Secret Planning Tools & Strategies For Long Distance RV Trips
Planning a long distance RV trip with multiple stops can be overwhelming. Questions such as: Where to go? Where to stay? How much will campgrounds cost? How long to stay at each stop? Are there amenities such as hookups? Where are dump stations along the route? and many others often arise when arranging such a trip. Where to begin?!!! I’ve put together a number of tools and strategies below which hopefully will help answer many of these questions and make the process of trip planning fun.
When and Where to Go?
The answer to this question is often dictated by the weather. Unless one has an important reason to go somewhere specific, such as a business trip or family gathering, most of us will head to locations where the weather is good so we can enjoy our RV vacations (which usually involve a lot of outdoors activities). In planning trips for our Scamp 13’ (with San Diego as our home base), paying attention to good weather usually means planning coast and mountain trips in the summer, all types of trips in the late spring and early fall, and coast and desert trips in the winter. By following this method, we usually avoid temperature extremes, which can not only be extremely uncomfortable, but also damaging to the pipes (e.g. freezing) in small travel trailers. Living in California, we are lucky in that there are usually locations throughout the year where the weather is favorable for small travel trailer trips.
In addition to the weather, it’s also a good idea to plan trips around locations of interest to you. It only makes sense going places you will enjoy. I have a friend who likes to attend the big annual quilting show in Sisters, Oregon every July. Another friend loves fishing and has a standing reservation at Silver Lake Resort. Building a trip around these activities is the perfect way to enjoy your small travel trailer and a fun interest at the same time. Personally, I enjoy going to National and State Parks for the outdoor activities and many of my trips are to these locations. After all, one of the big advantages of having a small travel trailer is being able to stay within these parks (often where hotels are non-existent or extremely expensive like the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite). But, I also enjoy going to unique locations of interest, such as farm stays or specialty locations. For example, I’m currently planning a fall trip through Oregon and hope to stay at several specialty stops including this alpaca farm, airport and airplane museum, small railroad depot, and organic farm.
Lastly, it’s often our schedules that dictate when we go. For example, families may only be able to travel in the summer. In these cases, pay close attention not only to the weather but also the potential for crowds when trip planning. Even if the weather is good at a particular location during the planned travel month, if may not be a lot of fun if there are big crowds (such as at certain National parks). I’ve found that going to lesser known parks can be equally enjoyable during the summer months. For example, we had an awesome time at Lassen Volcanic National Park this past July and probably enjoyed it as much as our Yosemite trip two months earlier.
Planning Tools
Once you have decided when and where you want to go, it’s time to utilize some key travel planning tools which will not only help you decide on the best travel routes, best places to stay, and where to dump, but also potentially will save you a lot of money and make your trip more memorable! The first tool I recommend is using Google Maps to search drive times between your planned stops. Search “drive time from X to X”.
We try to limit our daily driving to no more than 4 hours per day (and driving no more than 2 consecutive days in a row). However, we do sometimes make exceptions to facilitate certain trips (occasionally driving 5 or 6 hours if necessary and/or driving more than 2 consecutive days in a row if the drives are 3 hours or less and we want to visit a certain location). For example, in the summer we go to Mammoth Lakes in the mountains (about a 7 hour drive), but it’s not possible to stay overnight midway as it is the desert and too hot. However, when we arrive we often stay several days at each location, making the long drive on the first day worthwhile.
A second free tool is the AAA Triptik Travel Planner. It’s free, but you have to have a AAA membership if you want to save your trip (which isn’t really a big deal unless you are plotting out a lot of stops and want to come back to refer to the website map in the future). This is a fantastic route planner because it gives a lot of great information. It shows your route on a map along with pins at each stop (which you can print). You can set a time or distance interval that highlights with a circle on the map each interval. For example, if you want to limit each day to 4 hours driving, you can set a 4 hour interval and then the tool highlights these intervals on the map with red circles. The map lists trip total drive time and miles along with complete step by step driving directions (if you want). There is also a selectable legend that will show gas stations, campsites, restaurants, and other areas of interest on the map.
Sometimes it may be necessary to find an RV DUMP Station along your route. Having this information in advance can be very useful as it may allow you to stay at free locations (such as Boondockers Welcome or Harvest Host sites) without having to spend money for a campground just to have access to a dump. This RV Dump Stations Map by Roundabout Publications (publisher of travel books) is a third free tool which shows Dump stations all over the country (note: I have not verified the accuracy of this map so use at your own discretion). In addition to showing dump station locations, the map also has a legend indicating the cost of the station (some are even free!). In our experience, private dumps generally charge between $7 to $10 per dump.
State and regional parks often have websites and maps showing state and regional campground site locations (the 4th free tool). For example, on the Oregon trip I’m planning, I referred to the Oregon State Parks “Find a Park” map extensively. And many regional parks have campground maps that provide campsite locations. For example, Sonoma County has this regional campground map. I’ve found that state and regional parks campgrounds often offer very generous amounts of campsite space and tend to be an excellent value.
If you think you might enjoy some niche stays, such farms, wineries, museums, or people’s homes/driveways, consider joining both Boondockers Welcome and Harvest Hosts (inexpensive annual memberships). With this 5th tool, just a couple of stays will offset the cost of the annual subscription. Before signing up, go to their websites and view host location maps. The Harvest Host map even lets you plot your route and shows stay locations on the map! If it looks like there are many places to stay on your route, perhaps give it a try. We’ve had great stays using these memberships and enjoyed meeting the hosts. Also, memberships can allow you to save a lot of money if you stay at multiple locations throughout the year (as individual stays are free / although we generally give a small gift or make a purchase).
Power Tools: Using All Tools Together
I’ve found it incredibly efficient to use all of the above tools simultaneously together to review maps regarding the route and stops (Google Maps / AAA Triptik), Dump station locations (RV Dump Stations Map) , available campgrounds (AAA Triptik / State & Regional Parks map), and boondocking sites (Boondockers Welcome / Harvest Hosts). To do this, just open up multiple browsers so you can jump back and forth comparing all the information. Doing this allowed me to quickly see driving times and possible campsite locations on my planned trip. I was also able to identify some interesting boondocking possibilities without being concerned about a lack of a dump station at these locations (since I also had the Dump Station map and knew there were dumping options on the drive).
Fun Things to Do
Now that you have figured out when and where you are going, made a map of your trip (and chosen stops so you aren’t driving much longer than 4 hours per day and limiting travelling to no more than two consecutive days of driving), it’s a good idea to get some insider information on fun things to do at your locations. A few sources I’ve found helpful (beyond just Google searches) are campground reviews, State tourism commission websites, and a couple of travel websites. For example, when I searched Wallowa Lake State Park campground reviews, along with actual reviews of the campground, I found some great tips. There are recommendations for things to do and places to go, like taking the tramway to the top of Mount Howard, trails to hike, great restaurants (like the Wallowa Lake Lodge), good shopping (including art and bronze galleries) in the town of Joseph, and fishing. State tourism commission websites are also good sources of local knowledge. I checked Oregon’s “Travel Oregon” website for our upcoming trip and found some interesting things to do that I didn’t see anywhere else. For example, I definitely plan to reserve a pedal train car with Joseph Branch Railriders! I did something like this in Sweden and it was a blast! Tripadvisor and TripSavvy are a couple of travel advisory websites that are good for providing lists of fun things to do. Here is the TripSavvy list for Joseph, OR.
Conclusion
Now that you are armed with these Secret Planning Tools and Strategies for your future long distance RV trips, you can rest easy knowing that “you’ve got this”! You can now plan RV trips like a pro and have fantastic experiences without the stress which typically comes with figuring all this stuff out!
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