Optimized Road Trips to Places You Would Actually Want to Go

Randy Olson made a fun little python program that uses google maps and some genetic algorithms to compute optimal road trips. The only problem is that his initial example road trip was constrained to visit a single destination in each of the lower 48 states, which means it skipped TONS OF GREAT CITIES. Look at this thing, who would drive all over the country and skip LA, Seattle, and Chicago?

Optimal path for a single spot in each state. Click to interact.

So I did the only logical thing and forked Randy's git repo and dropped in the top 50 metropolitan areas in the US. I figured I'd make optimal road trips for the top 3, 5, 10, 20, 30, 40, and 50 metro areas. Click any map to embiggen and interactify.

I think the moral here is that you should never have to drive through Montana or the Dakotas. Also, I've done two of the nasty blank stretches multiple times (Portland to the Bay Area and West TX).

This has also shown me I need to learn some Jekyll and move my blargh over to github. Coming soon: yoachim.github.io

Anyway someone should go fork Randy's git repo (or mine), and calculate an optimized bike path to visit every Starbucks in Seattle.