Having a Solid Plan (or What Has Worked for Us)
Having a Solid Plan ( or What Has Worked for Us)
I’m a software engineer by trade. I spend a lot of time thinking about requirements and the push and pull between what you want and what is actually possible. I’ve found that trip planning feels surprisingly similar. Sometimes I get the balance right. Sometimes I don’t - and I should say we don’t because I don’t plan alone. My wife and I both have our parts to play.
What does a solid plan look like for us? It looks like a lighter day of shopping or exploring between bigger efforts when the kids are with us, having at least a rough outline of meals so store trips are quick pit stops and leftovers can become picnics, and spending a couple of hours on AllTrails looking for options that fit the group and schedule. Here’s how that planning process has worked for our family.
The whole trip, not just the hike
We start with the full picture: how many days we have, how much driving we’re willing to do, what the energy level of the group might be each day, and where all of this sits in relation to where we’re sleeping. Trail choices come after those pieces are roughly in place. It sounds obvious when I write it down, but we didn’t always plan this way. Treating the entire trip as one connected set of decisions instead of a series of separate ones has made the trail days more enjoyable for everyone.
Where we stay versus where we want to go
There’s almost always a tension between the ideal trail and the practical place to stay. Sometimes the best hiking sits farther from town than we’d like. We’ve learned which side of that trade-off matters more for a given vacation. For us, we usually prioritize comfortable accommodations and proximity to a town. That’s meant living with disappointment when a trail I really wanted to hike was too far away. If the main goal is a specific hike, we accept longer drives or a less convenient base. Getting clear on that priority early has prevented lots of heartache from long days followed by long car rides.
Pacing with family
When it’s just the two of us, we’ll string hard days together. With the girls, that approach doesn’t work. We’ve had better results when bigger efforts are followed by lighter days, meaning shorter mileage, less elevation, or a morning hike and an afternoon poking around town, or a non-hiking activity like whitewater rafting. Those lighter days give everyone a chance to recover and keep the overall trip feeling positive instead of like a forced march. We still miss the mark sometimes, but building recovery into the plan from the start has improved everyone’s experience.
Plan the Meals, Pack a Better Lunch
We don’t create elaborate menus, but we do sketch out the main meals for the trip. The practical reason is simple: leftovers make excellent trail lunches. A little extra grilled chicken one night becomes the next day’s picnic with no extra work. If we don’t have leftovers, nothing beats a PB&J while admiring an epic view. Knowing roughly what we’re cooking also keeps us from overbuying or ending up with nothing easy to pack in the morning. It’s not fancy meal planning — it’s just enough structure so food supports the hiking instead of becoming a stress point. With that said, we have our favorites, most of which seem to come from Trader Joe’s. We’re up to shopping at TJ’s in six states and hope to make it seven very soon.
Time on AllTrails
I spend a lot of time on AllTrails, and it’s always time well spent. Honestly, I enjoy it. I’ve always been a bit of a map geek. I’ll pick an area, scan the trails, look for difficulty grades and distances that feel right, read recent comments for certain keywords, and study the map itself before saving anything. I build a short list of realistic options instead of chasing one “perfect” hike. After that my wife will make a pass through the short list and always catch aspects of the trails that I didn’t. She’s not a map geek and looks at things I usually don’t. Typically that means reading between the lines on past comments. We’ve learned the perfect fit is extremely hard to find. Having flexibility when weather, energy, or mood changes is key. The app doesn’t replace judgment, but it has become a reliable part of how we narrow choices, whether it’s just my wife and me or the whole family.
When the plan still doesn’t work
Even with all of the above, plans still fall apart. Trails close, kids wake up tired, weather turns, or we misjudge how rough the road is to the trailhead. With preparation we usually have a backup option already identified and a general sense of how the rest of the trip can flex. That doesn’t make the disappointment disappear, but it keeps one bad morning from unraveling everything else.
This is the approach that has worked for our family and it has evolved over time. It will continue to evolve as well. It isn’t a formula, and it still requires adjustment every trip. The main shift has been treating the whole vacation as one connected set of decisions instead of focusing only on the hours we spend on the trail.