Vision Quest Atlas  ·  Brookline → Santa Barbara

Drag to pan · − / + to zoom · select any marker for its address
What am I looking at?the four rows below, in plain words — click to hide
The coloured cards, top One-click presets. Each picks a route and sets the map to the layers that make its case. Nothing you can’t do by hand below.
Show route Which single route is drawn. Everything else on the page follows this choice. All eight draws them together so you can compare.
Show markers Which kinds of marker appear on the map — hotels, food, fuel, landforms, oddities.
Bed standard The ratchet. ★ Five-star is $$$$ and up; ★★ Only the best is $$$$$ only — Aman, Blackberry, Post Ranch, the Vegas suite products. It filters the map, the bed picker and the stops, and it ignores the route filter so you see every qualifying hotel in every state. Apply standard then upgrades every bed it can and drops the stops that can’t meet it — stops marked ✕ are the ones with nothing good enough.
Thresholds Not places — the numbered orange discs mark where the country changes under the car: the Mississippi, the 100th meridian where the trees give up, the Colorado Plateau.
Stops slider A blunt “how many stops” dial — drag left and it drops the least essential stop still in, drag right and it restores the best one still out. It never overrides a stop you switched off by hand, and your nights and beds survive it.
Adding a resort you want Click any hotel on the map. The button on its card tells you which of two things it will do: if a stop within 80 miles already offers that hotel it reads ★ Use as the bed at <stop> — no near-duplicate 20 miles down the road. Only a genuinely off-route hotel reads + Add <town> as a stop; it is inserted in the right place and charged the detour, both ways. Your own stops are marked ★ and removed with the ✕.
Building a route from scratch Clear all stops, then click hotels on the map. Note that a hotel within 80 miles of one of this route’s own stops will switch that stop back on rather than create a new one — the card’s button says which. Stops order themselves along the road. Save this plan… keeps it; saved plans sit on the row below.
Your route (the button row) All stops on · Clear all stops · ★ Best bed everywhere (upgrade every stop at once) · Reset (back to the shipped itinerary) · Save this plan.
On this route only Hides places that aren’t within 55 miles of the drawn line. Turn it off to see everything on the map at once.
If you just want the itinerary:
  1. Pick a route — Vision Quest (most national parks) or Five-Star Line (best beds).
  2. Open the Plan tab on the right. Tick stops in or out, set nights, choose each bed. Drag the divider between map and panel if you want the panel wider.
  3. Want a resort that isn’t on it? Click it on the map → + Add as a stop.
  4. Hit Save this plan… so you can come back to it.
  5. Open the Brief tab and copy, print or email it to the travel agent.
Show route
Show markers
Stops
Bed standard
Your route
Saved
1.0×
drag = pan · − / + = zoom · pinch to zoom · click a numbered mark to frame it

What the miles are for

Public-domain and Creative-Commons photography · click a caption to jump to that stop

The Road-Test Kit — the Motion Bay field test rides along

2022 Cadillac CT5-V · every link below verified live 2026-08-10

Two phones run the crossing: the one you own becomes the controller (Motion Bay Remote, suction-mounted by your left hand) and the one you buy becomes the instrument (Motion Bay, center dash, cameras on the road). The CT5's quirk that shapes it all: every front power source lives inside the closed armrest bin — one charger in that 12 V feeds both phones, and the cable lengths below are measured for the two runs out of it.

Item~$Why this oneGet it
iPhone 17 Pro · 1 TB
unlocked · eSIM never activated		1,499 Storage is decadent (~50 GB records the whole trip) — the Pro's vapor-chamber cooling is the real buy: sun-struck dual-camera capture across the Southwest is the worst thermal load a phone can carry, and shutdown is the one failure that ends the test. Choose “Set Up Cellular Later” — GPS needs no plan. Apple
Dash suction mount — the HUD phone30 iOttie Easy One Touch class: gel suction cup, telescoping arm, dash or windshield. Use the adhesive dash pad it ships with — suction onto the pad survives desert dash heat that releases bare plastic. Amazon · iOttie
Window suction mount — the Remote phone25 Stuck to the driver's door glass, low and forward, so the key grid sits by your left hand. Gel suction rated to 194 °F. Two rules: below the sight line, and never drop the window with it mounted. Amazon
12 V → USB-C car charger · Anker 535 · 67 W35 The CT5 has no AC outlet. One compact 3-port charger in the armrest-bin 12 V powers both phones with headroom; short body so the lid still closes. Amazon
Right-angle USB-C cable · 3.3 ft · 100 W10 Bin → center-dash HUD phone; the right angle takes the strain off the mount head. Route out the bin lid, up the console seam. Amazon
USB-C cables · 6 ft · 100 W · 2-pack13 One runs bin → door seam → window mount (3 ft will not make it); the twin lives in the glovebox — on day 4 a cable always fails or vanishes. Amazon
USB-C → Lightning cable19 Only if your current phone is iPhone 14 or older. Apple
Cable clips · spare gel pads · microfiber15 Clips pin both runs clear of the wheel and shifter; clean glass is what suction actually grips — wipe before every re-mount. clips · pads · cloth
Total, with the phone≈ 1,650Fits in a shoebox; installs in twenty minutes.

Before ordering the charger: open the armrest, plug anything into the 12 V, and check the lid closes over a plug + two cables. Full setup ritual — the iCloud airlock, TestFlight, the driveway shakedown — lives in the Road-Test Kit and Field Manual PDFs.

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