We travel a lot in our coach, about once a week and about 170 miles per trip on average. So we have a system when planning our journeys.
Since we have a 40-foot motorhome, and RV travel is fairly popular nowadays, we can’t afford to be spontaneous; we plan our route over a year in advance, and make campsite reservations 6 to 12 months in advance.
Perhaps the most important tool is the RV Life Trip Wizard, a web-based app to plan our route. We start by deciding the rough route, based on states and national parks we want to visit, plus planning around weather to be up in our domicile state of Washington in summer, and down south somewhere in winter, aiming for comfortable temperatures and sunny skies year-round. We’re also slowly working our way across the country, getting a little further east each year.
Once we’ve decided roughly where we want to go, we start adding placeholder locations to the Wiz (as we call it), to rough out the route, then incrementally work on finding RV parks, state parks, etc along that route, aiming for about 200 miles between each stop. If on an interstate, we can go longer, since there are usually rest areas, and faster traffic; if on highways, we prefer shorter distances.
An important thing about the Wiz is that it is “RV-safe” — it knows the length and height of our coach, so it only suggests routes that we can take, avoiding low bridges, questionable roads, and other hazards.
We use a separate trip in the Wiz for each year; here is a screenshot of the route for 2022. The sidebar lists the stops, dates, and distances between each stop, while the map shows the route and stops, with different colors and icons for different types of places:
The Wiz helps us find RV parks, too; it can show the locations of parks in the area, and we can click on each to learn more:
We visit the websites for prospective RV parks, and look at reviews on the Campground Reviews site (also part of the RV Life suite, and conveniently linked from the Wiz). We prefer parks that allow online reservations, though will call if there aren’t better options.
Another useful feature of the Wiz is the ability to show lines to indicate the driving range, using green for 150 miles, yellow for 200 miles, and red for 250 miles (these distances are configurable):
There are several other useful features of the Wiz, too, but those are the most important to us.
The day or so before each trip (or when initially planning a route if it looks questionable), I use Google Maps satellite view to examine the route, making sure there aren’t any hazards (e.g. here’s one for the route from Caballo Lake State Park to Las Cruces KOA):
I zoom in to examine each part of the trip:
I open several tabs in Safari to interesting parts of the trip, e.g. this rest area, just in case there isn’t cell reception when we get there:
Another interesting part:
I also look at interesting parts with Street View, so I can see what it’s like:
And the destination, helping familiarize me with the RV park layout:
Street View of the entrance:
On the actual travel day, we have three GPSs going: the RV-safe one built in to the coach, Apple Maps on Jenn’s iPhone, and RV Life GPS (also RV-safe) on my iPhone.
Here’s the RV GPS, mirrored on the overhead TV:
And the RV Life GPS; I usually keep it on an overview display, so I can see the route ahead, though can tap Re-Center to get the detailed turns:
Another useful app is iExit, which shows upcoming rest areas on interstate freeways:
And another is TSD Open Roads, which shows locations and prices of discount fuel stops:
When herding a 40,000 lb, 40-foot beast down the road, it pays to be prepared. We aren’t always perfect, wrong turns happen, but we try to be prepared to know where to go and what to expect.
