Help with route for 1st long trip

I understand your need to plan because, to me, that's half the fun of the trip. Anticipation! Our first retirement trip we chose about 4 or 5 "must see stops" and the rest was free form with no reservations. After lunch we have a good idea of where we will be stopping. The navigator looks at a campground app or book to see what's available in the area. We sometimes call but usually not. If it's not a holiday we don't make reservations. One time we were taking a coastal route and after lunch I was concerned about availability and made reservations for the night. The campground was just a big parking lot that looked like an old drive-in movie parking lot. We found another campground in the beach city that had availability and cancelled the first one.

Also, stop at each state line rest-stop/tourism bureau. They have lots of help and brochures for you to get more ideas. They're very helpful.

I'm with some of the non-planners on here. The very first motorhome trip we did was 9 days and home is central California. I drove to the freeway and made the decision as I approached the interchange on whether to head north or south. It was going to be north to Oregon and Washington or South to Arizona. At the onramp I made a left and we went to Arizona. Then we decided by the day where to go next.

Remember you have a motorhome, you don't need reservations or plans with some exceptions. If you find an RV park great, if you can't find an available RV park pull over on the side of the road or at a Walmart and camp. An exception to that would be something like the California coast in the summer. You need reservations for a weekend stay and there aren't a lot of "legal" places to park and spend the night.

Another thought. Where going online really helps is learning about event schedules. For example, state and county fairgrounds often have useful RV parking with hookups, almost empty much of the year, but you won't find something during the fair. Many towns have events one or more times a year that fill up everything for a week or for a long weekend. Championship rodeos, bike weeks, auto racing, college and university home football games, etc.

One town in east-central Missouri where I like to stop on the way home from Michigan has a cluster of low-cost motels with huge parking lots. They are empty most of the time, but completely fill up during livestock auctions. The motels are there for that business, thus the big parking.

Another one, you do not want to stop in Canton, Texas during the "First Monday" weekends (which are four days) unless that is why you are going and you've made reservations well in advance, if you want a RV space with hookups.

When I plan a trip, I always put in the far destination and work to it and then back home.

I use Delorme Street Atlas and put in the miles per day I want to travel and then do a search on the Internet for things to see.

Their is an icon for each night stay and fuel stops (90 gallon tank @ 9 mpg, fill up when I get down to a 1/4 tank).

Jim@HiTek wrote:
If this is going to be your "first long trip" I suggest you don't over plan. IMO, planning two years early can be counterproductive. Keep it loose.

What I do is plan a trip to an area. Then I see what's there, branching out from a central point. You'd be surprised the hidden adventures that seem to be everywhere for a person with lots of curiosity. History, art, culture, adventure, excitement around every corner it seems.

Good suggestion - I'll add READ and LEARN more about the areas you plan to visit, You will still only learn and Know a small percentage of what is out there.

Having been doing this for Years we still learn more on every trip - even when we are back for the second third or tenth time. It is amazing how much is just out-there, that you will have a hard time hearing or learning about. Talk to everyone you can............


Best of Luck,

Well all of this has been changing my mind about the extensive planning. That is sort of my OCD stuff. I love to plan trips. But I think we will set a starting point then procede as we like. That does sound great. At times we have such a hard time getting sites locally on short notice we were worried that we might need reservations at most areas ahead of times. We love the stat parks and camp in coe now. But occasionaly we do like a nice full hook up site for awhile. We don't plan on traveling more that 200 to 250 miles a day at the most and are okay pulling into a Walmart for the night if need be. All this has been so helpful and please keep it up as the reading is great. I do love studying places I plan to travel to get the lay of the land so to speak and know some places I want to visit. We are so excited to get started.

I start at the state level for those I might pass through, see what the tourism department is proud of. My wife used to send off for the brochures and tour books, and we collected them at state welcome centers and local visitor centers. Right now I still have three file drawers worth of stuff for the Deep South, Midwest and Southwest.

Most of the information is now online for the state level at least, but we always found going over the hard copy stuff together was more convenient to planning discussions.

Two years at Myrtle Beach, with home in Michigan, in the era before most of the Interstate highways east of or through the Appalachians we made six trips to or from the Great Lakes region and never went the same way twice. First was in the dead of winter, we were in snow and ice from Rocky Mount to Conway, so we didn't see much of anything, not even other cars. Being from Michigan, it didn't occur to us that people in the South didn't drive on ice-covered roads. After retirement, we made the trip again (in winter) through SC enroute to Florida.

Rest of the trips were summer, each one started with just a broad plan "we want to see this part of the country" and we stopped when we found something interesting. Interstates make this harder, since they bypass everything except major metro areas, so you have to know where stuff is to get off the highway and find it.

Keep in mind that there are many useful routes, not much difference in distance and cost, time doesn't matter when not in a hurry. You can go up the eastern coastal plain as far as Maryland or Pennsylvania and go east from there to the Lake Erie area. If thinking about Chicago, Wisconsin, Minnesota, you can cross over to Atlanta then go north through Nashville, or all the way to Memphis through Alabama and Mississippi, and north from there. To Michigan, up I-75 through Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio to the Lake Huron side of the state, or up through Nashville, Louisville and Indiana to the Lake Michigan side (or Chicago and on into Wisconsin).

Other places to cross the Appalachians include the Smokies, Ashville to Knoxville, the Cumberland Gap, and western Virginia into central West Virginia and southern Ohio Amish country. Interesting north-south sections include sections of the Blue Ridge Parkway or following the Shenadoah valley. A lot of it is cosidering what you've already seen, or what might fit into another trip you plan to make.

35 years I've regularly traveled NE Oklahoma to SW or SE Michigan, have had about a dozen regular route combinations and regularly deviate from those in small ways to see places I've never seen before, even while going through others I want to frequently revisit.

Going into a new area, I also check the library for travel stories in addition to travel guides, and my own library includes 2-3 dozen travel books (mostly gifts from relatives) used for planning and dreaming. National Geographic, Reader's Digest, Discovery Channel's Insight Guides, Frommer's have been the most useful major publishers, but some of the best for local areas are small regional publishers.

imgoin4it wrote:
Wow. When we retired we left on a three month trip. We planned on leaving the day after I retired and drove one day. The first night, (early stop) we checked around to see if we wanted to drive the next day or stay and see local sites. That was about the extent of the planning and pretty much how we did every day. If the wind was blowing too hard we stayed put, if it was raining we stayed. Been pretty much planning that way for 13 years.

That's the way to do it! :)

Wow. When we retired we left on a three month trip. We planned on leaving the day after I retired and drove one day. The first night, (early stop) we checked around to see if we wanted to drive the next day or stay and see local sites. That was about the extent of the planning and pretty much how we did every day. If the wind was blowing too hard we stayed put, if it was raining we stayed. Been pretty much planning that way for 13 years.

When we are planning a long trip (always) I lay out the main route on Delorme Street Atlas. Each travel day I put in the day's destination and modify the route to hit any likely point of interest. Usually we seek out a likely stop within 200 miles of our departure point (or 5 hours). We use a variety of resources to locate a place to spend the night or the week. The latter may require calling ahead to see if there is space available.

I am an Elk and we are lifetime Passport America and active Escapees and members of Harvest Host. Add to those resources are Corp of Engineer sites and County/State/National Parks and we have a broad range of places to stay. Oh and I ignored Walmart and other large ox stores that will welcome us for a night. Quite often we will get distracted by a point of interest along the way and set aside the plan for something that intrigues us.

on edit: When we have a hard date for something we build the plan to arrive at least two days ahead of the hard date. That way if we have mechanical issues or get distracted we have some flexibility. A few years back we had to get across the country so even though we planned the trip for 9 days, we allowed 12. Had 3 days of relaxation on the East Coast before the event.