Multi month trip planning

I use Bing maps as a planner but .........this is my Spreadsheet (off the other site) for next summer;

Busskipper wrote:
Some of us not so Much with the Spread Sheet.

Me

Summer trip sheet;

Start in Maryland go to Colorado - then Utah - then Colorado - then Wyoming - then - Fly to Maryland - Family reunion - fly back to Colorado.....Spreads Pretty thin - :cool:

The best part is we all do it differently - and in an RV - they all Work. - :thumb: - :dance: - :thumb:

I still use Streets and Trips. For long-range planning. Bought a digital version from Amazon about five years ago, so it has been easy to setup on different computers as I've changed laptops. (It is no longer available).

The main problem is that I have yet to find anything which gives me a big picture overview.

By Sept or Oct I know some dates where I have to be certain places. Put those in and the dates. We usually know a tentative summer destination. Put that in.

By then we usually know where we will be at the start of the year. Put that in. Set a target to end the next year. Put that in.

Hit the "Get Directions" button and look at the results.

Okay - there are 27 days between here and here. What does other research give me as interesting stops between. Put those in.

Check the daily drives by distance. Nope, not going to do 427.2 miles in one day with no interstates. Need to add a one-night stop about halfway.

This year, we have a group campout in Athens, Texas - June 18-20 (I use the nights we will be there in planning. We will have something on Sunday morning, so I know I won't leave the CG until 11 or 11:30 am. Need no more than 200 miles to out Sunday, June 21 overnight.

We need to be in Grand Saline, TX on Sept 10. That gives me 81 nights - 6/21 to 9/9 - to spend somewhere.

Well, we could go to Phoenix where youngest granddaughter lives with her mother, spend a couple weeks and back comfortably in that time frame and visit several other places. Maybe stay in high altitude locations.

Two years ago we had to cancel 2 weeks near Mammoth Cave and come home quickly - 2 days (really 36 hours - an 18 and 12 hour driving day with 6 hours rest between) from Detroit when my youngest sister died. We can make a nice enjoyable trip to Mammoth Cave in that time, and drive the Natchez Trace.

We could just drive around between COE parks in the Ozark and Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma.

We could visit a lot of NM State Parks at high altitude.

Within a couple days, I could print out for the DW four or five options. Complete with accurate mileages, close estimates of RV spot costs. And we can talk about them.

Oh, got a call from granddaughter #1 - we are going to be great grandparents. Baby due about July 28, in Plano north of Dallas.

Of course we want to be close.

So now rather than one 81 day trip, we have a 25 day opening and a 32 day opening to fill.

Start playing with S&T again.

Planning each daily drive is more a look at road maps, websites (especially the state highway website showing current construction, and others. I'll run the Google maps route for 9 am departure a couple days before we leave to see if there are any spots prone to long traffic delays.

Also because the S&T Map is now 7 to 8 years old, I check major highway intersections with a satellite view. Some construction has changed those from what the S&T directions will say. Type up a drive plan, and we are ready to travel.

We have a Rand 2016 RV GPS, so it's maps are not completely current either. Bought a Garmin 730 RV GPS last year, which has more current maps, but it doesn't have features like tracking fuel purchases, mileage and such. And Garmin has the best real-time traffic of any GPS - and a big enough screen that I can see the directions of the other side of the cab.

Last week on Wednesday, we left Lake Conroe north of Houston, headed for a campground on Lake Tawakoni about 50 miles east of the Dallas area.

Made out first stop for a bite of lunch (to go only available), and topped off the pickup. Don't always need to refuel on a 215 mi trip, but it's close, and my bladder won't last that long.

We are retired and life is a journey that we try to enjoy.

Got back in the truck at Buffalo, Texas. Both GPS units recalculated a route we have never traveled. What the heck. Good day, decent weather, no schools in session, lets drive a new road for much of the rest of the journey.

That's my way, and I understand all the other reasons to try other tools. I do, but I'm comfortable with this method. It works for us. I'm pretty sure most of you would find it too much work, why spend all that time planning.

Well, I like to plan, and besides Encore Westerns, not a lot on daytime TV interests me.

We LIVE full-time in our RV. Not VACATION full-time in our RV.

We were at Lake Conroe to visit my brother on his birthday. First time in 50 years I've been near where he was on his birthday. I'm serious 1970 was my last time at home on his birthday. Another well from here to here in mid-March. Heck, I could go by Houston and see little brother.

I learned to read about age 5 in 1957, because my father had a bunch of road maps from a trip in 1955 from our home an hour east of Texarkana to Bakersfield, CA to visit one of my mother's cousins.

Even at age 5 I understood maps. "Daddy, how do I say this word, Flaqsfatt."
"Reggie, this is a G, not a Q. The first four letters is the word FLAG. Say that. Now, you got the T and the F mixed up again. The next five letters are STAFF."
"Flag Staff - that's a stupid name for a town. Why did they name it that?" (There is no 'true' story, just that maybe the name stuck after some different store owners started stripping a pine tree and nailing a US flag to the top to attract customers.)

I treasure those memories of sitting in Daddy's lap as he explained such things,
I was not allowed to put pencil marks on the maps, so I had to take a sheet of paper and write out places to go, and figure out how to add up the mileage between markers on the map. I was so happy that my parents helped me with such things, and my then two little sisters and one brother, were in bed because they were babies.

Next year in first grade, Mrs. Gordon was surprised I knew all 26 letters, and could sound out words. And could add numbers to well over 100. (Pronunciation was never a skill of mine, and I did not understand subtractions.)

Even today when planning a trip, I remember Dad, and Mom's help.

We use google maps , satellite view and street view let me zoom in, check conditions of the roads and search for rv parks and campgrounds for whatever city/area I need.

We used RV Trip Wizard on our 11,000 mile trip last fall and it was invaluable. We didn't plan very far in advance at all, but seeing the options of where to stop for the night within the distance rings was a huge help. I also appreciated using it to record our stops and route.

Lwiddis wrote:
The need to plan 100 day RV trips completely in advance escapes me.

For many a trip is more than going from A to B. A long trip has many fixed events & dates to work around. This means being at certain places at certain times.

The departure date is known. The return date is known. The rest is fill in with things to do, events to attend & making a route to fit. This is not weekend warrior or family 2 week trips.

In our case very few CG reservations are made unless for an onsite event like a bluegrass festival or over a holiday weekend. For the rest a general plan is followed but daily details are always subject to change on the fly.

gbopp wrote:
How did we go anywhere when we only had paper maps :@

That is the beauty of a stand alone program like S&Ts. You have all the flexibility of seeing the much bigger picture of a state map right in front along with the ability to zoom in on the detail that a county map provides. It also has selectable POIs & you can add whatever you want wherever you want without the clutter of marking paper.

A program like S&Ts is like having every map, state & county, at your fingertips & it is also a GPS. That is why those of us who used it on our long distance trips moan about its loss.

swphotobug wrote:
You may want to try rvtripwizard.com. Though it is a subscription it is the most complete product I have seen. There is also an app, RV Life for your phone that copies the trips from RVTW to your phone.

I too use this product and have planned many long trips of more than 25 stops - I even used it to plan a two week car trip in Germany

This thread certainly fits the bill of side trips. :)

We used to use Streets and Trips... Now we use Google Maps, Excel, and Garmin.

Plan things out on Google Maps.

Lay out our trip in Excel - with where we will stop, if we have reservations, how many miles and how many hours driving per day, stuff like that. On other worksheets info on things we want to do and see.

Input the stops into our GPS.

Bring the spreadsheet along both as printed papers and as a file in the phone.

For a lot of people, me included the planning is half the fun. We get to do the trip twice, once on paper then the real thing. The problem comes when people are not flexible and insist on sticking to the plan, no side trips etc. Some of our best adventures have been unplanned.

Lwiddis, I think there are folks who don't like to "wing it." Some do -- I'm one of them. But thank goodness there is room in the world for all kinds of folks!

It's sort of like the old proverb -- "There are two kinds of people in the world: those who categorize everything, and then the other kind." ;)

All kidding aside, when we first starting RVing, we planned every step, just as we used to do in the days of motel trips. Those had to be planned because it was so hard to get reservations.

But then, almost by accident, we learned that RV travel could be spontaneous, and we came to prefer that style. It was hard to unlearn the organizational habits of a lifetime.

And in defense of the meticulous planners, choosing a route carefully can add to the fun because it means that you can anticipate destinations and do the necessary investigations to see what hidden gems await you in each locale.