Taking a different route to planning your next road trip

It was an inevitable Internet marriage: Match online maps and driving directions with databases of lodging, restaurants and tourist attractions, and voila! You have almost everything you need to easily plan a road trip.

Or do you?

I recently took several online travel planners for a spin. As with any journey, there were some pleasant discoveries, a few bumps in the road and enough twists to get me lost once or twice.

It’s possible and even fun to plan a road trip entirely online, but it’s not always easy or convenient. And you generally get what you pay for -- or don’t.

For my virtual one-way trip of about 550 miles, I aimed to drive from downtown L.A.to Arizona’s Grand Canyon National Park. I would leave at 9 a.m. Aug. 4; stop for lunch, an overnight stay and sightseeing on the way; and then head to the park for two nights.

I test-drove three programs: TripKing and MobilCompanion, both new this year, and AAA’s 2 1/2-year-old Internet TripTik. Here’s what I found. (You may take less time than I did because I took notes and made frequent printouts.)

TripKing Road Trip Planner: This program was the economy car of the three: inexpensive (in fact, free) and basic. You could tell the program when you wanted to stop and what you wanted to do, and it eventually found the place.

The company that runs TripKing, Intuitive Search Inc. in Marblehead, Mass., licenses the program to several partners that make it available on their Web sites, said Chris Stockwell, company co-founder. (For a list of partners, visit www.tripking.com.)

I immediately hit a roadblock. TripKing rejected “Grand Canyon National Park” as a destination. I entered “Tusayan.” It rejected that too. I finally scored with “Flagstaff,” more than 60 miles away.

I tried to order a lunch stop at 1 p.m. But the program told me “we have found no locations that meet your search requirements” and advanced the time by 15 minutes. (OK, this is the desert.) After several queries, it found six places to eat in Needles, Calif., and calculated I could arrive by 2:05 p.m. I scheduled an hour stop, and the program bumped my arrival in Flagstaff ahead.

It was fairly easy to add other stops in categories such as “Dining,” “Cultural” and “Lodging,” although descriptions were sparse. Hotels were linked to Web sites on which you could book; in Flagstaff, 82 hotels were listed.

My three-page printed itinerary offered one map, addresses and phones for stops, and laconic directions with more than one reference to “unnamed road” -- apparently freeway exits or onramps. It didn’t total mileage or driving time, but it did estimate arrival times.

Time elapsed: About 50 minutes from log-on to printout.

MobilCompanion: This program, from the producers of the Mobil Travel Guide, was the luxury car among the three: expensive and loaded with options. It costs $129 per year per family, which includes discounted roadside service, travel deals and access to a 24-hour call center. The site is www.mobilcompanion.com.

The program offered a personal profile that let me set preferences from a dizzying array of options: nearly 50 hotel chains, numerous cuisines and activities geared to “family fun,” sports fans, shop-a-holics and more.

The program recognized Grand Canyon National Park only after I entered “Tusayan.” (You can find the park separately and enter it as a stop, a Mobil spokesman explained later, but it’s a four-step process. I missed it.)

For stops, I could specify “passing through” or multiple overnights, with lodging, activities, the works. Descriptions were complete: a capsule history of the ghost town of Oatman, Ariz., details on local festivals, hotel profiles with links to online bookings. Thirty-nine hotels were listed in Flagstaff.

I got lost trying to navigate this material. I took the online tutorial twice. I called the 24-hour help line and got a fellow named Robert, who said he didn’t know much about the technical side and suggested I call his supervisor the next morning. (Mobil said it was working to improve site navigation. )

When I finally figured it out, my 13-page itinerary was worth it. It had nine maps with detailed directions (no “unnamed roads”) and descriptions of restaurants and other options I’d chosen. It showed mileages and driving times between stops. For the whole trip, only mileage was totaled.

Time elapsed: Nearly two hours.

Internet TripTik: This was the solid family car of the three programs: midpriced and not too fancy. It’s included with AAA membership, which varies by affiliate. Go to www.aaa.com to link to clubs.

You enter trip locations, one by one, on the TripTik’s “Choose Locations” page. Under “National Park,” I found the Grand Canyon.

As you go along, you can add a location or create a map of it.

When you create a map, a “Points of Interest” menu appears that lists lodging, restaurants and other attractions. You can also find these by moving your cursor over icons on the map. Either way, you link to fairly detailed profiles; online hotel bookings are available. As you add stops, they appear in order on the “Choose Locations” page.

There were annoyances. When I ordered a map of Flagstaff, the program stated there were too many points of interest to show, so I had to zoom in to find them -- repeatedly and blindly, because I didn’t know the city.

My 19-page itinerary had 16 maps and detailed directions that flagged possible construction delays. Attractions were noted but not described. It showed mileages but not driving time between stops. It totaled both for the whole trip.

Time elapsed: about one hour.

Which of these three programs is for you? Like choosing a car, it depends on your personal style and budget.

As for me, I’m still shopping for my ideal online wheels.

Jane Engle welcomes comments and suggestions but cannot respond individually to letters and calls. Write Travel Insider, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012, or e-mail jane.engle@latimes.com.