To Plan or not to Plan

[holstein13]

That is the dilemma. In the past, I worked full time and could only travel on weekends, vacations or holidays -- the most crowded times of the year with the least time to waste. I planned the major details like where we are going and where we are staying. Sometimes, I planned 9 months in advance just to get into a popular campground. But the downside to planning was A) the work involved and B) the commitment to the plan.

Now we are fulltiming and I find that long term planning is becoming a hinderance. Things come up that don't fit into the plan such as maintenance, chance meetings, discovering new things, etc.

So, what can I do? I still need to have some idea where I'll be so that I can receive my mail and schedule appointments, but when is enough, enough?

[2gypsies1]

holstein13 wrote:

But I still need to plan on where I'll be in order to receive the mail once a month.

I guess I don't see the problem. Sometimes we land at an unplanned spot and once there, decide to send for our mail. We make the request and give them the nearby small-town general delivery P.O. address. We receive it Priority Mail in 2-3 days.

If you want the mail to be at that P.O. on the day of arrival, just make your mail request 3-4 days prior as you're traveling to that place. Pick up you mail and continue on.

We've never had problems doing this - even as we traveled to Alaska where we didn't make reservations. Even to Alaska, our mail arrived in 4-5 days max, sometimes shorter.

Good luck figuring it out. 🙂

[Veebyes]

The plan is be prepared to change the plan on the fly. For the most part no reservations here either except for major holiday weekends where we will hit a no reservations park on thursday & hole up for the weekend.

For events & appointments aim to be in the area a few days ahead of event to make allowance for a weather or mechanical delay.

[zekegb]

Recently retired. Looking to take the easy route and go to places and spend some time without schedule. But on first winter trip south for a couple months discovered I was glad I still planned in some detail.
- Place where meeting friends only had one week open when they were there.
- State park where we were going to spend 5 days only had two vacancies.
- Discovered town where we were going to wander into had a major annual festival that involves 50,000 people
- Coming back on California coast parks were filling up.

Have joined RV Golf Club and will be making a couple stopovers with them.

[holstein13]

OP here. For the record, I have a wonderful mail forwarding service called St. Brendan's Isle. I've got that totally under control and while I appreciate the suggestions on mail, I can tell you I do very well in that department.

SBI scans all my mail and I can either scan the contents, shred the mail, hold it or send it along. I receive my mail about once a month and it consists mostly of legacy correspondence, checks, magazines, passwords, renewals, parcels, and other pieces don't get sent via e-mail.

But I still need to plan on where I'll be in order to receive the mail once a month.

Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions on how to plan less. I will put the ones that work for me into practice. I especially like the idea of traveling less and staying longer at certain places. Several of you mentioned that.

I also like the idea of setting aims rather than goals. Just pick a direction or an area. Great stuff. Thanks.

[tatest]

Except for obligations put on me by family, and stuff like cruises and international tours, I quit planning at retirement. When I have free time, and not projects, I just go. If full timing, I would just go, with the general principle that I want to be where I can keep the windows open most of the time and not run either furnace or air conditioning.

Bills can be checked and paid online, an except for jury duty summons and the forms I need to file income tax (which come at a specific time) the rest is just junk mail accumulating in my P.O. box. I'll take off for two to six weeks at a time, mail coming to the house (junk, license renewal forms or jury duty summons) goes on hold until pickup, P.O. box accumulates.

If you are actually full-timing, all your mail needs to be going to a forwarding service, and you can arrange for that to be held until you tell them a new place to send it.

[2gypsies1]

JAXFL wrote:
I am not full-timing yet so this is just my thoughts about the mail issue.. do you really need all those coupons forwarded to you?

Our bills are all auto-pay. However, there are some pieces of mail that we still receive, including magazine subscriptions. (No, we will not read them online. We enjoy 'handling' them. We're on a computer enough.) We have our mail sent general delivery approximately every 4-6 weeks. No big deal. It's much cheaper to subscribe to a magazine than to pay for it in a store - even with postage added.

We enjoy getting birthday and Christmas cards. We also enjoy reading hand-written letters that some of our friends and family still do. 🙂

However, in 16 years of full-timing we do not receive any junk mail and no coupons and no catalogs. It's very easy to get off all those lists. 🙂

[Escargot]

C-Bears wrote:
Don't some full timers go by the 3-3-3 rule? Off the road by 3pm, stay at each stop for 3 nights, and I can't remember the last one.

I think the third "3" is 3 hours driving.

[noplace2]

The hallmark from people, who have been fulltiming now in our 14th year, and I can fix virtually anything:

Paraphrasing from a major inclusion

Sorry I didn't get that inclusiob

[C-Bears]

Don't some full timers go by the 3-3-3 rule? Off the road by 3pm, stay at each stop for 3 nights, and I can't remember the last one.

[rockhillmanor]

Old-Biscuit wrote:

holstein13 wrote:

Old-Biscuit wrote:
If the CG didn't accept visitor mail we would find local PO that accepted 'General Delivery' and have it sent there.

What the what? There are Campgrounds that don't accept visitor mail? I hope there aren't very many of them. I do most of my non perishable shopping on Amazon and have been sending my packages ahead to the campgrounds as I knew where I'd be.

If there are campgrounds that don't accept mail, I'll be in real trouble because I don't even bother to check if they do or not. I just send my mail and packages there and assume they will accept it.

7 yrs. of FTng.
YES there are CGs that don't accept visitor mail.
We came across quite a few in our travels.
Same with Post Offices.....not all accept 'General Delivery'

Best to ALWAYS check/verify FIRST

Ditto X10!

[JIMNLIN]

We've RVed and camped since the '60s and never make reservations. Reservation for us means traveling on a schedule of being some where at a certain time. We prefer a more laid back approach when we go on trips with the camper or without.

My work like revolved around being on a schedule such as a completion date or delivering my loads on a certain date at a specific location. That put lots of stress on me so I promised myself no more driving to meet a schedule...... if possible.

Were like a butterfly. Wife and I planned a trip to Yosemite and come back through NV southern CO/UT and northern NM to our home in OK.
We made it to Yosemite but instead went up through NV/UT on to Thermopolis WY and back down through central CO. Very long relaxing trip. I didn't have to be limited by time or a schedule.

[rk911]

holstein13 wrote:
That is the dilemma. In the past, I worked full time and could only travel on weekends, vacations or holidays -- the most crowded times of the year with the least time to waste. I planned the major details like where we are going and where we are staying. Sometimes, I planned 9 months in advance just to get into a popular campground. But the downside to planning was A) the work involved and B) the commitment to the plan.

Now we are fulltiming and I find that long term planning is becoming a hinderance. Things come up that don't fit into the plan such as maintenance, chance meetings, discovering new things, etc.

So, what can I do? I still need to have some idea where I'll be so that I can receive my mail and schedule appointments, but when is enough, enough?

back in the pre-MH days when we were doing the motel thing on trips I would plan out the entire day. where we were having lunch, getting gas, stopping for the night. the whole shebang. Inside I was miserable and was likely making the wife miserable. it was all about the journey and not in a good way.

I made a radical change. instead of a detailed plan we basically selected a direction and headed that way. no plan other than a vague destination which frequently changed. I recall one year, still pre-MH, where we sat in the driveway still unsure if we were heading south or west. we picked west and wandered and meandered our way out there and back for a full month.

as we've gotten older we've found that a mix of the two methods is best for us. we tend to go to the southwest for 3-months in the spring along the same route and stopping at the same places along the way but making time to see and go places that we've not seen before. in the fall we're more spontaneous and likely to blow with the wind for 3-months...more of 'I wonder what's around that curve' and less structure.

another change we made was how many hours a day we drive between here and there. the norm in the car was 12-hrs. we were both working and, like you, there was not a lot of time to waste. after we retired that habit carried over to the MH trips. then one day as we were returning from a spring trip to Arizona we were EB on I-40 near Tucumcari, NM, fighting the wind all the way. we hadn't been on the road for more than 2-hrs when I decided to pull off the hwy at a Flying J truck stop to rest. as we were getting ready to head back out I saw an RV park just down the road from the truck stop. we decided to call it a day right then and there...at noon! that was a turning point. now we usually limit our driving day to 5-hours. 2-hrs in the morning, a 1-hr lunch stop followed by 2-additional hours of driving. we're usually setup in the campground or RV park by 3pm. we are now truly enjoying the journey.

as for mail...virtually all of the mail we must have...bills mostly...have been switched to e-mail and the associated payments are direct-debited from the bank account. we've been doing that for the past 15+ years with no hitches whatsoever. the rest, magazines and junk, can wait till we return home. my bro-in-law lives in our home while we're gone and if the odd piece of mail comes in that we need to see he opens it, scans it and e-mails the PDF to us.

good luck and safe travels to you.

[C-Bears]

Some things we find advance planning are required, some not so much. A summer trip out west with an Alaskan cruise in the middle of it required some planning. We didn't want to get held up on the road and miss the cruise plus we had to have a place to store our fiver for 8 days/nights.

Our winter spot in SW Florida we reserve months ahead of time also.

Other than that we may decide on a Monday to hook up and take a 2 week trip with very little advance planning.

Prior to us going full time I recall reading posts by experienced full timers. They said at first you would be in sort of a "vacation" mode but would eventually slow down and settle in. I think that is very true.

[pasusan]

holstein13 wrote:

Old-Biscuit wrote:
If the CG didn't accept visitor mail we would find local PO that accepted 'General Delivery' and have it sent there.

What the what? There are Campgrounds that don't accept visitor mail? I hope there aren't very many of them. I do most of my non perishable shopping on Amazon and have been sending my packages ahead to the campgrounds as I knew where I'd be.

If there are campgrounds that don't accept mail, I'll be in real trouble because I don't even bother to check if they do or not. I just send my mail and packages there and assume they will accept it.

I'm thinking this will have to change...

Unless you enjoy being a mega-planner. 😉