I’m sure there are people out there who must plan absolutely every detail of their trip from when they leave down to where they eat. I very strongly recommend that you do not plan every detail. If you plan everything out, there’s no spontaneity to your trip; everything was predetermined and there will be no sense of adventure. Some of the best things my family has done on our travels we found out about while on the road, and we never could have planned for them. Before we leave our house, the only thing we have planned is our travel route and places to stop, a few hotel reservations, and any excursions that required reservations. For example, when we went to the southwest, we planned to stop at the Grand Canyon, Petrified Forest, and a few other national parks, but we did not plan a stop every day to allow for travels time and unexpected activities. One of the best places we stopped where we had no intention of doing so was Lake Cadoe, LA. We had a few hours to kill, so my dad googled what to do in the area. One of the results was a tour of the local lake on a small boat. After driving to what my brother and I expected to be a tour company, we found that the tours were given by a normal man who happened to have a boat and a house on a small channel to the lake. He wasn’t a professional tour guide, I don’t even remember what his job was, he was just using it as a side business, but that might have been one of my favorite tours we ever took. The man was very friendly, funny, and knowledgeable, and Lake Cadoe was incredibly beautiful. We would’ve totally missed such a great experience if we had planned every detail down to the minute. Let’s look at this tip from a different angle now. When my family, this time the four of us, my uncle’s family, and my grandparents, went to Hawaii, we went with a travel agency with a planned itinerary. We traveled with a group of maybe fifty people, and had to follow a sheet of paper that told us what to do and where to be. Don’t get me wrong, Hawaii was fantastic, but I hated being told how to go on vacation by a sheet of paper. Almost everything was planned out for us, even including where and when we had to eat dinner a few nights. It felt way too constrained and solid to be a real vacation. My parents argue that the schedule was necessary because without it we wouldn’t have been able to see all the islands Hawaii has to offer, and I guess they were right, however, if I ever go back I would choose one island, either Maui or Kuwai, and stay there the whole time doing what I wanted to do, not what someone else told me to do. Do not plan out every detail when you go on vacation; some of the best things that happen will be unplanned. Leave some mystery to your trip, even if that means running out of gas or driving until 2 in the morning looking for a hotel room. After all, you never know what you’ll find.