Road Trip Planning with Google Maps

When making my travel plans I love to use Google Maps for calculating routes by car rental.  Although the modern world of car rental has things like GPS satellite navigation systems, online mapping tools like Google Maps still have their place in pre-trip planning. Once a well plotted course has been chosen, I will still probably look into availability and pricing for GPS with my car hire.

I have always wanted to plan a road trip by car rental from my home town of Louisville, Kentucky to the west coast, so for this example that is the course I have chosen.  When I select Louisville International Airport as point "A" and simply San Francisco, California as point "B" my course is a pretty smooth sweep directly across the United States into California.  Passing through major cities such as Kansas City, Missouri and Salt Lake City, Utah; the trip covers 2,381 miles and will take an estimated 1 day and 14 hours of driving.

A great feature on Google Maps of plotting your trip this way is the option to drag your blue-highlighted route to a different course so that you pass through another city.  For example, If I happened to be making this trip in the winter in virtually the same number of driving hours and a mere 25 miles to my route I could re-route for a ski day trip in Colorado.

Now, unless I plan on driving my car rental across the country again, it would be very wise to look into a one way car rental for this trip.  Also, since I will be concluding this trip in Central America, it would be best for me to drive closer to an airport that offers frequent flights there.  Lets go ahead and add the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airportas point "C."  This route is great because it allows me to pass through the towns of Bakersfield, California and Albuquerque, New Mexico.  Enjoy plotting your next route by car rental and get the lowest rates when you book through CarHireX.com.