Wayfinder
Case study · Personal Projects
A living road-trip planner that turns the scattered logistics of a long drive into one adaptive page, plus a generator that builds a custom version for anyone.
Goal
Replace the pile of half-remembered logistics with a calm, single source of truth that updates itself, so the planning holds up when you’re tired, off-signal, and actually on the drive.
Wayfinder is a single-page road-trip itinerary planner. It takes everything a long drive usually scatters across a dozen tabs: weather, fuel, road clearance, campsites, backup plans, all held in one page that stays usable on the road. One full van trip is planned out end to end as the working example, and a companion generator builds a tailored itinerary for anyone from their own interests.
Audience
Road-trippers and van travelers who want a real plan without living inside a spreadsheet. It started as a personal side project, then grew a generator so the same structure works for someone planning their first trip as well as their tenth.
Process
Built as a self-contained HTML file with live weather and fire-restriction links, a fuel strategy, van-clearance awareness, and mapped overnight stops with a “sleep where you are” rule. The generator takes a traveler’s interests and produces a matching plan in the same format, so the personal build becomes a tool anyone can use.
Technology
- A self-contained HTML planner plus a static builder page: vanilla JavaScript, no backend.
- An inline SVG route map, no tile server and no map token, so it renders offline.
- Keyless Open·Meteo weather, fetched live in the browser.
- localStorage for packing-list state.
- A companion scheduled task for the campground cancellation watcher.
- Hosted on GitHub Pages.
Outcomes
The scattered logistics of a long drive collapse into one page that holds up on the road, off-signal, and late in the day. One full van trip is planned end to end as the working example, and the companion generator turns that personal build into something anyone can produce from their own interests, so the same structure serves a first trip as well as a tenth.
The campground cancellation watcher runs on schedule and does the checking a traveler would otherwise do by hand, and every piece stays keyless and client-side, so nothing depends on a paid map or weather service to keep working.
Status
A working prototype in personal use. One full van trip is planned end to end as the live example, the generator produces tailored itineraries, and the campground cancellation watcher runs on schedule. It keeps no account and no server-side data: trip and packing state live in the browser on the traveler’s own device.