Family across country road trip

We spent a month on the road making a giant loop of the US. We booked the big sights well in advance, and a few on the longer legs, but others we used GoodSam along the way by calling as we drove and they hooked us up with campgrounds along the way. Don't know how their service is now, but it was pretty effective in '08. Some of the parks along the way are not right along chosen routes, so I like to know whether my journey 10 miles off our path will be fruitful before I make the needless drive, only to return to the highway and look for another. I like to know I have a place when I pull into the park. Not everyone needs to know. Different strokes...

Traveling great distances with kids, you need a solid plan of things go south quickly. So I disagree with most comments here about not booking where lay overs along the way. Time things out, with gas stops about every 100-120 minutes (that's about the best you'll get with the gas tank size in the Tundra!) and see what towns are around you at the end of the day.

If do not book ahead, you run the risk of raised stress levels (of which, you don't want your wife stressed!!!), a lot of wasted time, and a very unhappy family who wont want to do long road trips in the future.

What I would add and recommend for a night or two, is if you can drive till the wee hours of the night, stop in for an overnight at a Cabala's, Camping World, or even a decent WalMart (use the RV parky app) to catch a little sleep and get back on the road.

If you cannot drive late, then booking a decent site is even more critical because the kids will need something to do at the campground. If you stop at 5pm, there's 4-5 hours left in the day to account for before bedtime. Time you could have been on the road...if you planned and booked your stops accordingly!

Headed West wrote:
The DW and I decided 400 miles a day should be the max from now on for a relaxing day of driving.

Having done this many times I'd agree. Here in Canada we've been using the metric system for quite a few years now so I think in terms of ~ 600 kms (~ 375 miles) as about the most interstate driving I want to do in a day, while 400 kms (~ 250 miles) would be my max for 2 lane driving, especially if mountain grades are involved. Regardless, there were times when that 375 to 400 miles would land us where there's absolutely nothing around, less so in the east but not uncommon at all the further west one is, so an occasional longer day was inevitable no matter how well we planned. The OP hasn't indicated his exact departure point in Colorado but with Denver to OBX being about 1900 miles I'd want to allow at least 5 days out and 5 days back based on an overall trip average of 50 mph. That's a lotta driving just to get to the beach! :E

Unless we are in a tourist area we make too many "let's see this place" stops to plan a day ahead. About an hour or so before we stop we look up campgrounds on the Good Sams app at the top of this forum.

In a tourist area we will schedule ahead, especially on weekends.

Since we travel about 300 miles a day, it was easy to plan stops along the way when we went out to the Grand Canyon last year. We mostly used KOA as they have pull throughs and full hookups. Most of our reservations were made at least a week in advance, though we winged it a couple of times. From what I could tell, there were always spots available at the KOAs. I made reservations at the Grand Canyon almost a year in advance just to be sure.
I would not just show up anywhere on the Outer Banks, though.

The family and I just returned from our 3,000 mile trip out west. Yellowstone seemed to be the only campground that was full along the way. Other than there the rest all seemed to have availability. The DW and I decided 400 miles a day should be the max from now on for a relaxing day of driving. We did 500 miles a couple times and seemed to be rushing to get all set up and eat before dark. I averaged 65mph on the flats but in the mountains I added a couple hours in for cushion. Never know what speed you will do or what can happen.

rxcoug wrote:
I stated that we want to make a 4 day trip but how many would it take going 60 the whole way with just gas stops and maybe one or two tourist stops?

Well you won't be doing 60 mph all the time but if you do most it on interstates divide the total distance to your destination by 50 mph and that should give you a pretty good idea as to how much driving you're looking at. Add any tourist stops and it will obviously take just that much longer. Denver to the OBX is ~ 1900 miles ... quite a bit in just four days, especially when you're towing a trailer and it's not all flat land in between. :E

I stated that we want to make a 4 day trip but how many would it take going 60 the whole way with just gas stops and maybe one or two tourist stops?

We just got back from a month long road trip with the grandkids. NH-CO-UT-AZ-TN-NH, with stops along the way. I made advance reservations for campgrounds in areas we were staying for awhile. But didn't make, nor need reservations for any of the stops out to CO or to any back from AZ (except Gatlinburg). We have never had a problem finding a place to overnight while traveling. We have made reservations in advance for those popular tourist areas we wanted to see.

Having said that we could have gotten into almost all the campgrounds we had made reservations at.The only one that was full was Wahweap at Glen Canyon National Recreation area. Glad we had a reserved spot there.

rxcoug wrote:
We are planning a cross country road trip from Colorado to the outer banks of North Carolina next summer. We have a 2012 Toyota Tundra pulling a 31ft TT. I have lots of questions.

I don't want to have this trip booked down to the minute but want to find a campground (koa, good sams, etc) every night. Do I need to make reservations for each night or can we drop in?

We are thinking that it will take about 4 days to get there. I will only run about 60 mph or my gas mileage is horrible.

What advise can you give us?

Having done many long distance trips ourselves when our boys were younger my view is that while reservations are comforting to have they're also restricting in that it puts you under pressure to be at a certain place on a certain date. At first we did reserve as much as possible but over time less and less, eventually only reserving over long weekends and during the busy summer months in popular tourist areas such as Myrtle Beach or Yellowstone NP, etc. Our trips always consisted of interstate "travel days" which were designed to get us the longest distance in the shortest amount of time and "touring days" which were mostly slower two lane highways where we'd stop regularly to check out local sites of interest. On travel days we'd almost always overnight at KOAs that were clean, safe, and conveniently located not far from the interstate and always offered a pool which was most welcome after a long day of driving. On touring days we'd usually stay for several nights at a time in a state park, national park, COE, county park, etc, reserved only when we felt it necessary, otherwise we just winged it and over many years never found ourselves stranded without a place to camp.