Awesome stuff. Look up Edward Tufte sometime - he's kind of my hero in this area. Here are a couple of links:
http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

And this one is very similar to yours, showing Napolean's march. I think the width of the bars is strength in men while one axis is distance and another is time. Pretty cool stuff. You might try to emulate some of it so you could show the creation and breaking of the Fellowship in some way (I know you said Frodo's journey so you might be just focusing on that).

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/posters#newposter