Make a general plan by answering a few questions: How many days are available for the trip? Are you making it for a specific reason? Will there be more than one driver?
Determine the minimum amount of hours it will take to drive where you want to go, using a road atlas mileage and driving-time map as reference and building in a generous cushion of time. Write your departure point on the top left side of a piece of paper. Open your road atlas to the driving time map and find your departure spot. If it isn't listed, find the nearest town in your area. Write the amount of time it takes to drive to that town, then write that town and its state next to your place of departure. Follow the route in the direction you'll be heading; on succeeding lines, write the names of each town in order on the possible route, and the time listed as required to drive that segment. Repeat until you reach your destination.
Round each segment to the nearest quarter of an hour and list the hour as a fraction in a column to the right; for 55 minutes, you'd write 1; 2 hours, 35 minutes would be 2 1/2.
Add up the times for all the segments. To that subtotal, add an extra hour for each four-hour period of time to allow for meals, gas stops and unforeseen slowdowns. Thus in the example trip, the total would be 12 1/2 hours (10 1/2 hours driving time plus two hours extra).
Open your atlas to the individual page map for the state of your departure and look for the first segment you'll drive. Next to the list of the trip segments, write down the number of the highway for the most direct route. Repeat this for each segment, turning to the page in the atlas for the next state when appropriate. You may need to flip back and forth between pages to find the proper highway between the towns where you start and finish each segment.
Look for possible overnight stops and other sites of interest, if you have the luxury of extra time or when a trip requires more than one day. Jot these down along the list of segments also.
Highlight your planned route on the state pages of the atlas to help make navigation easier while driving.
