Planning your route on the Pan-American Highway.

 I often get questions about riding the Pan-American Highway when it comes to route planning. I have met people and or seen post showing a pre-planned route, and then asking if that route looks reasonable.

Of course it is possible to plan your entire route, but as 25 year military veteran, I can say without a doubt, that the best laid plans go out the window then the first bullet is fired. This is my philosophy when it comes to Adventure Travel.

Before I set out on my journey I spent months doing research. Not on what roads I wanted to take, but more importantly, what I wanted to see. I searched the internet using phrases like "Top Ten things to see in......" This was a good way to start, but was limited to mostly generic "touristy" places. However if there was something on that list that sparked my interest, that led me down the rabbit hole to find other things of interest.


As you can see with a search, you will get a fairly generic list of places to see, but its not a bad place to start. There are some great websites that also help create the trip of your dreams. A friend of mine introduced to me to Atlas Obscura. (www.atlasobscura.com) This is a great website for finding things of the beaten path.

Some other sites that will definitely help are Lonely Planet or Fodor's.

So how do I keep track of all the places I want to see? Well, there are several options, such as paper maps. This will help visualize a potential route. I mean, there's nothing like a full sized map sprawled across the kitchen table or pinned to your wall. Kinda makes you feel like your planning the D-Day invasion! Another options is to pin things on a digital map such as Google Maps.

As you can see in the above photo, I have saved locations using Google Maps. But, what if there was an even better way to organize your list of places. One that you could even publish and share with other people? Well, that's where Google My Maps comes into play. With Google My Maps, not only can you pin places you want to see, but you can also organize them by county, Icon, add notes and links to each Pin.

Here, you can see with Google My Maps, I have organized each county. Within each pin I have, for the most part, entered information or links that will help remind me of what is there.

This is super handy, as we all know it's near impossible to remember all the places you researched.

So, now you've got an organized digital map for ALL the places you want to see. This in turn will help you decide your route. For me I never actually planned a route. I would simply pick the next place I wanted to see, and went there. Then it was wash, rinse, and repeat. Did i go to all the places I wanted to see? ABSOLUTELY NOT! See, that's the great thing about Adventure Travel. Everyday is an unknown. There were times i arrived to a place, and by talking to the locals, taught me about places I didn't know about. Adventure Travel is about taking risks outside your comfort zone. (Not necessarily taking physical risks, but emotional risk)

So, in conclusion, I hope this helps you organize your next great adventure.

Bonus points. With Google My Maps you can upload your recorded GPS tracks to make a historic map of the places you've been and publish and share that with your friends, Family and Followers.


If you would like to explore my historic route or my places to see map, you can view them on my blog site, Terradrifting, where you can read my other stories and articles.

Or directly here

Route map

Places Map

Greg Hilchey
Instructor
Traveler
Writer


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