Get on the Road Again and Don't Miss a Thing With Roadtrippers
When you're preparing for a long road trip, or even a short one, you want to make the most of it. While you could go to AAA and let them prepare a TripTik for you, along with buying all of their guides to help you identify places to stay and visit, that's just not the best way anymore. Instead, you should harness the power of the internet and your smartphone, and let an app help you plan. That's what Roadtrippers is all about.
With Roadtrippers, you can find the hottest spots as well as the most offbeat highlights along your trip. All you have to do is start your new trip, give the app your location and where you want to end up, and then choose what kinds of things you want to see. After that, the app will calculate the best route for you to take and what sites and other attractions might be along your travels. It's all quite easy, and very comprehensive.
The best way to plan your road trip
The Good
Roadtrippers has a lot of great features. It will help you plan your trip, and has a comprehensive catalog of locations that you won't want to miss. You'll be able to find gas stations, restaurants and diners, as well as historical landmarks with ease. Roadtrippers also helps you locate campgrounds, if you want to rough it along the way. It even includes points of interest that aren't quite on the beaten path, like the world's largest wicker basket.
The app also allows you to browse pre-planned trips, if you need some inspiration. Just visit the Guides tab, and Roadtrippers will provide you with a treasure chest full of possibilities, like the ultimate Route 66 road trip or a week-long drive along the Blue Ridge Parkway.
While overall the app is easy to use, it has its drawbacks. There's no easy way I could find to plan legs of your trip, so you may find yourself using another map to plan stops for really long road trips. Once you figure out where you need to stop for the night, though, you can pretty easily add that to your itinerary.
The other drawback to Roadtrippers might not be a bad thing after all. There's just so much to see and do, and the app can create maps that are downright overwhelming with how many options they provide you. You have to pick and choose, since you won't be able to see everything and still get to your final destination.
Finally, the app ships you out to another title for actual navigation. While it includes its own map, Roadtrippers doesn't do turn-by-turn navigation. It works with Apple Maps and Google Maps, though, and sends you straight to those apps with your start and end points preselected.
The verdict
All in all, this is a terrific choice for planning your next road trip. It's not perfect, but few apps are. What Roadtrippers does, plan your sightseeing, eating, and refueling locations, it does very well. I just wish I could do everything in a single app, even getting my turn-by-turn navigation.
