OK, first things first ... you do need to make concrete plans. My ex-husband's family was great for coming up with wonderful pie-in-the-sky ideas, but when it came down to making concrete plans and carrying them out ... it didn't happen. It got so that every time one of them would tell me that he/she was going to the Bahamas or Scotland or wherever the next summer, I'd just smile and walk away. I knew it wasn't going to happen ... and it didn't.

As downtube42 says, you've got to prepare a well-thought-out, detailed plan ... and a managable plan, one that's not too extreme or unbelievable.

As for planning, I'm a paper map person ... I find the online mapping software to be difficult to use, inaccurate, and not detailed enough ... although I will sometimes use it to map the route I've decided on, using paper maps, to determine distances. I find it is very hard to determine what is a gravel road, or a paved road, or whatever on an online map ... and I haven't seen anything yet with campgrounds and stuff like that. Who knows, there could be something more advanced than what I've used, but I find the paper maps work just fine for me.

I believe you can get paper maps at your local American Automobile Association, and at tourist information centres.

And as for cell phones ... they don't need charging when they are off. I keep mine off until I want to make a phone call, and in your situation, that would happen once, maybe twice a day for brief calls home.