Edit: I added in a bit of content as I forgot to convey some important info
Welcome to the community, NewTxJL. Nice rig you have for this kind of stuff too!
I don’t have a ton of experience with New Mexico (none actually) or Colorado (Very limited) but I can help with some of your other questions by explaining how we do it. There’s no ‘right’ way to plan a trip. It’s your adventure to make it what you want, after all!
First, we need an excuse. Our motto is “any excuse will do”, but without one, its difficult to plan a trip. Some examples:
- I want to run the ABC Trail.
- I want to see Red Rocks in Colorado.
- I want to get out camping to try out my gear, and I want to see a different park every night.
- I want to try the best hamburgers in NM and Colorado based on state-wide Yelp reviews
You get the idea. For us, our Alaska trip was “We want to drive as far north as we can in North America, and as far south as we can in South America”. Alaska was the first part of that, the rest is in planning stages. This past summer, we had a much shorter trip. I’ve been having some health troubles for a good chunk of last year, and I was not physically capable of a real rough-and-tumble adventure, so my wife and I decided that my health would set our pace. Our excuse this time was “Get back out there”, and so what we did was we rolled a dice every day. If we rolled a 1, we’d go north, 2 east, 3 south, etc. 5 was ‘stay put’ and 6 was ‘rollers choice’ if I remember correctly. And so each morning we would wake up and roll the dice, then go in that direction till I got tired and then we’d find a campsite. We saw a ton of Northern BC on this trip that we would have otherwise missed. So, figure out what you wanna do — your excuse — and that’ll narrow down your route.
Once we have an excuse, we start researching the excuse. In the examples above, thta means looking for trip reports on that trail, finding locations for Red Rocks and opening hours, etc. Eventually, we end up with a rough idea of ‘stops’ — where we want to go -- and then actually we do use google maps For the bulk of the planning For the rough route. For off-road sections, Google Maps with satellite view turned on is very effective at charting routes in NA, but if you are just starting out, be aware that what looks like a passable trail on sattelite may be unsuitable for a 4x4 when you arrive, so have a Plan B Nearby of things you can do. Over time, your eye will adapt to what is likely driveable versus what is not. To clarify, we do prefer to travel as remotely as possible, so we use google maps to map the obvious route, and then switch to satellite view to plan overland routes. Sometimes that happens by default because it’s the only route to the excuse, like much of northern Canada. Or southern Canada for that matter. Lots of space up here. But even the ‘best burger in two states’ can be a great way to find the remote logging roads and 4x4 trails between burger A and burger B.
Some considerations During route planning:
- What is your comfortable daily mileage? Remember when setting up and tearing down camp every day, cooking meals, etc. You can’t just put the foot down and go. Our Alaska trip required us to average 600 kilometres per day, and that was a bit too much for us the way we did it.
- Do you have the capacity to camp anywhere, or will you need to find campgrounds? Reservations necessary? Etc.
- Are you hoping for a “front load” an “End load” or a “even” trip? Front load = drive like hell to get to a location, meander back taking as much time as we can. End load = meander around the place, and haul back quickly on slab at the end of the trip. Even trip = an average daily mileage that we aim for.
So now you’ve got your excuse, and you’ve got a rough route planned, all that’s left is to load up and go. So to your specific questions - Google Maps is great for a part of the trip, especially with sattelite view. There are various Backroad discovery routes in the states, and their respective websites may have valuable info. I’d also suggest communities like this one for trip reports, Expedition Portal, or even check out ADVRider — it’s meant for bikes, but a lot of the tracks are comparable.
As far as getting a trailer to rent, it depends — are you thinking just a cheap-ish utility trailer to haul gear? In that case, UHaul is pretty ubiquitous. If you are thinking camp trailer, be aware that a lot of RV dealers will rent you a trailer, but I’d advise against taking them off road because traditional RVs are not built for the rough and tumble off-road environment. If you are looking for a dedicated Overland trailer, I’m not aware of rentals in your area (You are a wee bit south of me!) but you might have luck renting one off a member here or posting on Craigslist for a rental locally; a lot of folks have trailers they aren’t using on a given weekend and may rent them for a few dollars.
I hope that is somewhat helpful, and that you have a wonderful adventure with your family. If there’s more questions or if anything I said doesn’t make sense, let me know!
