How do you begin to plan for extended road trips?

We’ve found that 300 miles a day is too much. My days of seeing how long I can go are behind me. Others will go farther. We figure 50 mph is a good number counting stops for biological, food, fuel needs. Don’t like getting anywhere after dark, or feeling rushed to get somewhere. A two night stop every couple of days gives time to rest and see some along the way.

We deside what direction we want to go, tell the post office to hold the mail and then go. During the week there is always a camp ground close by that is not full. We never make reservations but don't expect to get into a national park when kids are out of school. We have found many places of interest where there wasn't supposed to be anything. Don't make your plans too strict, relax.

I like to have the first night booked. Might seem trivial, but in all the running around getting ready to go, it puts my mind at ease to have one less thing to deal with on the road. Generally the roads I’m driving the first day are somewhat familiar and I may already have an idea where my gas stop is going to be as well.

Once on the road, we figure out the route for the next day in the evening. Sometimes turn by turn and sometimes general. Once it gets to be lunchtime, we start looking for a spot for the night since we have a better idea of how far we’ll get. If we are looking in campgrounds, we check availability. If there seem to be openings we’ll hit the road and maybe book a site later in the day. If sites seem tight during our lunchtime search, we may go ahead and try to find something we can book then or expand our range.

What I really try to avoid is finding out after 8 hours on the road that there’s no place good to stay, but 100 miles back there were plenty.

We are still fairly new, so we are still learning the process.

We had to improvise a few weeks ago when we got caught in traffic from a truck accident. We lost almost 3.5 hours. It was 7pm when we started moving again. Middle of nowhere. We asked a deputy sheriff if there was someplace we could camp nearby and he directed us to an old motel that had 7 RV sites behind it. Just 3 miles away and we found no hint of it in any of our online searches.

We usually start by selecting our final destination and work backwards from there. Our daily limit is 400 mi, usually less. We select stopovers based upon this limit, preferring state or USACE parks (less $$$ and more like camping). We rarely attempt to stay anywhere without reservations.

lots of questions. I would recommend planning to get reservations for major stops where you know that you really want to be close to x, whatever x is for you. For us it is National Parks. For instance we may have reservations for 6 days at a National Park but not have reservations along the way. It is fairly easy to find campgrounds if your requirements are flexible. We have reservations for July 9- July 15 for a place approximately 1600 miles away but nothing until that. We try to only move from place to place during the week days instead of the more popular weekends.

For non destination stops, we use casinocamper.com and passport america and campgroundreviews.com. Sometimes we travel 250 miles in a day, sometimes up to 475 in a day. We also use WalMart's about 10-15 nights a year if we are just going from place to place and it makes it easier to stock up on supplies.

I don’t over plan and limit my daily mileage to 230 or so. Then I can explore (walk, hike, bike or drive) after setting up camp. Since I prefer boondocking, reservations are hardly ever needed. I pick highways I haven’t traveled before if possible. I might not take them again but I tried them unless the DOT says no trailers.