We had AI book us a campsite!

It's a strange world we live in, where after Tanner's passing, I thought about all the friends and family I should inform, and then realized, "Oh, I need to tell AI." Anthony and I had recently enlisted the help of Gemini, Claude, ChatGPT, and Muse to offer us suggestions for a foliage trip in the Blue Ridge Mountains. We took the initial itineraries and began doing our own research to whittle down the activities. Then, I continued the conversation with Muse to finalize our plans. Muse is the only AI (at the time of writing this) that has the ability to create bookings on its user's behalf. Knowing I'd want to try this feature, I kept Muse informed of my planning progress, and it continued offering extra help and suggestions.

In fact, Muse continues working on the back-end without prompting – something Anthony and I have mixed feelings about. The day after Tanner's passing, I went back into the app to let it know. To my surprise, I had messages from the past couple days:

"Heads up on something that never came up in our planning, and it matters: Grandfather Mountain now requires timed-entry tickets bought online to guarantee admission."

I appreciate Muse for doing due diligence and discovering this. I had honestly not even noticed the oversight because some of our other models had picked up on this, and so we already knew. But Muse didn't know that we knew.

Muse is apparently so much of a workaholic, that it also started telling me about events happening in Myrtle Beach that coming weekend. Granted, they were events I was already aware of, but this is when I realized that I could stop going on social media to find fun things to do in the area, like I did for our Summer to Remember. I don't think it's Meta's goal to have people use Facebook less because their AI is so good, but that's something they'll need to work out for themselves.

I informed Muse about Tanner and said that we were taking some time to decide whether or not to continue with the trip plans. Then the next day, I hit Muse with our next obstacle:

It's pretty obvious that I could do all the trip planning gymnastics on my own. After all, I've had lots of experience over the years. But Muse gave me another set of eyes to catch things I'd typically ignore, like flagging that Wednesday will now be a longer travel day. In my stubbornness, I probably would've still tried to squeeze in the mountain coaster that evening, but that would've definitely been added stress we didn't need, especially with all the unknowns of picking up the trailer part-way through our travel day.

Muse and I combed through every day of the trip, reworking the activities that were for Tanner, and accounting for the less strict time limits on the outings. The final itinerary revealed itself in the process. It seemed to thread the needle between "overpacked trip" and "slow moving travel" fairly well. It's possible it's still a little too packed for our liking, but I arranged to have moments of flexibility. On Wednesday, we could do a grocery run immediately after getting the trailer, or we could wait until we were settled in at the campsite and our fridge was cold. On Thursday, we could pack a lunch to eat during our scenic drive, or we could grab food at the grill on Grandfather Mountain. On Friday, we could take a morning hike and stay out for lunch afterwards, or we could go back to the RV for lunch, allowing a nice mid-day break. On Saturday, we could stick with just the country fair, or I could drag Anthony to the land of caterpillars. Flexibility is good. Then, we made the decision about Sunday. I took the Harvest Host that was going to start our trip, and I switched it to the end of the trip. This means we'll have a shorter drive home on Monday. It also means that Sunday will bring us new scenery, but without adding yet another Blue Ridge activity into the mix.

Once the itinerary was set, Muse put it into its aesthetically-pleasing PDF format.

You can view the chat history in the PDF below. Some superfluous parts have been redacted.

Here's the finalized itinerary (pretty PDF version), before bookings:

Next, it was time for the nerve-wracking part: allowing Muse to make our bookings.

We started with the least daunting, the mountain coaster reservation. This didn't require any payment, as it was simply reserving a check-in time. No buying of tickets happens until we arrive to the location. I treated Muse like a concierge, telling it the time we'd like to reserve, and giving it the information it requested.

The difference between Muse and other AIs is that it doesn't just read websites. It has its own browser that can interact with websites. This is what allows it to fill in forms and do transactions. As soon as I requested it to assist me in the booking, its browser popped up in the chat. I had the option to keep it thumbnail-sized, or preview it in a larger, separate window, so I could observe what Muse was doing. If anything seemed to be going amiss, I had the option of stopping Muse, or taking over the browser manually.

Muse says that it won't book anything until the user looks over the info and gives the go-ahead. This was hit-or-miss in my experience. For the mountain coaster, I was able to tell Muse to put the reservation name under Anthony, and it corrected the input without issue. After a couple minutes, the confirmation popped up on Muse's browser, and I got the confirmation email.

This officially marked the first time either I or Anthony had booked anything with AI. It was exhilarating. We're also extremely trepidatious. It's one of those moments where it hits you that the world truly will never be the same again. We now have an AI that's not only doing assistance work in the background, sans prompts, but it can also run its own browser and accurately fill out forms. We won't spend time on this blog venturing into the potential catastrophes that this could lead to. Instead, we'll move onto the next booking – the first that requires a monetary transaction.

Muse uses Stripe Link to create virtual card payments. On the surface, this is actually quite secure. Link is a platform that anyone can use manually, too, and instead of typing in your actual credit card number, it generates a virtual number that, as the name states, links to your card. This lowers the chance of hackers stealing your credit card info, because you're not actually inputting your real info. Even still, allowing an AI to access my link account felt like I was handing over my soul. Future Nicole might seriously regret this decision.

I had already gone onto the Pineola website and checked campsite availability, and only 2 sites were left – 1 deluxe big rig site and 1 big rig pavilion site. I couldn't risk either of these getting scooped up. I wanted to see if Muse would alert me that I had a choice of campsite type, and it did. It assumed that I'd want the non-pavilion site but told me that if I wanted a pavilion, to just say the word.

I'll admit that I freaked out the first time and stopped the payment, partly because I didn't trust Muse to input payment info, and partly because it didn't let me confirm before starting to finalize the payment. But I got over it and tried again. Luckily, the Pineola website wasn't holding the one remaining deluxe site in the nethers of its website. Oftentimes, if someone tries to book, that site is held as "unavailable" and then released later if the booking doesn't go through. We've had that issue before. But Muse was able to get right back in, confirm the site was still available, and book it.

Will this become part of my trip planning process? Probably not. I don't trust AI enough to let it book without watching its every move, and it took longer than if I had just done it myself. That being said, am I impressed that a robot just booked my campsite for me? You bet your custom phonemes I am!

Lastly, I had Muse book our timed entry for Grandfather Mountain, which also required a payment. By that point, it had memorized my request to put Anthony's name on the alpine coaster reservation, and it had defaulted to this ever since. This was great, because when Anthony and I book travel and excursions, 99% of the time I use his contact info. It's our way of divvying up the work. I plan, and then he manages the reservations from there. However, if something needed to be changed, Muse doesn't give a lot of time or opportunities. If it really requested that I confirm the booking before processing, this would be great, but it's still glitching. Because I know it's supposed to do this, I imagine the developers will catch on pretty quickly that something needs to be reprogrammed.

I drew the line at giving Muse my login info for membership sites. Muse does have the ability to log into websites if the user provides the info and authorizes the login. So technically, it could have also booked the Harvest Host overnight. I'm not ready to give Muse access to Harvest Hosts. We only just met! That's one booking I'll make on my own.

Same for RV Trip Wizard. I kept my login info close to my chest, and when the campground reservation was confirmed, I added the info to my trip. This means that the travel itinerary and activities itinerary are kept separate, but this is how I've always planned. The only difference now is that we have a lovely PDF to remind us of our daily schedule.

Faults and boons

Combing through the PDF, I found fine print that wasn't updated to reflect our plans to visit the country fair on Saturday.

The fair is a day-specific event, which means it cannot be moved to Friday and vice versa. These plans are no longer swappable.

On the other hand, Muse caught a recent trail reopening that hasn't been updated on most websites.

During initial planning, Muse let me know that the Upper Falls trail was closed, which was correct. The next day, it said the trail had been reopened in the past 24 hours. I combed the websites to get confirmation of this. On All Trails, it was still saying closed, and this alert linked to the Burke County website, which confirmed the closure.

But, since the Burke County website said it was last updated in August, and All Trails was seemingly using this website to check the closure, I went one step further. The Burke County website links to the NPS website, which has the most up-to-date info. Granted, I needed to zoom my screen in to read the map, but there it was, the little Upper Falls Overlook trail in green, indicating that it was now open.

Muse was able to comb all the websites and learn that NPS' website was the most up-to-date, and therefore accurate. I doubt I would've noticed this on my own because I would've taken the All Trails alert at face value. We still would do the trail either way, which means we'd eventually get there and notice the open trail. That would be a pleasant surprise, but we wouldn't have accounted for the extra time and mileage ahead of time. I'm glad that we have the right information going in.

It all goes to show that, whether using AI or doing your own research, double-checking is necessary.

Our trip planning journey with AI had far more ups and downs than we anticipated. Clearly, real life doesn't stop just because we're letting robots assist us. With the logistics ironed out and the bookings complete, we now face the implementation of all our plans. Our fun foliage trip is now a trip of healing, as we remember the joy that travel brought Tanner. Our trip will surely not be stress-free, as our first day will be inevitably taxing. But on the other side, we hope to make more memories, see more beauty, and have more moments that remind us why, once upon a time, we loved the RV life.