How do you folks plan travel for long distances?

[crasster]

I keep finding that it's very hard to plan an RV trip. I'm doing it old school. I'll have my start point, destination, and manually find every "night stop" along the way.

It kind of stinks because it's starting to feel really limited out there. Everywhere is booked. If I want to go for 14 days from TX to Yellowstone so much is booked in between. I can get the reservation at Yellowstone, but I land much in between....

Is there ANY more simple way to plan? I dunno about sleeping at Walmart but I do have a family with me. (In our Travel Trailer - we have several types of RV's). Mainly, I don't want a "knock" at the door by the cops saying "you can't sleep here" or whatever. I have some small children with us and that would really stink to wake them and load up to drive on at 2:07am.

I may be missing something.... But all this seems so archaic and manual right now. Is there a better source for "planning"? Or is going to recreation.gov and all the individual state park sites, etc. etc. etc. still the way to go?

Tips, pointers, suggestions, experiences all appreciated.


EDIT: Has anybody ever been turned away from a campground or whatever and had nowhere to sleep?

[dedmiston]

We took a long trip last fall (just under 11,000 miles) and only had four firm dates:

* Shakespear Festival in Cedar City, Utah in August.
* Meet our kids at a camp in NM for Labor Day.
* Get to Cedar Point in Sandusky, OH the following weekend because they're only open weekends after Labor Day.
* Paso Robles, CA in October for Peter Frampton's farewell tour.

The rest of the trip, we barely had any idea where we were going. We never back-tracked, so the day before a travel day I would ask my wife which of the other three compass points she wanted to head in. I would spend that evening on RVTripWizard.com quietly looking at options. I would pick out 2-4 acceptable options based on distance and POIs (unless we already knew of a specific target) and then quietly bide my time. The next morning we'd get on the road and then sometime around one or two I'd ask my wife if she had any thoughts about a destination. If she said yes, then I'd tell her to book it. If not, I'd throw out a couple of destination names and tell her to check them out and then call and book whichever one she fancied.

That was the extent of our planning: UT, NM, OH, and CA. The rest was just wherever we felt like going.

Oh yeah, on the Friday we arrived in Sandusky, I called to Elkhart, IN to book a service appointment for us for the following Monday morning to replace the fender that blew off in the high wind in southern Utah. It was sooooo much cheaper to have it fixed there near the factory than to have the parts shipped back home. Plus we didn't have to look at the ugly missing siding anymore.

We got ugly again in Wyoming when high winds blew out bedroom window out. Although I was able to call my new pal at the factory in Elkhart to have a new window shipped home, we still had to make do with a garbage bag and duct tape for the rest of the trip. It got chilly in Nevada when it snowed.

Enjoy your trip. I hope you get to go at a time of year when the world isn't all booked up already.

[Veebyes]

I am a planner but not a reserver. Reservations are for high demand destinations, events & maybe weekends. The route, sort of, is planned. Approximate areas of overnights are looked at for possible CGs, don't reserve. There is plan A, plan B then Walmart if only in transit.

We try to roll in by mid afternoon so chances of getting an unreserved site are pretty good. A call when a half hour out or so does the trick for stopping or carrying on.

[jarata1]

I start early use trip planner and all stays and book way in advance never had a issue would never do a wal mart

[Gulfcoast]

I prefer Passport America with 1/2 price campgrounds all over the country. They have a simple trip planner on their website.

[Matt_Colie]

I have no good answer, but at 40$us/year RVtripwizard did not work for us. That was decided after paying for three years and only getting to use it for two and then it was still a failure. First off it is a webapp. Even though we do carry wire, we are out of good coverage (even with a 3ERP repeater) that it has zero value underway. This means that the day's route has to be loaded to the navigating GPS before departure, and if you deviate from that route, you better have a good way to deal with it. When any of our GPS would revise a route to meet the current situation, it has universally been a disaster. That has been true of Garmin, Rand Macnally and Magelan. Our newest as last Street Atlas is now 6 years out of date and wasn't very good then.

I am waiting for either completely universal cell/web coverage, or a standalone planner/navigator to give us some good direction.

As you can see I have disappointed by Garmin. They bought Delorme and then dropped that line. They still make a good GPS, but don't even try to read the device instructions or use it for more than an "This is where we are now" application.

Well, I'll step off this milk crate and go about the day and continue planning at home only and on paper charts/maps.

Matt

[Mayor30]

Weekdays usually aren't a problem finding a site. Weekends will be tougher. Start mapping your route then look at all campgrounds along the way where you plan to stop for the night.Look at everything: state,federal,private,county,city. Also some free campgrounds too. They probably won't have hookups but for one night you'll be ok.

[agesilaus]

There are really two (or more) types of RVers. The vacation group, who we belonged to for years, who has a limited time for their trip. They need to push hard to maximize their time in their intended vacation area. Driving from PA to FL for example to vacation in FL. They drive 500 miles or so for the first few days to get to FL so they can do what they planned to do there.

They fit in with stopping at Walmarts and other free overnight stops because they pull in late.

The second group is the Fulltimer and Almost Fulltimer group. They want to take their time and drive no more than 200 or 250 miles a day. The want to get to their stopping spot early and relax.

And for them I cannot see pulling into Walmart at 3 O'clock in the afternoon and relaxing in the parking lot. So for that group these free overnight spots don't work well. I'm just appreciating this difference now we are moving into the fulltime group.

However as I noted above there are a number of other possibilities for cheap or no cost stopping places.

[kfp673]

We are "walmarters". Last 2 long trips were PA to FL and PA to TN and we used Walmart both times. Of course I am fine driving until midnight or longer, and at that point the kids are already asleep in the truck, so we are really just looking for a place to sleep. Find where the other RV's are, setup the generators, and hit the sack! My concern with making reservations along the way is I could see us getting to that spot and thinking "why did we stop, I could have made it 3 more hours". That said, if you have plenty of time and can take your time, totally different story. We have limited time off so we just want to get there.

[crasster]

All great suggestions! Keep them coming! I love some of these ideas!

[ppine]

Learn to be flexible. You can't plan it all ahead of time. Call the day before to make a res. Find a place you like, stay for several days. Feel like a museum, change your plans. Loosen up and enjoy yourself. That's it right there.

[agesilaus]

We use a combination: for trip planning we use RV Trip Wizard, RVTW. It's about $30 a year. It routes you on a path that takes your RV size into account and has a very full set of Points of Interest: gas stations, various retail outlets like Walmarts, dump stations and many more: and various campgrounds that you can filter by membership like Passport America or Good Sams and various ratings. It has a app RV Life for your android phone to go with it. This is being actively developed and the guy doing it listens to users. He just today updated the Range Circles feature to show actual road mileage in response to requests. This feature draws a couple of circles on the map showing you desired daily driving range. I have it set for 250 and 300 miles for me.

RVTW does show free campsites but apps like freecampgrounds.net show many more if you are going to boondock.

But you should always have a paper map on hand to verify any of these software programs. RVTW has been fairly reliable in not doing strange routing so far.

In the Truck we us an old 2015 copy of Streets and Trips for the actual navigation. No connection needed to run it but it will send you on strange routes if you are alert.

[rexlion]

It's hard to make any specific suggestions for where to camp along the route, since there are many highways you could take. And we don't know how many travel days you want to take, what you'd enjoy seeing or doing along the way, etc. But there are hundreds if not thousands of places to camp between your place and Yellowstone.

I use freecampsites.net and Ultimate Campgrounds, mainly. I go for all the free and cheap spots. And I hardly ever make reservations along the way (IMO you've done the hard part when you got sites in Yellowstone). If I want to go 400 miles the first day, I'll look on the maps of those sites for CGs along the route; maybe I'll have to change it to 350 miles or 500 miles, but I'll wind up with 2 or 3 possibilities. Then scope out what's available another 400 miles down the road. On travel day, I will stop by the first of my alternates and if there's space I will probably stay. Then I look at the maps that night and decide if I want to make any adjustments for the next day (because things change, I might be tired or feel like taking a different route or whatever).

[padredw]

From Dallas to Amarillo is 365 miles. Many good campgrounds in Amarillo, plus the state park at Palo Duro Canyon.

From Amarillo to Raton Pass is 219 miles. I have just made a reservation at "Raton Pass Campground and Cafe" because we always enjoy staying there.

From Raton Pass to Cheyenne, WY is 312 miles. Many campgrounds between Loveland, CO and Cheyenne.

From Cheyenne to Lander, WY is 272 miles. A couple of nice campgrounds in Lander. We have stayed in Sleeping Bear.

From Lander to Yellowstone is 215 miles.

Of course, this is only an example but I have just been planning two trips to Colorado and New Mexico and have been able to find campsites along the way. Let me know if I can help in a specific area.

[narcodog]

Look at "Boondockerswelcome.com" There is a small membership fee but there are plenty of them. I utilize rest areas all of the time and I have never been rousted from one. I also use Walmart, Cableas, and other locations. Always ask and never turned down. Truck stops I don't use much any longer because they are crowded. In the west there are truck parks, no facilities but it's a place to stay.