Home
>
Outdoors
>
10 Tips to Planning Your Dream Road Trip

taxi from O'Hare Munster limo Chicago New Lenox Cadillac Escalade SUV rentals Melrose Park Cadillac Deville rentals Streamwood Barrington Hills town car ride to ohare .. Drug testing

10 Tips to Planning Your Dream Road Trip

Everyone has a travel dream. For many it is hitting the road for a relatively unlimited time, either here or abroad.

But how many people actually get from the dreaming to the doing? Here's a list to inspire you to go live your personal vision of a road trip dream.

BRAINSTORM WHAT YOU WOULD WANT TO DO ON YOUR TRIP Everyone has dreams about what they would like to do "if they just had the time" to take that long, unencumbered vacation. What are those things for you? Why not take a weekend away and begin to formulate your plan? Dream big.

PICK A THEME OR TWO Once you have identified all the ideas you might enjoy doing, there is a sad reality: even in a year, you can't do it all. So organize those groups of ideas into a "theme" for your trip. Maybe it is seeing all the national parks, or seeing a baseball game in every major-league stadium, or painting a scene in every state. The ideas are endless depending upon your interests.

RESEARCH YOUR IDEAS Now the fun begins. To further refine your ideas, get on the Internet and browse, order visitor guides from the locations you plan to travel in, buy some books about your destinations, talk to people who share your passions, subscribe to some online "newsletters." Get excited, get motivated to go.

START "SOCIALIZING" THE TRIP WITH FAMILY AND FRIENDS One of the most difficult parts of actually doing a trip of a lifetime is gaining the support of your family and friends. It's not that they really don't want you to have this incredible experience; it is that we are all resistant to change, and your leaving means adjustments in their lives. Start early, talk often, but make sure they know you really are going to do this.

DECIDE ON YOUR MODE OF TRANSPORTATION More research is in order. Do you want to camp or stay in motels -- or a combination? Do you want to move every day or stay in one spot for awhile? How important is it to have your belongings around you? All of these issues and more will influence your choice of transportation.

DEVELOP A BUDGET TO MEET YOUR GOALS There are many ways to finance your dream trip, but at some point you do have to figure out the details. Once you know what you want your trip to entail, how long you will be gone, and how you will travel, it is time to put pencil to paper.

MAKE LISTS OF WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE TO LEAVE ON YOUR TRIP There is so much to think about that it may seem overwhelming. You begin to doubt that you can make it happen. But you can. Just take a deep breath, and work through it step-by-step.

PICK A DATE TO LEAVE AND START WORKING TOWARD IT This is VERY important. Once you have a real date to leave, everything will begin to fall into place and your dream will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. People will help you; you will have a special theme and trip to plan on. Then, before you know it, you will be on your way.

INCLUDE FAMILY AND FRIENDS IN GETTING READY TO GO Everyone will want to feel included, and feel that you have taken care of their needs while you are gone. One of the best ways to do that is to let them help you plan it and help find solutions to the issues that arise. Every family has issues to manage, don't be discouraged by them.

SAY GOOD-BYE AND HAVE THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE! The work is done and the date is drawing near. Let your friends throw you a going-away party or two. Take pictures and exchange e-mail addresses in order to stay in touch. Give them your website address, so they can follow your travels. Wave good-bye and embark on the journey of a lifetime!

Excerpted from Live Your Road Trip Dream: Travel for a year for the cost of staying home ?2004 Phil and Carol White. All rights reserved. To order: 1-888-522-TRIP (8747) or visit http://www.RoadTripDream.com

You may reprint these tips for free provided you send a tear sheet and the full credit as given. If you have any questions, contact Kate Bandos at KSB Promotions, 800-304-3269 or kate@ksbpromotions.com.

The Whites decided that the time had come to just take off and travel. Once they were on the road, people peppered them with questions, not so much about what they were doing (everyone has their own dream!), but about HOW they actually made it happen. It was with the encouragement of want-to-be travelers everywhere that Live Your Road Trip Dream was created.

limousine chicago service

In The News:

If you're not lucky enough to live in the path of the May 20 "ring of fire" solar eclipse, you can still watch the spectacular event online.

If you plan it right, you could rent out your home on the Internet -- and use the money to take a free vacation of your own. These three websites will help you roll out the welcome mat.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg updated his status to "married" on Saturday.

A new app launched this weekend that will scan the faces of patrons in 25 bars across the city to determine their ages and genders. Would-be customers can then check their smartphones for real-time updates on the crowd size, average age and male-to-female mix to decide whether the scene is to their liking.

An oil company exploration crew's chance discovery of a 200-year-old shipwreck in a little-charted stretch of the Gulf of Mexico is yielding a trove of new information to scientists who say it's one of the most well-preserved old wrecks ever found in the Gulf.

They say patience is a virtue, but like temperance and chastity, it’s not much fun. Unfortunately, if you want to reach a state of true techstasy, you may need to repress your desire to buy a new gadget today and wait for the next version to come out.

Taxes, dental exams, cellphone contracts — things you hate but can't avoid. Actually, you can skip the last one. With prices on smartphones dropping and plenty of used smartphones for sale, BYOD — bring your own device — is now an option.

A turtle the size of a small car once roamed what is now South America 60 million years ago, suggests its fossilized remains.

A new private supply ship for the International Space Station remained stuck on the ground Saturday after rocket engine trouble led to a last-second abort of the historic flight.

A private spacecraft stands ready to launch on a historic first visit to the International Space Station early Saturday morning.

A new generation of super rich, super young tech entrepreneurs is upon us. And while some are barely old enough to rent a car, most could -- if they really wanted to -- buy a small island nation instead.

The small town of Monmouth in Wales (population: 8,807, according to Wikipedia) will become the world’s first “Wikipedia town” on Saturday, May, 19, Monmouth county officials said on Thursday. Every person, place, and thing of interest in the town can now be scanned by a smartphone and looked up on Monmouthpedia.

The 16th Annual Webby Award winners have been released, honoring websites, interactive advertising, online film & video, as well as apps.

Summer's almost here and that means kids will have a lot of time on their hands to surf the Internet. So you may be concerned about what they'll be looking at online. Fortunately most web browsers like Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer have easy to use privacy settings.

Apple was sued in March by a New York man who alleges that Apple’s Siri commercials are misleading and deceptive. Apple’s recommendation to Fazio: buy a different phone.

A new NASA survey has pinned down the number of asteroids that could pose a collision threat to Earth in what scientists say is the best estimate yet of the potentially dangerous space rocks.

Tech geeks across the Facebook empire celebrated the company’s IPO and their newfound millions by slugging back energy drinks at all-night code-writing parties.

Just two weeks after the huge "supermoon" wowed skywatchers around the world, the heavens will offer up another observing treat — a solar eclipse on May 20 that should be visible from much of western North America.

NASA has given SpaceX $381 million to develop a private rocket to replace the space shuttle -- and that’s just the tip of the money iceberg. The space agency plans multiple future grants ranging up to half a billion in the next year and a half. Is the $4.9 billion program worth it?

More than 900 million people worldwide check their Facebook accounts at least once a month, but millions more are Facebook holdouts.

10 Tips to Planning Your Dream Road Trip

Outdoors Outdoors