October 2025.
Our journey through eight states.

Since September 2020, my niece, her husband, Lynn, and I have piled into a Suburban to tour the country, and sometimes, other parts of the world. We often get a photo of the four of us on our journey, but that didn’t happen this year. The group photo above was taken on our October 2024 journey to South Africa. The travelers, left to right, are Gary, Pat, Lynn, and me.

This year, trading speed for scenery, we let AI chart the backroads. Our road trip wasn’t about getting there fast—it was about getting there differently. With Pat or Gary behind the wheel, Lynn and I settled comfortably into the roomy back seats. We turned off the interstates and tuned into a slower kind of travel—one curated not by GPS, but by prompts and algorithms.

This isn’t a comprehensive diary of our journey, but a collection of adventures and misadventures from the back roads and byways we followed. Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing posts about the places and attractions we visited. This is the story of our AI-guided journey.

We used Gemini AI to plan our route on a day-to-day basis. For those who are wondering, I used the free version of Gemini and spent several hours planning and developing the route, generating many questions for the AI tool. To start with, here is my initial prompt:

From there, I refined the prompts city by city to keep drive times to six hours or less and chose the cities we wanted to visit. If Gemini suggested a route that exceeded six hours, I asked for a closer overnight stop before continuing on to our choice of cities to visit. Its responses were clean, consistent, and with some exceptions, easy to use—I could simply copy and paste them into a Word document.
Here’s our routing for Day 2:

Each day’s plan included similar details, followed by a Google Maps snippet for visualization.

My next step was to use Google Maps to double-check Gemini’s work. Highway mappings, especially state and county roads, aren’t always crystal clear in Google Maps, especially when avoiding interstates, so if the routing looked complex, I manually added a turn-by-turn section. Then, to ensure I hadn’t missed anything, I asked Pat to gather state highway maps and highlight the routes based on my directions. It was a blend of AI-powered planning and “old-school” navigation—algorithms at the computer, paper maps in the passenger seat.

We stayed flexible on our journey, open to changing stops or directions as needed. The original plan was for Lynn and me to drive from Fargo to Pat and Gary’s house in northern Iowa—a manageable four-hour trip. We’d spend the night there and begin our road trip’s first leg to Salina, Kansas, the following day. But before we even reached Iowa, Pat floated a new idea: why don’t we head to Lincoln, Nebraska, that same day? It was just over three hours farther. That meant Lynn and I would be in the car for a little more than seven hours, but we’d be in the back seat—and we’d knock out a good stretch of the journey right away.

That change shortened our next day’s drive to Salina to just three hours, giving us extra time to explore. With the afternoon wide open, we visited two local gems: The Garage Automotive Museum and the Yesteryear Flywheels Museum. One celebrates horsepower and chrome; the other focuses on Kansas farm life. Together, they offered a vivid contrast—and a snapshot of Salina’s character.

The Garage showcased an entire wing dedicated to European cars. A 1989 Aston Martin Lagonda S4 stood out as a high-end example, sleek and imposing. But the collection wasn’t all luxury—there were plenty of more modest models, along with a charming lineup of Vespa motorbikes that added a splash of whimsy.

Day 2: Salina, KS to Oklahoma City, OK 5 hours, 10 minutes

Our next destination was Oklahoma City, where we planned to visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial. We intentionally modified our Day 2 journey to include a short stretch of Route 66—the legendary Mother Road—now a state highway near Arcadia. Heading south, we planned to stop at OK County 66 – John’s Place, a quirky, heartfelt tribute to Route 66, and visit Pop’s 66.

From the back seat, I played shadow navigator, keeping an eye on Google Maps. We discovered that Gemini’s suggestions often mirrored Google’s routing—especially when I checked the “Avoid Highways” box. At one point, Google Maps offered a five-minute shortcut to “cut a corner” on our way to Route 66. We took the bait and paid the price: three of the roughest miles of gravel road I’ve ever encountered. And living in North Dakota, I’ve seen my share of poorly maintained gravel.

Unfortunately, despite OK County 66’s website and Google Maps listing it as open daily from noon to 6 PM, we arrived well after noon to find the driveway gate shut and locked. So we rolled a little farther down Route 66 to Pop’s, where a towering 66-foot (20-meter) soda bottle marked the entrance to a glass-walled retro-emporium: part restaurant, part gas station, and part soda pop showroom—a fizzy wonderland boasting over 700 bottled flavors from around the world.

The Oklahoma City National Memorial was every bit as somber and heart-wrenching as we knew it would be. Since this was our overnight stop, we had ample time to wander through the museum, listen to the poignant stories, and walk the grounds, which were powerfully transformed by the events of that tragic day.

Day 3: Oklahoma City, OK to Abilene, TX 5 hours, 24 minutes

Near Abilene, we made time for a visit to the Buffalo Gap Historic Village, located just a few miles southwest of town. This living history site preserves more than a dozen original and relocated buildings from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, offering a vivid glimpse into frontier life in West Texas. The centerpiece is the 1880 Taylor County Courthouse, still standing in its original location. We wandered through a two-room schoolhouse, a doctor’s office, a barbershop, and a quaint chapel, each filled with period furnishings and artifacts, and enjoyed our visit with the docent at the visitor center.

One of the things we learned about avoiding Interstate highways is that US, State, and County roads all lead through small-town America. Some of those towns aren’t so small. As we approached larger communities, a quick glance at Google Maps often helped us select alternate city streets that bypassed the downtown business district and its string of traffic lights—avoiding the main highway through town that Gemini had recommended.

Except for cities where we’d reserved in advance for multi-night stays, we booked our hotel rooms each morning using our smartphones. We never had trouble finding a place to stay. Once we were within a few miles of our destination, we’d plug the hotel’s address into the Suburban’s GPS to find the most efficient route—usually leading us directly back to the edge of the nearest Interstate. The next morning, we’d reverse-engineer our way back onto our planned route and continue the journey.

Day 5: Alpine, TX to Big Bend National Park to Alpine, TX 2 hours each way

We opted to stay in Alpine for two nights for two reasons. The first was no fault of Gemini: the government shutdown had begun just days earlier, and we weren’t sure whether the only National Park on our itinerary would be open. Staying in Alpine gave us flexibility—close enough to drive into Big Bend in the morning, spend the day exploring, and return for the night before setting off again. It also gave us backup options in case the park was closed.

As it turned out, we needn’t have worried. The park was open, but the visitor centers were shuttered, and no park personnel were available.

Our first five days proved that an AI could successfully map a backroads journey across the Great Plains and West Texas. We tested the limits of Gemini’s algorithms, matched them against paper maps, and were rewarded with a truly unique travel experience.

But the biggest challenge to come wasn’t in the planning; it was waiting for us as we turned east toward San Antonio, the Gulf Coast, and the bayou. Join me next Travel Tuesday for the conclusion of our trip, where unexpected events changed our schedule far more drastically than any AI ever could.

Read about the final legs of our journey, the hospital trip that changed everything, and the celebration that was in jeopardy in Part 2: AI Plans the Route—Life Changes Our Plans.

John Steiner