Saving Routes And Campground Info

[oscarpower]

Hello!

You know how it is... you plan trips and things happen and you have to cancel or change plans? Well, that has happened to us this year! Earlier in the year we planned on driving up to Maine, then a daughter was having a baby last month and requested our help in Colorado.... and guess what? A close family member got gravely ill and we had to cancel both trips. Hoping that she gets well enough for us to leave, we are now considering a short/closer one to OBX and Jamestown, VA.

Anyway, I spent hours researching best routes for each trip and reading forum suggestions and decided I needed to keep track of all so as not to do the research all over. For now, I have copy/pasted and filed them under "My Documents/Travels/name of State/Route recommendations or campgrounds" . Any of you keep/save these in other ways?

I also prepared a spreadsheet with mileage from point a to b, aprox. driving time, where to stay, if full hook-up or what...cost, etc. But I am not happy with my spreadsheet. I remember reading once in one of FMCA forums of someone having a similar spreadsheet... ???

We started motorhoming 8 yrs ago. When I retired last year, we took our first long (3 months) trip from Florida all the way up to Glacier Park, then South to NM and back, stopping anywhere and everywhere. It was an awesome trip!

Our 28'Concord/Coachmen keeps "calling us: let's go, let's go... " and we are so looking forward to it!

Jocelynn and Quico Power

Gainesville, FL

[kaypsmith]

Sounds like a pretty good system that you have going. I use word and copy and paste to it in the same manner that you described. I haven't found any other method yet that works well for me. Hope someone else has found a better way, as I would like one also.

I lived in Lake City back in the early eighties and supervised convenience stores in Gainesville. We still have family in that area, and visit them a couple times a year. Always like to hear from your area.

Happy trails, hope that Concord/Coachman gets her way soon.

Kay

[willtory]

I use Delorme's Street Atlas for trip planning. I put notes on the map describing whatever info I want to keep, and save the route. Each route is then available with all the info I wanted to save. I have attached a sample:

[tbutler]

You guys are waaaayyyy too organized! After almost 10 years full time and now three summers of travel, we do relatively little trip planning. If we are planning a trip of limited time, I will use my Garmin MapSource program (an older program that came with an early handheld GPS) for general planning, distance and route. We usually call ahead for campground availability about an hour before we feel like stopping for the day. We almost never make reservations further in advance unless we are planning to stay at a destination for an extended period (a week to a month or more).

For general planning on extended trips I simply put my planned major destinations on my computer calendar. On these extended trips we like to take a casual attitude toward travel, if we like a place we stay longer if we don't find much of interest we move on. If we can't extend our stay at one campground we may check another to see if they have space for some additional time in the area. If no campground space is available we'll move on.

As an example of this, we toured Alaska in 2006. When we arrived at a campground in Anchorage they had space for us for three days but then a large tour group was coming in and would take all their spaces. We stayed the three days, meanwhile we made reservations for a spot at that campground for a two week stay about two weeks later. We left, went south into the Kenai Peninsula spending time at several campgrounds, Seward, Cooper Landing and Portage Valley near Whittier, all with no prior reservations. At Seward we were parked right on Resurrection Bay. I watched a sea otter feeding on clams looking out the front window from my easy chair. When we returned to Anchorage we had a wonderful two week stay before moving on to our next destination. That was the only time in the three month trip that we made reservations at any campground. Everywhere else we simply showed up and found a place to stay.

Both Louise and I were classroom teachers and lived lives paced by bells for years. We probably have an extraordinary desire to avoid schedules. For us, traveling this way keeps us relaxed, no rushing to get to a specific destination on a certain day or at a certain time.

[aztec7fan]

I'm with Tom and Louise, we don't do much trip planning, but we do make some rough plans to make sure we have wnough time to complete the trip.

This year we went from Denver to Los Angeles and back, and had 9 days to do it. We figured how far we would drive each day for about 300-400 miles each day and then made a guess where we would stop for the night. In the afternoon, we would see how our progress was, decide if we wanted to stay in an RV park or just boondock for the night and then check the internet for a likely place to stop.

My only requirement is I try to return on a different route than I traveled to get to my destination.

As far as keeping track of previous trips, we keep photos albums with pictures and brochures from amusement parks and attractions we have visited on the trip. I also have a large map posted on our living room wall with all trips we have ever taken traced on the roads, with notes showing what year we made that trip and the direction of the route taken.

[rdchef]

Hi,

I am planning to leave for Glacier soon from St Augustine--would you share your route and any tips that you would share from your trip?

Thanks.

Patty

matrix0204@gmail.com

[mrtbusiness]

I really like using Microsoft's Streets & Trips. I set up my prospective route for ideas as to distance and days traveled and then go in and make changes as my route and destinations change. You can save the trip and move it from computer to computer via a flash drive.

The Discovery Owners' Club has created an overlay file for Streets and Trips that helps find RV-friendly locations - http://www.discoveryowners.com/cginfo.htm. I sometimes save the file with 2 different names - my original one and the one I change from day to day and then compare them to see how my actual trip differed from my original plan.

You can add all kinds of details as name of Campground or attraction, phone number, address, etc.

Hope this helps.

[sunnyhoward]

We have tried spreadsheets, the GPS, etc. Now we have found rvtripwizard.com and we love it!

All of our previous trips and stops are there and when we rough out an itinerary we just put it in the trip wizard. The map shows the distances ( we are in the 230 club), and it highlights the campgrounds that are available in that area. I can print it out, and if I were a bit more techline, I could create a file that I can download ( upload?) into our GPS.

Keep rolling!

Bill & Sunny Howard

Frustrated Maestros

[mrtbusiness]

We have tried spreadsheets, the GPS, etc. Now we have found rvtripwizard.com and we love it!

All of our previous trips and stops are there and when we rough out an itinerary we just put it in the trip wizard. The map shows the distances ( we are in the 230 club), and it highlights the campgrounds that are available in that area. I can print it out, and if I were a bit more techline, I could create a file that I can download ( upload?) into our GPS.

Keep rolling!

Bill & Sunny Howard

Frustrated Maestros

Sounds like a great program, unfortunately for me, I often dry camp and have no access to the internet so it probably wouldn't work. I need something I can keep on my computer to work on without internet service. Thanks for the info.

[rossboyer]

We use Delorme's Street Atlas, too. We have traveled the about the same route between Indiana and Arizona so many times that we have fuel stops, overnight stops, and even restaurants for our evening meals. But we still use Street Atlas because there have been times we have had to deviate our route due to weather, etc. When you know that you do not have to make a turn for 120 miles, you don't even look at the screen for about 2 hours.