How We Plan A Trip

How Do We Plan An Extended Trip

And The Tools We Use To Do It

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Planning any trip can be exhausting, but to plan an extended trip on the road with any RV can twist your brain in so many ways it is not funny! We are still pretty much rookies, but we have enough experience to know what works for us, and hopefully will work for you as well... If you have any comments or suggestions to what we have here, by all means feel free to shoot us an email with your thoughts and/or ideas! We are always open to making this process easier and faster!

THE BASICS: (considering you already have a computer/laptop/mobile device and an internet connection)

1. First off you must have a fairly clear idea of your basic route, the major sights/areas you want to visit, and a basic time frame for how long you have for you trip. If you are full timers (live in your RV full time) you still probably have an idea of where you might want to go and for how long.

2. Second, you must have a good mapping application to plan your actual route your going to travel. We use Google Maps as

3. A trip planning application is not totally necessary but HIGHLY SUGGESTED. We use RV Life Trip Wizard as it is simple to use, integrates with other useful tools such as Harvest Hosts, and can run on multiple platforms. Being an online based app, it is very easy to use next to Google Maps and simply jump between applications by clicking headers. To explain this, you have multiple windows open at the same time, and just jump between windows by clicking on their headers in navigation bar.

4. We also recommend purchasing a few subscriptions for discounted RV Park rates. We use Harvest Hosts and Passport America, but there are a ton of them out there. Any others that look good to you might help you save money in the long run if you are on the road long enough. Harvest Hosts can be subscribed with RV Life Trip Planner so that makes things extremely easy and a little less expensive when subscribed together. This kind of adds a little more time in the planning phase as it brings in more possibilities, but in the long run saves you money.

5. Not part of the planning really as prices change like the wind, but Gas Buddy is an app that we use while on the road for finding the best prices and or location for fuel. A free app that we highly recommend!!!

So once you have all the above things in place, bring up at least three internet windows on your preferred browser. You will actually end up with more than three, but lets start with that. In the first window get RV Life Trip Planner running. In the second window get your Google Maps running. Then in your third window get something like Passport America (discount RV Park membership listed above) running. We also have a fourth window running which is Harvest Hosts. The image below shows my computer screen in full on planning mode. Notice the tabs on the top that indicate what I have running. Usually there are a couple more windows with things like the RV Parks or campgrounds we are looking at for the area/stop/overnight we are planning. Jumping forward a bit, we plan one stop at a time in consecutive order as much as we can. Make a decision and move to the next stop, just easier for us rather than jumping forward and backward all the time.

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So lets talk about each individual component involved starting with RV Trip Wizard. So we use this to keep the individual stops listed in order. The Trip Wizard map works great, but the actual route we choose is a combination of Trip Wizard and Google Maps. The GREAT thing about Trip Wizard is you can input all your rig specs, like height clearances, lengths, weights etc. and it will factor that into the route it will choose for you. We don't like unpaved roads, so we set it up so that those options are avoided, or at least highlighted so that we know to look for alternate routs. It will tell you if a bridge is to low for you height clearance, things like that are good to know PRIOR to encountering them.

Google maps, we pretty much all use it. It is built into our navigation system in the truck, probably yours as well. But in the planning phase anyway, the ratings for each place we are interested in staying at is invaluable. A park with a bad or low rating is an easy pass, and keep looking until you find something better. Possibly the best part of Google Maps in the planning stage is the Street View. Amazing how good the coverage is now, in fact sometimes you can actually go inside a campground/RV Park and see the area/campsite your interested in, not just the road getting there. For those of us with solar and looking at boondocking areas, so cool to see if there are trees around the site your interested in. A forewarn for you, the coverage of Google Maps does not always cover these types of spots, but it is getting better all the time! When we were wondering about smaller back country highways, it was a help to see what shape the roadway was in before deciding on the route. Two lane versus four lane, shoulders, pavement condition, all can be seen by using street view.

Harvest Host is a listing of areas that are available for a free overnight stay. Businesses, wineries, farms, personal property owners and such will let you stay overnight with no charge. The hitch? Well they would just like you to contribute something to whatever interest they have. Like if it's a winery, buy a bottle of their wine. If it's a museum pay the entry fee for the tour. If it's an eating establishment, buy a dinner or piece of pie. You get the idea, just contribute something.

Passport America is a network of RV Parks that offer half off (ish) or more for an overnight stay. Sure beats paying full price, and the cost of the membership is paid in the first two overnights. We use these quite often, especially on simple overnight stays. Combined with Google ratings, we pick the best deal and/or the best park in the area. They are rather limited in the amount of parks that are in their network, but again, the membership has paid for itself many times over for us.

1. Stay flexible??? We really want to stay flexible so we are planning our route, but so far not making any reservations.

2. We have laid out our route with the main areas we want to see, main attractions and potential campgrounds/rv parks. But again we have not made any reservations until we actually hit the road. In Bend it can snow at any time during January when we are leaving, so that is the main hurdle to jump before making any reservations. Once we know that, we can go for it at least a week ahead at a time.

3. Planning Resources. So far we have a subscription to RV Life with their trip planner, we have joined Harvest Hosts, and also Passport America. Another MUST have is Google Maps to help move forward from where RV Life trip planner is currently at your last stop. 4. Google Maps. We always have either RV Life trip planner running, and Google Maps in the background, or visa versa. Between the two, and then multiple windows open (like 10 it seems), I can jump back and forth between all the prior mentioned programs and bringing up campgrounds, state parks, attractions etc. So far we are good for the first 3-4 weeks, from Bend to Big Bend (how crazy is that?) and now trying to retrace our path if cold, or heading north a little and back through Flagstaff if no snow is in the forecast. 5. The street view in Google Maps is absolutely GREAT! As you can see below, I have all my windows running at the same time and can switch between them easy peasy just by clicking on a tab! This is the street view of the Rio Grande Village Campground running in Google Maps where we can check out every campsite we might be interested in. A forewarn for you, the coverage of Google Maps does not always cover these types of spots, but it is getting better all the time! When we were wondering about smaller back country highways, it was a help to see what shape the roadway was in before deciding on the route.