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One of the first questions many fellow RVers ask each other is “How do you plan your travels?” We know that there are many ways to do this, and many websites and apps to assist with this task. Your traveling purpose will also steer you towards certain tools. As full time RVers we have developed a planning method that works for our purposes.
Our base tool for planning is RV Trip Wizard. The first thing we do is choose our final destination and arrival date; basically, where do we want to stay for a relatively long period of time and in what time frame do we want to arrive. Then we look for places along the way that we want to visit. Those are usually major stops where we want to stay for a few days and see the area. We use those as waypoints to determine our general route.
Once we have our major stops and destination planned then we can plan each day. We try to limit our travel days to be about 5 hours of driving time. We use RV Trip Wizard along with Campendium to find parks for multi night stays. Campendium does a nice job of showing national, state and county parks that are generally more scenic and cheaper than private parks.
Harvest Host and Boondockers Welcome are where we look to fill in between major stops. We use these options for one night stays. Although some Boondockers locations will let you stay multiple nights while visiting the area. Most Harvest Hosts are not near major highways but are certainly worth the drive. We have had some amazing experiences at Harvest Hosts and they become great memories of our journey.
Once you have the stops planned RV Trip Wizard plans your route based on the data that you enter. You input your rig size and driving preferences. On driving days our routes are then triple checked using a truckers atlas, our Garmin GPS (Garmin RV 770) and usually the maps app on our phone. In metropolitan areas we will also use Waze for current traffic updates. We try to stop every 2 hours to give the driver a break. We try to make them easy on and off spots like rest areas. If we need fuel that requires more research. To choose a fuel stop I will use the Gas Buddy app, our Garmin and then the satellite views on the maps app.
None of these tools or methods are foolproof. And we try to use all four of our eyes to look out for unanticipated problems. We are always looking for ways to improve our planning and keep updated on new tools.
If you have specific questions about any of these tools that we mentioned please ask. This was just an overview of the process. Be safe and enjoy the journey!
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Our Harvest Host referral link for 15% off is here.
One more note from Kunio... Michelle is our expert tour guide and planner. She does all of this with meticulous detail and we've never been steered wrong. She is an amazing planner and guide.
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