Good Sam Trip Planner question

Depending on where you are, and what you drive, it can matter a great deal what you use for routing software. Near big cities and along the east coast you can get into a lot of trouble if you don't account for a rig's height, width, weight, propane, and type. From Richmond VA to Portland Maine. For example, one of the most beautiful roads in NY, the Taconic State Parkway. It was built to allow easy travel to and between some of NY's most beautiful parks and campgrounds. DO NOT use it with anything other than a small van size or truck camper. You'll be lucky if a sheriff or state trooper pull you over before you crash into, or have to try to turn around before, one of its beautiful stone archway bridges. Trailers are also not allowed. Not even small cargo trailers. And the fine is substantial. But guess what road most GPS's will select for "avoid tolls" when headed to or from the Adirondacks and NYC. Yeah, the Taconic.

Bottom line: a good GPS, designed for RVs will add to your peace of mind. But even if you do have one, they are not fool proof. You still have to be alert. It seems as if every year, some idiot slams into the only low bridge on the Onondaga Lake Parkway, outside Syracuse, on a road that is less than 5 miles long, with plenty of alternative routes as well as warning signs, lights that blink if you are over height, and even chains that hit the top of your vehicle half a mile before the bridge.

"Be Careful Out There"

oklatraveler wrote:

DougA wrote:

oklatraveler wrote:
Updated question: We'll be going from Branson, MO to Robbers Cave State Park in Wilburton, OK. I'm not interested in points of interest type things, just how the roads are. So if using the Good Sam trip planner is it going to give me the best roads to use for a RV/trailer?

Hi, I use the Good Sam's planner all the time. I especially like that I can download the planned trip into my Garmin GPS. One important hint: if you want to use a certain road, like if you wanted to follow Old RT 66 across the country, you have to enter more waypoints directly on the route number you want to take. Otherwise the routing software which usually looks for the shortest or fastest time will take you off the route. Google will not allow enough waypoints on one trip to do this, especially if you are planning a multiple day trip with lots of waypoints.

Bottomline, if you use Good Sam and indicate you are driving an RV and input its height, it will try to route you on a "safe" route. There are a few faults though. The data is not rapidly updated for road closures and traffic. This is why I like to download the Good Sam planned route into my Garmin, which is updated with immediate as you go road closures and traffic information. The Garmin can reroute us around these things if necessary.

Ok thank you for that info. Unfortunately we don't have the Garmin..we use Waze on my phone.