Best RV trip planner

Trip Wizard looks real nice but I only really something like that once a year and the price for infrequent use turns me off.

Street Atlas and I parted ways after buying several updates to keep current and being unable to find changes to highways around home over 10 years old had never been incorporated in them. One was a 10 lane wide bridge over the Missouri river - had to miss but not worthy of being included. I raised that point to DeLorme in there booth at a FMCA rally. That must have been the last time they bought a booth.

To me (as much as I dislike Microsoft) Streets and Trips was much more intuitive than Street Atlas and I'm very sad to see MS pulled the plug on future development.

I guess with proliferation of cell phones with GPS capability, the market for these standalone programs.

I'm surprised the convoluted GPS devices by Garmin, Magellan and Rand McNally have survived. Their interface is much harder to use and cumbersome. I own several and some aren't bad but the ones dedicated to RVers seem to be the worst out there.

I'll keep doing as I have done for years and plan my trips on my PC with MS Streets and Trips 2013 (the last year is was updated I believe) and then put the day's destination in my phone's GPS (WAZE) to find my way.

Can't remember how I ever found my way to a campground in a distant city I'd never been to before using paper maps back in the day.

X2 on Delorme Street Atlas. Best trip planner out there. However, in 2016 Garmin bought Delorme and promptly discontinued it. I use the last version 2015.

I also use CoPilot on my tablet for up-to-date maps, and also for trip planning. But Delorme is my primary trip planner.

RobWNY wrote:

wrogers wrote:
I use RV Trip Wizard. Works great for me. Only caveat is that it is not free.

X4 Wonderful program. I've been using it for a couple of years now. The annual price is very reasonable.

x5. Used RV Trip Wizard to plan last year's 45-campground trip:

You are about 5 years too late.

Delmore Street Atlas was better than anything else has been. The only problem now is that the charts are terribly old. With a GPS puck it can do everything you might need or want and there is no end to the POI files that can be up loaded. I could (and did) plan a 8000 mile excursion including all the end of day places a year in advance. Yes, the plan did require revision the third day, but with SA on the laptop that is easy. Changes made (like fuel stops) can wrinkle through the rest of the plan and still be good.

If you are going to stick to the blue roads, it doesn't matter. But if not, you need it to still works when those little bars go away. So, if it cannot run without cell service, I don't want it. The is my stopper of RVTP. So, if you only plan to run blue roads and/or only ONP at crampgrounds with bad WiFi, then that is a good option.

The only one that will plan and still work as an enroute navigator is Copilot RV and there are problems reported with getting it to find the GPS on a Win10 laptop.

I plan to keep looking, but it is getting grim.

Matt - Was once a real navigator.

rr2254545 wrote:
To download to Garmin it is easy - first using the trip tool - click send to GPS -click on download csv file - this will place the file on your computer
Then using the Garmin "POI loader" install the file to your Garmin you can get the loader from the Garmin website

Actually this is not true. To upload to Garmin RV785, you must use Garmin basecamp. RV trip wizard creates a GPX file. Garmin rv 785 does not accept cvs files. The GPX file is imported into basecamp which loads it into the the GPS. The problem is it is POI's sorted alphabetically. It is not imported as a multi stop trip. As I said, use the RV trip wizard for planning and just key in the address each morning before departure.

Ken

X 2 for RV Parky

To download to Garmin it is easy - first using the trip tool - click send to GPS -click on download csv file - this will place the file on your computer
Then using the Garmin "POI loader" install the file to your Garmin you can get the loader from the Garmin website

viajante wrote:
I am looking for the best RV trip planner that would show mileage, estimated travel time, fuel stops and campgrounds (good sam and private).

I'm having to do this since the new Good Sam trip planner is total garbage and not really useful anymore.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

You might try RVParky. Works well for me.

wrogers wrote:
I use RV Trip Wizard. Works great for me. Only caveat is that it is not free.

X4 Wonderful program. I've been using it for a couple of years now. The annual price is very reasonable.

rr2254545 wrote:

wrogers wrote:
I use RV Trip Wizard. Works great for me. Only caveat is that it is not free.

Best product out there i have use is for at least 6 long trips of 20 stops each

x3. Used it two years now after GS changed theirs. Only issue is that it is difficult to impossible to upload to the Garmin rv785. It it is easier to just key in the address and hit go on the Garmin.

We used it to completely plan our biannual Alaska trip starting in early May.

Ken