Road Trip

Road trip, it’s summer and that means road tripping season is upon us. It’s time to jump in the car with family and friends and hit the open road. Here’s a list of the top five apps for your next road trip.

Waze:

First off, we’ve got Waze. If you’re not currently using Waze, now’s the time to start and not just for your summer road trip. Waze is a navigation app with tons of great features. Since Waze is crowdsource fueled, it’s constantly updating and gives you the best routes available. It will alert you to slow traffic, accidents, speed traps, hazards, and much more. Then it will route you around them if possible. If you see an accident or another event, you could drop this onto the map and help out other Wazers. Waze will even help you find the best price on gas. Speaking of gas, that brings us to our next app,

Dark Sky:

Dark Sky Gas Guru is a simple and easy to use app that helps you find the best price on gas wherever you are. Watch the app and it shows you all the nearby gas stations and prices for each. It will highlight the best price in green, so you will know where to go. If you don’t like the map, you can view all of the nearby stations ranked by price.

Tapping on one will give you directions to that station, prices for all grades of gas. It will also give you a phone number so you can contact them if you need to. You can filter by the grade of fuel your vehicle takes and also search for other cities. This way you’ll know where to go when you get to the next stop. On a road trip, it’s not the end destination that counts but how you spend your time getting there.

Road Trippers:

Road Trippers helps you find awesome things along the way like attractions, food, and much, much more. You can plan your own trip or use one of their guides if you feel like taking a spontaneous weekend getaway. When making your own trip, pick your start and end points and it will plot you a map showing your route. Then you can add points of interest along your way based on your preferences and what you find interesting. These range from practical things like accommodations, food, gas stations, and campsites to more wacky and fun items like offbeat attractions, quirky shops, flea markets, wineries and breweries, and ghost towns.

Add as many or as few as you like and it will populate your map with icons showing you where to find these attractions. Swiping up on a point of interest brings up photos, reviews, contact information, a star rating, and more info like hours of operation and price. You’ll never travel the same way after using this app. With so many amazing points of interest to see narrowing it down to fit into one trip is going to be the real difficulty.

Dark Sky:

There’s nothing worse than heading out for a nice day at the beach or a hike in the woods only to have the weather spoil it for you. Dark Sky will help you avoid this mishap and let you plan for your next adventure accordingly. Dark Sky is a hyperlocal weather app that gives you super precise weather info down to the minute.

Because it uses your GPS location, it can tell you what to expect in the next hour, day, or week. The interface is clean and easy to navigate, showing you all you need to know quickly and clearly. Cycle through the chance of precipitation, temperature, wind, humidity, and UV index. Now you’ll know whether to bring the sunblock, the rain hat, or the kite when you go to the park.

Swipe right and you’ve got a clear view of the week laid out for you. Swipe to the left and you can see an animated world view of storms coming your way. You can even see the temperature and how it will change throughout the week. You can also search for other locations and scout out the weather there before you go. This way you will be prepared when you get there.

Finally when you stop driving for the day, whether it’s your final destination or just a stop along the way. You will want to find the best hot spots in town.

Findery:

Findery is your local guide to the city, no matter which city you’re in. Using Findery is like sitting down with a group of knowledgeable locals and enjoying a cup of coffee. This is while you discuss all that the city has to offer. Find the best donuts in town, catch some live music, or relax in a quaint secondhand bookstore. If you’re into quirky oddball attractions, Findery has that too. You can search near where you are or far away to plan an upcoming trip. Swipe down on a location to add it to your bucket list, a mark that you’ve been there, and leave your thoughts on the place or you can upload your own discoveries. Tap on a location to read more about it, peruse others memories of the place, check out photos, see maps, and find more information about that place.

Findery is constantly expanding and changing as people upload their thoughts and memories of places all over the world. So there’s no end to all the great places you’ll discover. All these apps are fantastic and can help make your next road trip the highlight of the year. But none of them are going to do you any good if you’ve got no cell service. All of these are based on crowdsourcing data. So if you’ve got no access to the web, you’re out of luck.