Three Good Stops isn't a venture-funded travel portal. It's built and run by James Armstrong out of Ashe County, North Carolina, in the mountains where US-421 climbs out of Winston-Salem and the Blue Ridge Parkway crosses over.
I've spent years driving people up and down the East Coast for a living — airport runs, weddings, wine tours, long hauls. When you drive that much, you learn something: the difference between a good trip and a miserable one is almost never the route. It's the stops. A 500-mile drive with three decent stops feels shorter than a 300-mile drive spent hunting for a bathroom you don't regret.
Every other planner I tried optimized the wrong thing. They'd shave nine minutes off my arrival time and route me past nothing but interchange gas stations. Nobody was answering the question I actually had: where should I get off this road?
You give it a start, an end, and how long you want to drive between breaks. It walks the route the way a real drive happens — kicking in a stretch break every couple of hours, a fuel stop when your tank says so, a meal near lunch and dinner, an overnight when the day runs long — and it picks real towns for each one. Not the nearest exit. Towns with enough around them that stopping is worth the off-ramp, and it tells you the reason each one earned its spot.
It covers all 48 continental states, from a place database of over 1.6 million spots across 142,000 towns. When it can't vouch for a town, it says so instead of inventing one.
Because routing calls cost real money and I'd rather charge you 99¢ than sell your trip data or bury the itinerary in ads. Your first trip is free, no card. If it helps you, three more are 99¢ one time. If you drive constantly, $2.99 a month saves your trips too. That's the whole business model.
If a stop we picked was wrong, or a town you know deserves to be in here, tell me: info@threegoodstops.com. I read all of it, and the suggestions have already changed how the picker scores towns.
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