Guides
Part of Highway Itinerary Planning: How It Works on Scenic Routes
Highway itinerary planning: a two-day loop with buffers
Highway itinerary planning for two days: pick a 120 to 160 mile loop, set the overnight point first, and place the buffers where they survive.
What to take away
- Loops beat out-and-back routes over two days, because nothing gets repeated.
- Set the overnight point first. Everything else is arranged around it.
- Give one stop the whole afternoon. Two days of short stops produces no memory of either.
- Write the fallbacks into the plan, not into your head.
This is a template for highway itinerary planning rather than a route to copy. The shape is a loop with a single overnight, one long stop per day, and buffers placed where they survive.
Pick a loop, then find its natural halves
A loop of 120 to 160 miles suits two unhurried days. The BLM's Gold Belt Tour Back Country Byway in Colorado is an example. It retraces historic travel routes toward Cripple Creek along a narrow-gauge railroad bed, an old stage road and a county road.
Loop length and access
131 miles | Gold Belt Tour loop
120-160 miles | suits two unhurried days
1 hour | from Colorado Springs or Pueblo
The three legs form a loop of about 131 miles taking in historic sites, museums and recreation sites, reachable in an hour from Colorado Springs or Pueblo.
A route described in legs has already told you where to break the days.
Fix the overnight before anything else
The overnight point sets both days. Choose it at roughly the halfway mark by driving time, not by distance, then check that it has fuel, food after six, and a bed you have confirmed. Everything else on the plan is negotiable. This is not.
Overnight point checklist
- Halfway by driving time, not distance
- Fuel available
- Food after six
- Bed confirmed
- Everything else negotiable
Day one: drive long, stop late
- Leave early and cover the longer leg first, while the party is fresh.
- Take two short stops of twenty to thirty minutes for legs and coffee.
- Arrive at the day's main stop by mid-afternoon and stay two hours.
- Reach the overnight point before dark, with fuel already in the tank.
Day one carries the driving because a delay on the first day can be absorbed. A delay on day two lands on your journey home.
Day two: one long stop, one short drive
Give the second morning to one place with enough to fill it. Somewhere with a choice of walks works best, so each person sets their own pace.
On a loop of your own, a stop like Bosque del Apache in New Mexico fits: the Fish and Wildlife Service lists twelve nature trails that vary in accessibility and difficulty. Visitor center staff help choose between them. Twelve options absorb a morning without a schedule.
Then drive home in the afternoon with nothing else planned.
Where the buffers go
- Thirty minutes after any timed entry, in case it runs long.
- One unassigned hour on day one, in early afternoon.
- Thirty minutes before the last fuel stop of each day.
- No buffer at all in the final leg home, which is where slack disappears anyway.
The fallback column
Write, in the plan, one alternative for each of these: the main stop on each day, the overnight bed, and the route between them. Three lines. Nine times out of ten you will not use them, and the tenth time they will be the difference between adjusting and abandoning.
The structure behind all of this comes from our guide to how highway itinerary planning works. If anyone in the party has access needs, choose those stops before you fix the rest of the days.
