RV travel book suggestions?

Another approach that I have found useful is to look for photography guides to areas. These are focused on scenic areas and often provide specific locations and best time of year to visit. I have used the excellent three volume series by Laurent Martres when planning trips in the Southwest USA for example.

tatest wrote:
My road trip and RV travel collection is about three feet of shelf space, at least the part of it I keep stacked on and in the cabinet next to my desk. Not all of it my choice, my sisters started buying me road trip books as gifts when I retired. Some of them I've found browsing through used book stores, a market that seems to have since moved to Internet marketing.

(Extensively snipped....)

That's some awesome info.! Thanks for taking the time to list it all. I'll definitely be taking a close look at those. Don't think we have 3' of bookshelf space in our TT tho... :) Once in a while I've struck gold in a used bookstore on various topics and that'd be worthwhile checking out for travel info. too.

ependydad wrote:
We love our Big Rigs Best Bets book. It's great for finding places that we fit easily. But looking at your TT, it seems like you're quite a bit shorter.

This sounds like it might be a good one,thanks. Something that has realistic descriptions of CGs will help as often the descriptions in brochures and on the internet are misleading or lacking info. Couldn't find any reviews in a quick search I did.

My road trip and RV travel collection is about three feet of shelf space, at least the part of it I keep stacked on and in the cabinet next to my desk. Not all of it my choice, my sisters started buying me road trip books as gifts when I retired. Some of them I've found browsing through used book stores, a market that seems to have since moved to Internet marketing.

It helps to open up beyond RVing to road travel generally. My RV-specific books are kind of old, and what is RV about them gets dated quickly. Some may have newer editions, others not. For what it is worth, in that category:

"RV Vacations for Dummies" by Harry Basch and Shirley Slater
Frommer's "Exploring America by RV" by Shirley Slater and Harry Basch
"Great RV Trips" by Charles L. Cadieux
"RVing Basics" by Bill and Jan Moeller
"The RVer's Bible" by Kim Baker and Sunny Baker

Then the general road trip books, the first being the best I've found for planning my travel adventures, while the last three are coffee table books that might build an interest in travel:

"Road Trip USA" by Jamie Jensen
NGS "Scenic Highways & Byways"
Reader's Digest "See the USA the Easy Way" for loop tours
Reader's Digest "The Most Scenic Drives in America"
NGS "Drives of a Lifetime" (a global bucket list of 500)

Then there are specific route (or region) guides, the first being the best I've found for the historic US-66 (I have several others):

"EZ66 Guide for Travelers" by Jerry McClanahan
"Native Roads" by Fran Kosik
"Scenic Driving Texas" by Laurence Parent (a Falcon guide, others for elsewhere)
"Adventure Guide to the Alaska Highway" by Lynn & Ed Readicker-Henderson
"Scenic Driving Alaska and the Yukon" by Erik Molvar (another Falcon guide)

And road trip guides that tell a story and suggest what to look for but don't necessarily show you the way, like:

"Route 66" by Michael Wallis
"The Lincoln Highway" by Michael Wallis
"The Complete Route 66 Lost & Found" by Russell A. Olsen
"Adventure Guide to Oklahoma" by Lynne M. Sullivan
"Roadside History of Oklahoma" by Francis L. and Roberta B. Fugate

First three are coffee table books, last two are more useful when traveling, providing information about the places you are going through.

Then more general regional and local guides not focused on road tripping, rather about the destinations more generally:

NGS "Complete National Parks of the United States" by Mel White
Sierra Club Guides to the National Parks (separate guides regionally)
"The Essential Guide to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park" by John Jenkins (there are others in this series by the Colorado Mountain Club).
"The Colorado Plateau" by John A. Murray
Discovery Channel Insight Guide "American Southwest" (others in the series)

Some special interest travel guides:

"Watch It Made in the U.S.A." by Karen Axelrod and Bruce Brumberg
"Road Food" by Jane and Michael Stern
"Eccentric America" by Jan Friedman (a Bradt Guide, more in the series)
"Weird Texas" by Wesley Treat, Heather Shade and Rob Riggs (others in series)
"Tony Hillerman's Navajoland" by Laurance D. Linford
"Roadside Geology of ..." a series in which individual books might be regional, by state, or in some cases by highway.

Books about skills or activities one might associate with travel:

NGS "The Ultimate Field Guide to Photography"
NGS "Field Guide to the Birds of North America"

NGS is the National Geographic Society, one of our biggest publishers of books for and about travel, history, geography and cultures. This is the time of holiday book sales at the NGS, according to the junk mail they constantly send my because they know I've bought a lot of their books.

Discovery Channel, Frommer's, Falcon Guides are also good places to start. Used book stores, "charity" resale stores are another good place to look. One of my treasures is a 1982 edition of "Book of British Towns" published by the Automobile Association, which cost me just one pound. Library and fund-raising used book sales also yield some travel treasures, but the used bookstore guys tend to get to the bigger sales early, so inventory gets somewhat picked over.

My regional focus is the Southwest, because it is what interests me (geology not buried under vegetation). You can put together collections for other parts of the U.S. just as readily, looking at the catalogs of the publishers of these travel guides.

For the country as a whole, I think Road Trip USA is a good start for planning because it has six north-south and four east-west trips laid out in detail, most of them coast to coast or border to border. It is not necessarily a book to generate interest, however. The coffee-table books work better for that.

myred,
Frommer's cost me $16.99 list, maybe less. Sounds like B & N wanted to make all their money back on one sale. That's crazy. There can't be that many new roads - or new places to see.
Can't go wrong with National Geographic, though. My Dad had a subscription when I was a kid. I traveled the world in my imagination by the time I was a senior in High School.

We love our Big Rigs Best Bets book. It's great for finding places that we fit easily. But looking at your TT, it seems like you're quite a bit shorter.

Jim Shoe wrote:
I have quite a collection, but the two that seem to be the most helpful when looking for things to see rather than where to camp or how to get there are Frommer's "Exploring America by RV" which was published in 2002, and National Geographic's "Guide to the National Parks of the United States", published in 2006. There may be newer versions but I'm not aware of any new National Parks since 2006. Frommer's includes some info on RV parks, but I don't rely on it. RV parks come and go or have changed hands since 2002.

Thanks for the tip on the Frommer's book. I haven't come across. Did a search and Barnes & Noble came up before Amazon so I checked their price. $215!! After picking myself up off the floor, I found a decent used on Amazon for $30 (new is $80). These are for the latest edition from 2012.

Amazon has older editions of the Frommer's book and don't know if they have different write-ups and photos that might be worth getting. Will get the NatGeo book at some point. They're sure to have great photos.

I have quite a collection, but the two that seem to be the most helpful when looking for things to see rather than where to camp or how to get there are Frommer's "Exploring America by RV" which was published in 2002, and National Geographic's "Guide to the National Parks of the United States", published in 2006. There may be newer versions but I'm not aware of any new National Parks since 2006. Frommer's includes some info on RV parks, but I don't rely on it. RV parks come and go or have changed hands since 2002.

We have found a number of interesting places to visit in the U.S./Canada version of the book A Thousand Places to See Before You Die.

The problem with travel guides, CG books, and even atlases is that they're obsolete, in part, the day they hit the book stores. Good for some initial planning, but you need to follow up on a computer to be sure that what you're looking for is still there. Even streets and trips is ending its run soon. The computers get faster and I get slower.

The bookstore was a total bust. Mostly guides on where to dine and stay.

After more internet perusing, it seems like there isn't much even on a road trip in a car. Many are state specific or after reading reviews are too sketchy. I wish Anthony Bourdain had a book or two on travel, culture and cuisine on travel around the US. I don't mind maybe a state specific book, but then I don't want a library of 48+ books either. Some books are also written for foreign visitors to the US and cover too much on things that aren't relevant to us in N. America. This is harder than I thought it would be!

Off the Beaten Path looks like a good one and the suggestion of City and County parks is good too.

I ended up getting these on Amazon as a start.