Real-Life Road Trip: Every Hashtag You'll Need on Your Cross-Country Trip

This is going to be your most important hashtag. Without geo-locating, you won’t find any helpful information. Before you enter any other hashtags, make sure you’ve targeted your search to your next destination. Whether you’re looking for the best #seafood in #NewOrleans or a #ranch in #WestTexas, you’ll want to filter out the noise by telling Twitter exactly where you’re trying to look. Of course, this doesn’t work very well if you don’t know where you are, but that’s what Google Maps is for.

Don’t be fooled: Just because this hashtag seems a little obvious doesn’t mean it isn’t going to be helpful. If you’re looking to find unknown gems in the cities and towns you’re passing through on your trip, this is the place to start. With this hashtag, you could discover a secluded waterfall, a beloved local donut shop, or a can’t-miss music venue all at the same time. Of course, if you want to get specific, this may not be the ideal hashtag, but if you want to discover something new wherever you are, using #travel is a great way to do it.

Though #LP is the preferred hashtag of the travel guide organization Lonely Planet, it is also used by people who believe themselves to be “little princesses” and Linkin Park fans. You might want to check #LP first, and if there are just too many people quoting nu-metal lyrics from 2002, then you can try #LonelyPlanet. When you tap into Lonely Planet’s network, you’ll find photos, articles, and musings from travellers all over the country and the world. This is a hashtag you can check out while you have downtime on your trip or even before you go if you are looking for general information from fellow wanderers. Once you’ve gathered photos and insights of your own, you can use this hashtag to share them with fellow travelers around the globe.

This is another great hashtag to check out as you prepare for your journey or while you’re rolling through that endless expanse of corn in the middle of the country. The Society of American Travel Writers is a professional organization of journalists who focus on the open road. Searching this hashtag will give you articles from professionals and amateurs alike who have traveled and found themselves inspired to put pen to paper (or, these days, fingers to keyboard). This hashtag will not only give you detailed info on travel destinations, but might also inspire you to start on the travel journal you promised yourself you would keep. Once you pen that essay on America’s oldest ballpark or the abandoned missions of the Southwest, find your audience with this hashtag when you find the cajonés to tweet it out to the world.

Yelp is great, but we’ve all seen a few bad apples or a couple overly generous reviews wildly warp a rating. Sometimes you need more information than a star rating and a sentence in all caps telling you exactly how “totally awesome” the burgers are. Rather than wading through corporate PR blurbs and lists written by national writers who don’t even live in the city, use this hashtag. #localfood is a great way to stumble upon hole in the wall brunch spots and tucked away dinner destinations. Once a tweeter or two points you in the right direction, you can still do your due Yelp diligence before you spend that hard-earned scratch.

It’s every traveller’s fantasy to stumble into a dive bar in a strange city and hear a great band. Too often, you get the same old 40-something, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Journey covering group of bros you see at every dive bar in every town in the country. Don’t simply rely on luck or a big stadium show to deliver music that you want to hear. This hashtag will yield great bands hungry for an audience no matter how small a hamlet you might be passing through. If you end up hearing a two AM combination of “Free Bird” and “Don’t Stop Believin’” back to back, you have only yourself to blame.

You’re probably wary of day-based hashtags at this point. It’s hard to blame you. We’ve all been done dirty by #tbt and #FF. No, we don’t want to see a picture of your mother giving you a bath when you were a toddler and no we don’t want to follow your awesome fellow “marketing bloggers extraordinaire.” Don’t be fooled by the day of the week, #traveltuesday is actually a useful hashtag. You’ll find deals, events, advice, and anything else you could possibly want when it comes to going off into the world if you seek out #traveltueday tweets.

It’s easy to find the cheapest hotel in a city on the Internet. All you have to do is visit one of the legion of sites that comb the web for deals. If price isn’t your only sticking point, if you want to find a place with a certain feel, now that’s a lot harder. If you explore #hotel, you’ll find all kinds of pictures, advice, and complaints from hotels all over the coming night’s port of call. Sure, you could stay at the Holiday Inn Express again, but maybe it’s time for a breakfast that isn’t so continental.

Sometimes you don’t know what you want until you learn how cheaply you can get it. If you’ve got some time to kill in your itinerary, or if that national monument just isn’t as monumental as you thought it might be, look for nearby deals that peak your interest. It’s not like it’s a huge time investment. Scroll for ten minutes, and if you don’t find anything, you can always head to the bar. Speaking of which…

Don’t go into the first bougie cocktail spot or dingy bro-centric sports bar you come across just because it won’t be a far stumble back to your hotel. There are so many great places to drink in every city in the country, and at least one okay place to drink in every town in the country, so there is no excuse to slurp over-priced swill in the hotel lobby when you could be out there finding the bar of your dreams. With the rise of craft beers and artisanal cocktails, people have really started to care about what, where, and how they drink. Bar goers from coast to coast spend way too much time reviewing their drunken escapades in less than 140 characters. Take advantage. It’s a simple fact: Good nights tend to happen in good bars.

If you aren’t exactly the best at planning ahead, you can forget about finding a campsite in most national parks. Anal-retentive families with color-coordinated inhalers book the prime summer campsites months in advance. Too often, you end up searching for anywhere to pitch a tent after being rejected from the nation’s national parks and you end up in some dried out ditch near a truck stop. Not all camp sites are created equal, and if you can find a gem like the Carlsbad KOA, you’ll remember it just as much as the national park you weren’t allowed to camp in.

You aren’t sure if you want to see a band, hit the bar, or do something completely different, but you do know that after fourteen hours in the car, you want to do something. If you simply throw #tonight into your Twitter search, you’ll find all kinds of things to do. Whether you want to see a house DJ set, stand-up comedy, or a monster truck rally, you’ll find entertainment that strikes your fancy (and a lot of things that hilariously don’t) with this hashtag. Some of life’s best plans are made at the last minute. You already wrote on your online dating profile that you’re “spontaneous,” now is the time to live up to that claim.

There is nothing worse than driving hours off of the most direct route to see something that isn’t that cool. There is so much money to be made off of tourists like you, and that means every podunk town across the country wants you to come to their “world’s largest” whatever the hell they have. Before you swing off into those caverns or that museum, check in with Twitter regarding how worthwhile your excursion might be. Two quick tips: Dinosaur Kingdom in Natural Bridge, Virginia is totally worth it and Roswell, New Mexico sadly is not.

Speaking of Roswell, it is always helpful to find out before you walk into a tourist trap. Prior to landing at a place like Four Corners or Pigeon Forge, Tenn., make sure you gas up, buy some food, and check just how low your bank account has dropped. There is nothing wrong with a good tourist trap, but you’ll be kicking yourself if you end up spending $300 at some historically themed restaurant. Places like that are great for buying novelty t-shirts, but it won’t feel so novel when you realize you could have gotten a hotel an hour back for half the price.

A hashtag list wouldn’t be complete without something a bit more motivational than practical. Planning is important so that you don’t end up out of gas on the side of the road or shived in a truck stop bathroom. All the Ziploc bags of snacks and highlighted maps in the world aren’t going to make you enjoy your road trip. At a certain point, you’ll have to trust whatever planning you’ve done and let the experience take over. While we’re on amazing trips, we tell ourselves that the next year we’ll get out on the road and do it again. Too often, life gets in the way. The job, the family, and the bank account resume their place as the anchor that keeps us tethered to our homes and keeps our cars parked in our garages. Yes, it can be valuable to reach out to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and the like for that valuable intel, but if you spend too much time looking down at your phone that you miss the beauty around you, you’ll be kicking yourself for a long time. Safe travels, buy a portable air compressor, and don’t spend too much money in Vegas. The road is yours for the taking; go take it.