Suggest me a Road Trip

What this tool does

The open road has a pull all its own, but the first question, which road, can stall the whole idea. This tool gives you a starting point. It hands you a famous scenic drive at random, so you have a real route to picture and plan around rather than a vague urge to just drive somewhere.

Press the button for a route. Press it again for another. Ask for a few at once to build a short list of drives. Take it as inspiration to start from, since a road trip needs more planning than most trips, and matching a route to your time, your vehicle, and the season is where the real work begins, as the sections below explain.

How to use it

1. Number / Quantity. How many routes to pull at once, from 1 to 100.
2. Generate. Pulls a fresh route, or a fresh set if you asked for several.
3. Starts with, Contains, Ends with. Optional filters that trim the list before it picks. Leave them blank to draw from everything.
4. Copy. Copies the current routes to the clipboard as plain text for your notes.

A route is on screen as soon as the page opens, so there is always a drive to dream about.

How it works

The list is a fixed set of road-trip routes, and each press draws one at random, with no repeats inside a single set when you ask for several.

The filters let you aim. Contains keeps any route with your text in it, so typing coast brings up the Pacific Coast Highway, the Amalfi Coast, and other coastal drives, while a country or word narrows it the same way. Starts with keys off the first letter and ends with off the last.

What is on the list

It is a list of around two hundred of the world's great driving routes, each named with its start and end. The legends are here, like California's Pacific Coast Highway, Iceland's Ring Road, Australia's Great Ocean Road, Italy's Amalfi Coast, and Route 66, alongside quieter gems from Ireland's Wild Atlantic Way to South Africa's Garden Route.

The routes span the easy and the epic, from a relaxed afternoon's drive to remote, multi-day expeditions across deserts and mountain passes. So a pull might be a weekend away or a serious adventure, which is worth noting before you commit, and the filters help when you have a region or a kind of drive in mind.

Why choosing a route is half the battle

There are so many beautiful drives that picking one can stall the trip before it starts, since each looks tempting and none feels like the obvious choice. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper documented the effect in a 2000 study, where a sampling stand of twenty-four jams pulled a crowd yet converted fewer buyers than one offering six. Abundance, again, gets in the way of deciding.

Barry Schwartz called the broader pattern the paradox of choice, where more options leave us slower to act. A random route hands you one real drive to plan around instead of the whole atlas. Reacting to a single route, picturing the stops and the scenery, is far easier than weighing every great road at once, and it often turns up drives you had never heard of.

Planning a road trip that actually works

A road trip rewards planning more than a fly-and-stay holiday does. Start with time, since the length of a route decides whether it fits a weekend or needs a fortnight, so be honest about the days you have. Check the season, because some of the best drives cross mountain passes that close in winter or run through areas with a clear wet or dry season. Make sure your vehicle suits the route, as a remote or rough drive can demand more than a city car, and plan for the empty stretches with fuel, supplies, and a sense of the conditions. Sort the logistics too, like whether the route is a loop or one-way, which affects car hire, and check the rules and which side of the road you drive on if you are abroad. Use a pick as the spark, then build the trip around those.

Questions people ask

Is it free, and does it save anything?

It is free with no sign-up, and nothing is stored. The picks run in your browser, so use Copy to keep a list of drives.

Can I get a few options at once?

Yes. Set the quantity to the number you want, up to 100, and press Generate for that many different routes in one pull.

Are these short drives or long ones?

Both. The list ranges from afternoon drives to remote, multi-day routes, so check the length and terrain of a pick before planning around it.

Can I find routes in a certain country?

Type the country or a word like coast into the Contains box and the list trims to matching routes, which helps when you have a region in mind.

References

1. Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, "When Choice Is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2000, the study behind choice overload. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11138768/
2. Barry Schwartz, "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less", his talk on how more options can lower satisfaction. https://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_the_paradox_of_choice