Even after four-cross country road trips and now traveling full time, I still add things to my road trip bucket list. As I’ve been thinking about teaching folks to actually get on the road, I realized that a big part of keeping yourself motivated to save and do the things you need to do is having a bucket list.
It goes back to the mindset piece of travel. If you have the places you want to see in front of you all the time, you’ll actually take these trips that you want to take.
There are lots of ways to keep track of your bucket list but I want to talk about three. Bonus points – all of these are free!
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First is the most obvious and you might already be using this now – Pinterest. Create a board dedicated to your bucket list and Pin away. Search for the places that you think are accessible, such as locations near you and also search for the places that you think you’ll never be able to visit. Having BIG things on your bucket list really helps to push your dreams.
The second tool to track your road trip bucket list is Roadtrippers. I found out about Roadtrippers from my friend who took several months to travel the country. They have created an awesome database of places to see. I use Roadtrippers almost exclusively when I’m planning my bigger trips. I’ll put in my starting point and my ending point and then I see what cool things are on my route.
I use their Save Place feature when I’m planning or if I see a neat place pop up on their Facebook page. When I was planning a road trip that ultimately didn’t happen a few years back, I put on a filter with my saved places along the route we were hoping to take. I could quickly see places I was interested in seeing easily along my route.
The third tool for saving your bucket list is Asana. I started using Asana years ago when I began work with one of my virtual office management clients. Since then, I have truly fallen in love. I use it for everything from keeping us organized to get on the road, to keeping track of tasks for our real estate investing business, to my grocery list, to keeping track of posting on this blog, and my bucket list.
What I love about Asana is that you can create checklists, add files, tag other people in your project, and create recurring things. I have a whole task with subtasks listing out the places I want to see.
Asana tips for you to steal
You can set up an email address that sends a task to a project you have set up. Now when I see something I want to do, I can either email the article, or screenshot to Asana. I will then add that place to my bucket list.
In your subtask, you can add sub-sections. Mine is broken down by state and international. I’m sure once we start traveling internationally more regularly, I’ll break this down more.
If you use Chrome for your browser, there is an add on that will let you add things right when you see them. I love this because if I’m reading an article that has a lot of places I want to see or one place, I can just click a button and the subject of the article becomes the title of my task and the link is in the description. I can then put it right into the project I want.
Another aspect about your bucket list that I think could use some more airtime is your Reverse Bucket List. Basically, you list where you HAVE been. It can be discouraging when you aren’t traveling as much as you’d like to see the trips that you have taken. We have a scratch off map that we update after every road trip and it hangs on our wall.
What about you? How do you keep track of your road trip bucket list? What ways do you find motivation to actually take the trips you want to take?
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