewhere early in the morning vs mid day, etc. This is the most fun part of planning, doing the research and of course once your algorithm knows you are interested in Moab, for example, you start to see more content around it. This alone, makes me even more excited for an upcoming trip.
Once we have a good bit in our sandbox we create a tab to start building out our itinerary in Google Sheets, keeping everything ordered by dates. This is where we get into the nitty gritty, the meat and potatoes of it all. We start mapping out what we want to do and in what order as well as how many days we realistically need in one location.
After our general itinerary is built and we know how long we want to be somewhere we are able to book a hotel as well as a rental car if needed. We rarely stay in a place longer than 4 days. We feel like that is enough time to explore an area and all that it has to offer, especially a city.
Once we have our flights, stay and transportation booked we start looking into restaurants in the area. There is nothing more annoying to me than being hungry in a new city and being like so what do we want to do next or where should we eat. I like to have a list of options that I can share with the group and we decide from there. Plus, I, Katie, have a gluten allergy so eating in the US is always a little trickier.
At this point we build out a detailed itinerary with all of the important logistics, consider the itinerary a draft and the detailed itinerary a final copy. We start booking excursions, making reservations and getting a more in depth idea of what we plan to do. We add ideas for each full day as well as rainy day ideas. Traveling with kiddos has also taught us to build in rest and relax days so we don’t wear them out to the point of vacation fatigue. During this portion of planning, we take it one step further, as things get put on the detailed itinerary we add them into a budget sheet so we can get a cost breakdown and make sure we aren’t going overboard. Not only is this a good idea for life but especially travel because then it allows us to budget so that we can afford to take more trips.
For full planning videos and tips we use to save money, check out our YouTube cost breakdown videos from our adventures as a family! Hope this breakdown helps your family when you are starting to plan your next trip!