Rookie Looking For Advice on Creating Travel Plans

I like to have reservations for Friday and Saturday nights, but wing it the rest of the week.

We usually stop before late afternoon and have a plan B just in case. No real issues with the size at commercial CGs and often many others. But some state and federal CGs cannot take our 42'. Sometimes asking about our 10' rear overhang will bring a more favorable result.

When we first started full timing, we set someplace we wanted to see and headed for that spot...i.e. Grand Canyon. What we soon discovered is that by doing so, we were traveling as though we were simply on vacation and that was our destination. Doing so, we missed a bunch of fun stuff to see and do along the way.

Now we look at a map or the internet, and find a location about 3 hours away from where we are. We use an app, RV Parky, that locates all the campgrounds in the area. From there we can use our toad to explore. We stay off the interstates and visit many of the small towns scattered across the U.S.

Rarely have we had a problem with the size of our rig..I think you'll find the same as you travel. Don't let the naysayers tell you your rig is too big...call ahead if there's a question in your mind......take your time and enjoy the journey.....Dennis

I'm another one who uses Microsoft Streets&Trips for planning. I set it to start driving at 9am and finish at 3pm each day. Then I set my home as the start and end point, and the destination as a stop. It will then calculate a route based on my preferences and show any overnight stops along the way. I then start at the first overnight stop and look for campgrounds nearby - after selecting a possible campground I go to the Good Sam website, rvparkreviews.com, and tripadvisor.com to read reviews for that park, along with the park's website, if available.

If I can't find an acceptable stop at that overnight place then I look backwards along the proposed route until I find something acceptable. I prefer to be off the road by 3pm so we've got time to relax each day so I only stretch the days out if absolutely necessary.

As I identify and enter each night's stop on the S&T map I rerun the trip planner to identify the start for the next night's stop. It's an iterative process but that's part of the fun of planning a trip!

I also set our home as both the start AND end of the trip so that I get a complete budget for the trip - S&T provides total mileage and time, and calculates a fuel budget based on your inputs - I use 7 mpg and $5 per gallon to get a rough idea of the fuel budget. You can also have it display fuel stops if you want.

Microsoft has announced that they will no longer be offering support for S&T so the 2013 version is the last we'll see. But it will still work - I used the 2006 version until I upgraded to the 2013 version 2 years ago and the maps haven't changed that much in the intervening years, so I figure the 2013 version will work for me for at least the next 5 years or so.

I prefer to use an off-line planner because our internet connection is through a Verizon Mifi and I'd rather keep my data available to see pictures of our grandkids!

S&T 2013 is the last version and I doubt there will be any updates to 2013.

Checking on the all the good tips for travel plans I see that Microsoft discontinued Streets and Trips in July 2014 and will stop on line support in July 2015, so I assume no map updates after that.

What I did is : I only want to drive 400 miles per day max. so we look ahead to the net to find a 5 star RV Park around the area of 400 miles. Works for me!

As others have mentioned campground directories are a good start as are road trip planning computer programs and online sites. I do like the hear of someone's opinion on a particular RV park.

But there are a few things to consider and tips...for your 1st long trip out plan ahead to select the types of roads you wish to drive on & research the 1st couple of days campgrounds along that route. After that...try "winging" it day by day.

However we found it has always been difficult to guarantee we will make those certain stops on time. We found it's more "fun" to stop more often and on a moment's notice to see something between stops...that throws RV park reservations "under the bus"!

Online Campground directories and printed books are good but both may be out of date. Always call ahead. I found another way to "have a look"...using Google Earth look up the campground and really "look" around, especially helpful to see how easy it is to find the park. However,images may be at least 1 year old.

Call ahead, at certain times of year some areas are booked, in winter they may be shut down, etc.

Always arrive during daylight hours no matter how well you have researched the site. We've had issues that caused damage because of the dark.

Happy Trails...

The Allstays Camp and RV app has a filter for Accepts Big Rigs and several hundred other filters. You can try it online but the phone app is much better in my opinion.

We have been in state parks, corp of engineer parks, county parks, city parks, private owned parks and forest service parks that you would fit into with no problem. Some of those even had pull thru sites. There is no one source that I know of that will give you that info. If it's a park with online reservation systems, the size of the site is usually listed and some also have photos.