Route planning with Triptiks or Streets and trips

[RCWannabe]

Hi everyone,

I have been planning a 6 month TT trip. I have tried MS Streets and Trips and now I am trying Triptiks. My question is, do you plan day by day and make a route for the day or maybe leg by leg (1 to 3 days. I have been trying to do the whole trip as one and I am thinking it is a mistake, infact I run out of space for triptiks before the trip is done and I am not going in to great detail.

Obviously I need to change my approach so I am reaching out to the more experienced to see how single day works verses multiple days, also how many days seems to work well for you.

We expect to have sections of the trip that are dedicated to getting some distance covered quickly, but most of the trip is short runs with a longer stop to do day trips from that location with just the TV.

Thanks in advance!

[RCWannabe]

Enblethen, State Tourism brochures were ordered a few months ago and we did exactly that, it is a great tool.

Tegu69, I most definitely expect changes on the way and you are right the triptiks won't be much good if printed and the route changes. This is why I am using it to get the basic plan and to find points of interest as well. I don't expect to do much navigating with it, DW purchased the road atlas, we have maps from tourism offices and gps.

[tegu69]

Sometimes plans need to change. When we started out on our trip to Alaska two years ago, I knew I wanted to try and take the most direct route to Glacier NP.
I knew I could be flexible, since the only reservation I made was for Memorial Day at a State Park in Montana. Started out changing course because of tornado outbreak, then Mississippi was flooded, then snowstorm in Colorado. Then our reservation for Memorial Day was cancelled due to flooding. Triptiks would have been a waste of time. I like being flexible and we always carry a road atlas.

[enblethen]

Should remind you that most trip planning are funded by advertisers, especially AAA.
Another thing we do in planning is end to each state or locale for tourist information. We each go through them marking items of interest. Then we make a list, plot it on S&T, and see what trip looks like.

[RCWannabe]

Sounds like I was heading in the right direction from what I am hearing, use both because they both have good features and both seem to have shortcomings. I like the interface with triptiks and the options of S&T. Looks like I will be using both as a basic planning guide, the GPS to help as we travel and most likely good old fashion paper maps a little as well.

Thank you for the input it helps to know I am on the right track and it is reasurring to hear from the 'veterans'. We will use the software as a guide/planning tool/logbook and adjust the trip as we go based on our needs, distractions, weather, unexpected side trips, etc., I am not expecting to plan everything, nor do I want to, but I do want to get a good idea of where we going and what there is to experience there.

Thanks again for the tips, greatly appreciated.

[agesilaus]

I divide our trips up into two sections, travel days and location time. If I'm going from Florida to Rocky Mountains NP then I'll have 3 or 4 travel days which I plot out on S&T to get there. This is mainly just route finding I don't try to micro plan it for gas stops and such. And while I'll put in stopping points for the end of a day, I don't regard those as fixed. Depending on how the day went I may stop short of that point or go past it if we made more progress than expected. We call ahead for CG reservations a couple of hours ahead.

Once we reach the location (RMNP) I just set aside a week (or however long we plan to stop there) and do local trips from there without the preplanning. We do reserve major stops ahead of time since they are often at places that can be difficult to reserve.

BK

[PawPaw_n_Gram]

RCWannabe wrote:
My question is, do you plan day by day and make a route for the day or maybe leg by leg (1 to 3 days. I have been trying to do the whole trip as one and I am thinking it is a mistake, infact I run out of space for triptiks before the trip is done and I am not going in to great detail.

Streets & Trips is great for an overall plan. I do like to get a big picture.

Then I save the master, and will break the trip into segments.

I will also break those segments down into one days travel - which I will either export and load into my Garmin GPS or use to program my Rand GPS.

I don't try to put more than one day of travel into the GPS.

Even back before GPS units were created - I would have AAA prepare my TripTiks are one day packages.

Always remember that GPS and routing guides like TripTik are advisory. You still have to know where you are going enough to avoid trouble. Or you might spot something you want to do / see and make a change in your route.

[Matt_Colie]

RC,

You have half the plan.....
Now part of my problem will be that I outgrew S&T some time ago, but it still should be able to do this. It will take longer for me to explain than it will probably take you to do.

With Strips & Treets, load your own preferences (fuel, hours/day, speeds) then plot where you want to go. It should tell you where to look for fuel and where to plan to overnight. Go into the exit data for fuel and set that stop, so S&T knows where to point to next. Then, either in the overlays or campground directories, find a place to overnight. Do this all along the route, but it won't last.

Now, go to the TripTik site and find what is of interest along the route. When you put in the hours of stop for the museum/attractions, S&T may change you End of Day. Well find another campground and set that as overnight and clear the other. You should get the TripTiK set for the entire route, but it will be getting angry with you, but let it.

When you get that all, go back to S&T and include the stops that you want and include a best guess of time for each stop. S&T will have adjusted the EOD for each day. Use what ever you have to find places for the night and put them into S&T. S&T will now have a guess for the next EOD.

When you start the day's travel, load just that day into the stand-alone unit. That may be a simple means of cross loading from S&T or you may have to do it manually, but no big deal either way.

As you travel, move the EODs, fuel stops and holdups so S&T can find you a new EOD.

This is all much easier than it sounds and it sure beats pouring over maps and guide books.

Matt

[enblethen]

I bought the Streets and Trips with the Pharos GPS antenna with it. I use the GPS units as a standalone.
I have an old version of the Trailer Life directory in my laptop. I can use the Pharos antenna connected into th TL directory.

[RCWannabe]

enblethen wrote:
I plan the3 full trip. Then every day or so update the past days travel. You can change your profile and stops to make it work for you.
We use Streets and Trips. It has been the easiest for us.
We use it on laptop with GPS. We also have been using the Rand-McNally 7710 for daily travels. We just input that days travel destinations.

Never thought to mention we just got the TomTom 1605 RV GPS and should be able to connect it to the laptop, but I just opened the box and have not used it yet so I don't know what all it will do.

[enblethen]

I plan the3 full trip. Then every day or so update the past days travel. You can change your profile and stops to make it work for you.
We use Streets and Trips. It has been the easiest for us.
We use it on laptop with GPS. We also have been using the Rand-McNally 7710 for daily travels. We just input that days travel destinations.