Use These Apps To Road-Trip With Even Less Planning [iOS Tips]

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Because, seriously, who wants to spend time planning so much?
Because, seriously, who wants to spend time planning so much?

Planning, sheesh, who needs it? Maybe you’re young, fancy free, and willing to take a risk on things like hotels and fuel being available when you get there? Maybe you’re just taking a zen-like trip in your car, and planning really messes with your mojo. Either way, there are apps for that, as you’ll quickly see.

HotelsByMe is an app that will help you find that last minute place to lay your head when you roll into town much later than you anticipated, or when you just can’t drive much longer and need to find a place to park and sleep. HotelsByMe lets you view a list of hotels by location or landmarks, sort by price or star rating, and even filter by the type of amenities the hotels nearby are offering. There’s even a 24/7 call center for booking snafus and customer support should you get stuck. It’s a universal app for the very nice price of free, so you don’t have much to lose if it works. Via IntoMobile

Another app that might help you with your plan-less travel is Cheap Gas! Heck, it’s an app that could probably help us all regardless of our organization or planning abilities. Cheap Gas! uses location data from your iPhone to help you find nearby gas stations, sorting by distance, or price. It uses the GasBuddy.com website to, ahem, fuel the data it returns to you, and allows you to add info on gas stations you visit that aren’t already there. Once it finds the data, it will help you get there with routing information as well. For a free app, it certainly sounds pretty nice. Via IntoMobile

I’m a big fan of just typing a place into the Maps app on my iPhone, like “coffee shop” and finding what’s nearby. However, that does take a certain amount of tapping and typing and such. Map Buddy helps you do the same thing, only with less time and effort, and that can’t be a bad thing. Downloading this app, currently on sale for $0.99, will let you find the nearest location using pre-defined lists in the app itself. You can, when you feel like doing a little pre-trip effort, customize the lists, add new ones, and even organize the locations into categories. Cool feature? It even works with an iPod touch if you’re in a metropolitan area with Wi-Fi in some areas of the US, Europe and Japan. Nice! Via Mashable

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