When we Van traveled with up to 6 kids (5 of them boys), I would look at the Road Atlas or map or even brochures picked up at the Stateline Welcome Center. That's how we found the Petrified Forest/Painted Desert before hitting the Grand Canyon. The kids all walked off excess energy and excitement from the trip. Now that we RV and it's only the 2 of us, we have different needs.
During this Summer, we took a 5-wk over 6000 mile vacation with 1 GD, I did quite a bit of pre-planning. Most of the places, we had multiple choices of where to stop before the night's campground. Might hit one, but not the other depending on how traffic or the weather may have slowed us down. Each night, we'd assess where we were and see if we wanted to add, subtract or reroute to see something different.
It was a lot of work, initially (2 yrs of planning and changing). But since we had MS Streets & Trips to help plan the whole 5+ weeks, it went fairly smooth. We took the Lance, so since we were smaller and only needed 30amps, we only made 2 reservations the whole trip. The rest were a call about 1-2 hrs ahead of arrival.
Next time, I think we'll plan a little less and when we tire, look for an upcoming campground and pull in.
