Community & News

Sign up or login to Facebook today and become a fan of our Streets & Trips Facebook page. Share your travel story and upload your videos and photos about your favorite adventure using Streets & Trips. We will showcase a selection of stories on this website. Get in on the fun today!

Read the latest travel story below or click a link to read past stories:

• Mountains to Vineyards: "Hey, That Looks Fun"
• Five States in One Day: Seattle to Quebec
• RVing with Microsoft Streets & Trips
• Traveling the Lower 48 States with Streets & Trips with GPS

Five States in Five Weeks: Arizona to Park City
Joe and Iris Collins

Santa Fe, Durango, Moab, Monument Valley, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Zion River, Park City—five states, 5,771 miles in five weeks—and Iris and Joe Collins used Microsoft Streets & Trips to help make their trip a memorable one.

Joe started using Streets & Trips seven years ago while touring cross-country on his motorcycle. "Streets & Trips really helps with my trip planning. For years I've planned my routes and waypoints using Streets & Trips. I've also used the feature of sharing trip details with the navigation device I use on my bike. Makes navigating so easy."

These days Joe and his wife Iris like to travel in their motor home—most recently to the Southwest. "All my trips start with planning in Streets & Trips. First we choose the key places we're going to visit, and then I use Streets & Trips to map the route and find interesting stops along the way, such as state and national parks, landmarks, etc. Less worrying about navigating and more time taking pictures!"

Streets & Trips includes easy-to-use planning options to help tailor your trip. "When planning our trip to the Southwest, I used Streets & Trips to set my travel speed, fuel usage, and driving start and stop times to determine how many days travel to my next destination. Streets & Trips route planning estimated where my first night stop will be, and then I used 'Find Nearby Places' to find the businesses we were going to need—an RV campground, Walmart, a diesel station, or maybe a store. And Streets & Trips suggested where along my route to make my fuel stops."

"I have a 45-foot motor home, so I have to be careful when pulling a car because we could get stuck and not be able to maneuver. I often use Streets & Trips to zoom in on a possible overnight location to get a better look and then when I'm connected to the Internet I click 'Show in Bing Maps' to see a bird's eye view. It's really helped me see if there was enough space to maneuver."

Joe and Iris run Streets & Trips on a laptop that they take with them in the motor home. "I use Streets & Trips to easily make changes en route. It helps me solve problems while we're on the road. For our summer trip, we were having so much fun in Cortez that we wanted to stay longer than planned, so I changed our route to skip one of the other destinations. Streets & Trips quickly recalculated our route and we were on our way again."

Memorable travel moments? Joe and Iris have plenty. "Streets & Trips helped us make this trip one to remember. Coming into Monument Valley on Route 163. Beautiful. Truly awe-inspiring. And I have the pictures to prove it!"