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Route Planning can be as casual or precise as your nature, budget and trip duration dictate. This is the time to really think about what you want out of the expedition, to see certain sites, to cover distance, to explore new areas or just see where the road leads. Usually you will move back & forth between your Route & Budget Plan as they are so interrelated. The distance you want to cover will affect your fuel cost, the fees for campgrounds, national parks and such, and the numbers of meals you will either cook or buy all play into budget cost. So you may find yourself rerouting your trip to avoid a paid campground or to but back on total miles covered. The Continental Divide Expedition has presented some unique route planning challenges. First the only GPS tracks/waypoints available to me so far are those of the dual sport motorcycle crowd. And while I have found some great trip repots like those of Mark Sampson of www.bigdogadventures.com it is difficult to know if a 4wd will travel as quickly as a motorcycle. Also figuring fuel stops and where food supplies can be restocked is an important factor. Today we have incredible navigational aids like Google Earth and MapQuest to help spy the roads/trails and research towns along the way for fuel & food. Besides the range of the vehicle it is important to know the pace of the people and this is where you pre-trip info becomes even more valuable. Knowing how often you need to stop for pee breaks, stretching and such along with likely photo ops and sites to see will help you know the approximate amount of ground coverable each day. Don’t forget in your route planning that the longer you plan to be traveling the more important it becomes to factor in some rest or diversionary days. Days when you either don’t travel far or better yet not at all, these days can be at a site worth spending more time exploring or in an area where you can setup a base camp and take short excursions out of. No route plan is perfect and you should remember this in the beginning stages of planning so that you can both plan alternate routes and so you don’t try to micro-manage your trip into a hellish dirt road banzi bash. As time grows near for our Continental Divide Expedition we will post more detailed plans and try to co-ordinate with anyone who would like to join us for any part of the adventure.
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