Reservations keep you on track, but sometimes you can find a good coupon deal for a motel along the route. I am in agreement, don't try to overplan your trip. When we got into the motel, if I recall, we took a dip in the indoor pool and then a nap in the room, as we were tired! We'd had a major delay due to an accident just south of Flagstaff. On the day we left Tempe and ended up at Santa Rosa, we left at 3 am MST and pulled into Santa Rosa at 2 pm, MDT. My husband and I have seen the deserts around Phoenix many, many times, so crossing it in the wee hours of the morning is not a problem. When traveling east these days, we often stop in Tempe to see family, and then move on quite early in the morning. When you start doing that, it's easy to get so focused on the schedule, that you forget to actually look at what's going on around you on the road! That's not to say that planning is bad, by all means, plan out a reasonable schedule, look for places to spend the night and make reservations if you choose, but you don't have to get so far into the details that you are coming up with arrival times detailed down to the minute. Some days you might plan to get on the road at 6, but not actually get moving until 7 or 8. There might be a case where you take a break, and then 20 miles down the road you see something that catches your eye and you want to stop for again. Some days, you might take a 30 minute break every 2 hours - other days you might feel like breaks a little more or a little less often. You might have traffic or construction that will slow you down.

One of the beauties of a roadtrip is things are at least somewhat unpredictable. When you're breaking out spreadsheets, trying to schedule specific breaks, and estimating exact arrival times, you might be taking things a bit too far.

Weatherbug fort smith ar