The goal inaugural trip was to visit many family members, friends, and see as many sights as possible along the way. The trip wound fun to be about 8500 miles and 46 stops, not counting mid-travel stops. The trip was on a relatively fast pace because of our “other stuff in life” and we knew that going into the trip andes, 19 weeks was TOO FAST.
Okay, on to planning a trip, the screenshot of our inaugural trip is from the RV Trip Wizard tool from RV Life. We looked at tons of methods for planning trips, spreadsheet, various campsite vendors, and settled on RV Trip Wizard as the most comprehensive mechanism. Trip Wizard serves as the master tooling but that is by no means enough or complete enough to be 100% ready. We use Google Maps & Street View before each couple legs paying careful attention to fuel stops, rest stops, and interchanges. We carry a paper truckers guide for backup and low bridge checks.
This trip did not involve a lot of high demand stops and for other reasons we were only booking a couple weeks in advance. On this long of a trip we would have been killed with change and cancellation fees had we booked in advance.
Our tow car was not yet equipped to tow so Sharon had to drive the first several legs into Nebraska, see our Tow Car Purchase blog post for the convoluted sh.. that happened. In short BlueOx came through.
The Campgrounds tool in RV Life provides great information on campsites including reviews and photos; however, we also check the Google reviews and Street view which helps on ingress and egress. We have even found a bridge weight limit of 10 tons which would not carry the load of our motorhome. When looking at campsites, be sure to check the services available, electricity (30/50 Amp), water, sewer to fit your requirements.
