Today we’re celebrating the 3rd birthday of myscenicdrives.com! We’ve grown — now featuring hundreds of scenic drives in 29 states. Our Road Trip Planner has helped plan trips all over the United States, Canada, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Wow! We are truly appreciative of your support, suggestions, questions, shares, tweets and likes that have helped us make getting there more than half the fun! Thank you!
Just in time for spring break. The Sunshine State — from glistening quartz sand beaches and emerald green water to lush forest, swamps and marshes. Or a delicate string of barrier islands to rare coastal lakes. We’re excited to launch these latest scenic drives in Florida that offer such a bountiful experience. So much to see and do — explore state parks, wildlife refuges, historic forts, discover unique tropical flora and fauna and partake in recreation galore. The possibilities are endless. Explore now.
We are so fortunate to have more than 84 million acres of incredible treasures in the United States National Parks System. And best of all — during National Park Week — they’re free!
Not many of us can say they’ve been to all 58 National Parks or 25 National Battlefields, Battlefield Parks, Sites and Military Parks or 125 National Historic Parks and Sites or 4 National Lakeshores, 187 Memorials, Monuments, Parks, Parkways, Preserves, Reserves and Recreation Areas, 5 National Rivers and 10 Wild and Scenic Rivers and Riverways or 3 National Scenic Trails or 21 National Seashores and Other Designations but we sure can try! Start creating your bucket list of must see’s.
We’ve expanded our Road Trip Planner’s time zone capabilities. Our planning tools have always informed you if your trip was crossing a time zone, but with our latest update, the directions will show the exact step where. Which time zone you’re in and how much time ahead or behind will also be noted. For best results, be sure to enter your trip’s start date under the Trip Settings.
We have been posting Road Trip Planner Tips on our Facebook page.
Here’s Tip #4 and a roundup of previous posts.
This month marks the third anniversary of myscenicdrives.com. We couldn’t do it without you. We appreciate all of the feedback, questions, and suggestions which have helped make myscenicdrives.com better! We are continually growing — now featuring drives in 29 states and developing our tools to make your trip planning simple and fun. We have many more roads to travel we hope you’ll continue this journey with us.
Traveling in winter calls for extra attention to the road and weather conditions. Here are some tips to help you get to your destination safely.
With summer vacations in full swing, we have been busy updating the site and have just published two extraordinary scenic drives in Maine, the vacationland state. Shaped by glaciers and frequented by great American presidents including Franklin D. Roosevelt, Maine offers a limitless array of outdoor activities, puffins, whales, and miles of breathtaking ocean coastline. Start your adventure now.
We recently added thousands of campgrounds to our data base, and now you can search for them on any scenic drive or place of interest (previously campgrounds were only available on our Road Trip Planner). Simply click the Campground checkbox under the map and campground locations will appear.
We do not usually say much about the people behind myscenicdrives.com, but recently, myscenicdrives.com founder, Eric Theriault, was interviewed by GeekWire.
We love the ways you have found to use our Road Trip Planner. Not only for getaways — we’ve seen amazing road trips planned for cross-country college tours, baseball stadium tours, honeymoons and more.
We are humbled and inspired by your road trips and appreciate the many tips and comments. This month, we release two major features in our Road Trip Planner thanks to your constructive feedback.
One of the features our users love is how our Road Trip Planner quickly divides your trip into manageable days. Finding the perfect stopping point varies from person to person, and sometimes from stop to stop. To customize your stop, we now have a City Suggester which locates cities and towns along your route, allowing you to choose an alternate as your overnight stop.
To use this feature, go to the Directions Menu in the Road Trip Planner, and click on the city selected for your overnight. A side panel will open highlighting alternate nearby cities and towns. Simply click on the Add button on your desired city or town to incorporate the stop into your route.
If you are one of the many people who use smartphone calendars, you will love our newest feature: exporting your trip to your Calendar!
To use this feature, first enable the Start Date of your trip under Trip Settings. Once that is done, click the File menu above the map and select “Export to Calendar”. We then generate an iCalendar file which can be used in most popular software, including Google Calendar.
Road tripping season is here and we’ve been busy adding awesome new features to make your trip planning even easier. Here are the highlights.
Nervous about where to charge on long trips? Our Electric Vehicle Support locates EV charging stations along your route and with a simple click, you can add them to your road trip plan, get turn-by-turn directions and incorporate the charge time into your daily itinerary. Now just relax and enjoy the ride.
One of the features most requested by users is to have campground locations on our Road Trip Planner. Today, we’re happy to be releasing a public-beta test. We still have a lot more campgrounds to add, but we wanted to get this feature out as soon as possible. Please let us know how it’s working for you.
Imagine your road trip has you leaving from home and heading first to an airport, or perhaps a segment of your road trip includes a train ride. You can now add these to your Road Trip Plan as a Non-Driving Destination. Select Add a Destination and then Non-Drive to enter airport codes, train stations or addresses of start and end locations as well as travel time, and we’ll seamlessly provide directions!
We’ve always calculated your fuel costs, but now you can manage your entire trip budget by entering a daily spending amount and/or costs for meals, entertainment or lodging associated with each stop.
Dividing your trip into manageable days is a user favorite. We’ve added a new section to our documentation to help you get up-and-running faster using this practical tool. Full details here.
One of our new features is Non-Stop Drives. Available on the Schedule Tab of all destination properties, you can now specify that the driving period from one stop to another should not be divided, no matter how long the drive is. This can be useful for days where you aiming to get as close as you can to your destination before stopping. Of course we recommend driving no longer than 8 hours a day. See our driving tips.
A related feature is the ability to turn off dividing the days completely. This is useful when you want to concentrate on the roads you are traveling on rather than the daily driving details. Go to the Trip Properties Day tab to enable and disable this feature.
We offer great hotel rates around the globe. Enjoy the convenience of our Hotel Prices in Euros and British Pounds, as well as United States Dollar and Canadian Dollar.
In addition, simplify your planning with our new Potential Hotels feature. After searching through our hotel database in the Road Trip Planner, add some of the possibilities to your trip. When you’re ready, just finalize and book — all in one place. Along with highly competitive rates, you get your confirmation, accommodation details and turn-by-turn directions incorporated into your itinerary.
We are continually refining our Printing and Exporting abilities. One of our major features is the ability to print the Day Markers, allowing a clear visual of where you will be spending each night. We’ve also added a font-size adjustment tool on the printing screen.
When planning long trips or collaborating with others on trip planning, you might be working on portions of a trip separately — but how do you bring all those pieces together? Select the Import Road Trip feature and automatically import all of the unique stops from one trip into the current trip.
Coupled with our Save As functionality, this is a quick and easy way to plan and collaborate with family and friends.
We have made it even easier to import your routes from popular GPS software by auto-detecting the file extension.
In addition to improving our Comma-Separated Values (CSV) importer, we have also added support for Tab-Separated Values (TSV). These file formats are useful to quickly integrate with other tools.
If you’re using the Garmin Communicator Plugin to export our trips onto your GPS, you will note that we have recently upgraded our software to use the latest and greatest Garmin Communicator Plugin. Don’t worry, the upgrade is free and simple to do.
In our last post, we introduced a feature called Path Compression which removes some of the detail in our exported file-formats, making it easier for certain GPS units to follow our directions. Since then, we’ve added a new Path Compression called “Just Stops” which only export your exact stops.
And as noted above, we’ve added support for exporting Tab-Separated Files to new tools.
We have supported IPad for a while and have recently added support for Android Tablets. Simply direct your favorite web browser to myscenicdrives.com and enjoy. For Android Tablets, best results are achieved in full-screen mode, such as in the Dolphin Browser.
If you love to share your road trips with family and friends, easily keep them up-to-date with any changes you make by using your browsers auto-complete. Most modern web browsers will display this information if you double click within the Share’s e-mail box.
Thank you to all our users for your support and feedback. To show our appreciation, we’re giving away a myscenicdrives cap in a random drawing every time we reach another 100 Facebook likes until the end of August. If you’re not a Facebook user, send us an e-mail at info@myscenicdrives.com to be automatically entered. The first one went out to Julie M. in Monrovia CA at 4000. Who’s next?
Our entire site has always offered all the features you love in our desktop version, slimmed down to a full-screen, touch-friendly interface in your mobile web browser. Plan, edit, share, and get directions on the go — as usual, with no software installation or updates.
It’s road trippin’ and hiking season. If you need a forest pass, we’ve got you covered. Pacific Northwest National Forest, Southern California Forest Adventure Pass, Arizona’s Tonto National Forest and Coconino National Forest’s Red Rock Country, New Hampshire White Mountain National Forest and if your travels take you far and often, the cost-effective America the Beautiful.
Have happy and safe summer travels!
Two years ago today, myscenicdrives.com was launched. We began with many drives in Washington State where we’re based, a few in Oregon, and a grand vision. A lot of miles, maps, research, and picnics later we’re proud to feature drives in 25 states and are continuing to make myscenicdrives.com the go to website for all your road trip planning needs.
We’ve had an exciting year with many new developments. Here are four highlights:
We have more interesting features planned for the next several months and are always adding scenic drives.
Thanks for using myscenicdrives.com!
Hopefully getting out more often was one of your New Year’s resolutions? Discover a nearby destination, take a weekend getaway to that special somewhere you’ve always wanted to see, and like many of our users, begin planning your summer road trip!
It’s never been easier using our Road Trip Planner! We hope you enjoy all our new features.
You ask, we listen. This feature was requested by many users to use with Export to GPS, simplifying the routes exported to your GPS. Choose from three options:
You’re going to love our simplified interface. Just click Add Destination below your last stop to add addresses, search for destinations, nearby stops and more.
Do you use address book management software? More than likely it supports a vCard format which you can now upload to our Road Trip Planner saving some copy-’n-pasting. To import, select File and select Import Address from VCard.
Finding a hotel on myscenicdrives.com is more responsive and faster.
Now you can add hotels booked on myscenicdrives.com by phone to your Road Trip Plan. Just select your reservation from Add Travel Accommodations.
And for your convenience, we’ve added more payment options.
Have you ever wanted to try out options in our Road Trip Planner didn’t want to lose what you already created? Worry no more! We’ve added Undo and Redo for most operations throughout our Road Trip Planner, making it a cinch to restore your trip back to the way it was.
Just one click on Add Activity is a quick and easy way to add destinations, places of interests and personal notes to a stop. And best of all, it now works on iPad!
Using the metric system? We’ve added support for liters in our gas calculator and Road Trip Planner.
Our Road Trip Planner now supports importing and exporting of Comma-Separated Files, commonly known as CSV. Customize your column layout using our CSV Import and Export tools.
Using CSV for one of our scenic drives? Just add the Scenic Drive to a Road Trip and then use our GPS Exporter to generate the CSV file you need.
If there’s anything we can improve or change to make it easier to plan your trip, please e-mail us. Happy and safe travels!
Growing up in New Hampshire, I’ve had the chance to explore many of New England’s roads and locally-known “secrets”. I’ve been looking forward to adding New England to myscenicdrives.com since we launched a year-and-half ago, so it gives me great pleasure to announce the first set of scenic drives in New Hampshire.
Beginning with a few of the classics, these are the “must-see” roads of New Hampshire — and of course there’s more to come. Let us know your favorites.
We’re also happy to announce that we are now resellers of the White Mountain National Forest Passes, required at many day-use areas in the White Mountain National Forest. These fees help support and maintain high-quality recreation facilities. Save time by purchasing yours on myscenicdrives.com.
Many of the changes we do to improve your experience on myscenicdrives.com take place behind the scenes, with little fanfare. But we do want to share the excitement of some of the larger features just added to our Road Trip Planner.
Imagine you are planning a road trip to San Francisco and intend to spend a few days exploring. Perhaps friends have mentioned museums or restaurants you shouldn’t miss. With our previous version, you would have to add them as a specific stop on your road trip plan or make notes.
Now with Activities, you can simply add these items to your San Francisco stop. Click on Activities to expand the menu and drag any existing stops or search results into Activity. Activities are just like regular stops, except that we do not provide directions to them and they are not scheduled, but they will be exported to your GPS as places of interest (for all devices that support them) and will be on your printout.
Activities are presently not available on iPad and Mobile devices.
We’ve updated the printed directions to make them even easier to use.
Instead of just offering a list of stops, we now provide a rich overview that summarizes your travels for each day. At a glance, you know how far you’re traveling and which stops you will see along the way, allowing you to ensure that you have enough time to visit each one.
The printed map is now on a separate page and larger than before. This is especially useful for longer trips.
We are now including the stop number in the driving directions, allowing you to quickly reference the directions with the maps. This number system is also included in the user interface as well. And you now have the option to print out each day’s travel on a separate page. While this can be really useful for long trips, we also encourage you to consider the environment before enabling it 
.
The new To Do List guides you through the Road Trip Planner by making it simple to get directions, highlighting days with very few hours of driving, reminders for finding overnight accommodations, and more helpful suggestions to come.
Have something you’d like us to check or remind you? Let us know!
To Do Lists are presently not available on our mobile editions.
If you are planning a cross-country road trip, more than likely you have many stops planned. We’ve now improved the way we calculate the optimal routes and even the most complex routes are optimized in several minutes. Don’t need such a fine-tuned plan right away? Our Rough Optimizer is not 100% precise, but provides a rough idea in seconds.
Some of our smaller features this month:
Our favorite features are the ones you suggest, so keep them coming. Thanks for using myscenicdrives.com and happy planning!
We’re always developing new ways to help you find scenic drives and plan road trips. Our latest features make it easy to find side trips and get inspiration by interacting with our maps.
Some of the best experiences are short side trips off our main scenic drives. And sometimes (thanks to your suggestions!), we hear about a great road but have not had the time to put together the full description and interactive map that you have come to love from us.
Until now, these gems have been in a feature we call Side Trips, which you may have noticed in our Recommended Stops or when using our Road Trip Planner.
Today, we unleash side trips to a more prominent position on our main, State maps page. Click “Show Side Trips” in the green bar above the map and voila — yellow square icons appear on the map. When you hover your mouse over the icons, it will provide details about the scenic route.
You can easily add these side trips to your road trip plan or get directions by clicking on the link that appears when you hover. Keep in mind that Side Trips do not have turn-by-turn directions, so you may want to print out a copy of the Side Trip.
Our maps are automatically adjusted to ensure that the entire drive or state is displayed, and sometimes, that’s small. We have always included the ability to click “Expand Map” so users can zoom and pan in our Drives and Places of Interest, but our state overview maps didn’t have that… until today.
Now after choosing a State, you can zoom and pan to highlight particular areas on the overview map. Used with our new Side Trips feature, finding the perfect scenic drive is easier than ever.
Need inspiration for your cross-country road trip? Not sure what’s on the way? Use our Map Surfer!
Don’t miss out on great roads close to where you’re already traveling. Choose a state, click “Map Surfer” from the green bar across the top of the map and once enabled, more of our scenic drives will appear when you pan and zoom on the map. Add the scenic drives that catch your eye to our Road Trip Planner, book your hotels, and you’re ready to hit the road.
We have a lot more drives in new states coming very soon making these new features even cooler. Keep sending your recommended roads and feedback — we love hearing from you. Thank you for using myscenicdrives.com.
