Hitting the open road and driving into the sunset is a romantic notion, but most of us need a little planning before road trip.

Do you go north? Do you go south? Do you take a week? Do you take a month? What are the best stops to make? And there are a million more questions to be asked.

Randy Olson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, mapped out a super-efficient — and super-ambitious — way to see the contiguous United States. He devised his cross-country road trip, combining algorithms and Google Maps, so he could visit 48 capitol buildings.

“For this road trip, there is one goal: to take a picture at as many U.S. state capitols as possible,” Olson wrote on his blog. “We will travel only by car, so that rules out Alaska (too far away) and Hawaii (requires a plane flight) and leaves us with the 48 contiguous states (excluding D.C.).”

“Whenever possible, we will avoid routes that require us to travel through foreign countries, as entering/leaving the country requires a passport and border control tends to slow things down.”