Have you ever thought about going on an RV trip but maybe just didn't know where
to start in the planning process stay tuned and we're going to share with you
what we do to plan our trips to be able to have a great time while we're
enjoying life on the road
hello everyone and welcome back to the channel if you are new or this is the
first video you're watching my name is charity and my husband Ben and I have
been RVing with our family for over two years in this video today we are going
to talk about some of the resources and the tools we use to plan our RV trips
now I'm a planner by nature it's just kind of part of my DNA in personality
assessments or in temperament assessments I am one of those people
that is high on the scale when it comes to planning so planning is something
that I definitely always do when we are getting ready to look at going on
different trips with our family so having a plan it can really help you out
just to make sure that you do have a spot to stay for the night and that you
don't end up having to boondock out of necessity
however planning is also good for safety reasons and if you'd like to learn more
about safety for RViers you can check out the video above where we
actually give you some great safety tips and planning ahead being one of those
tips so one of the things that we always want to make sure in our planning
process is we do not want to drive more than 6 or 7 hours a day even though we
do switch off driving I drive and sometimes my husband Ben drives we still
like to keep those stretches on travel days less than 7 hours it just is not
fun for our two children being cooped up in the RV for more than seven eight
hours very maximum at a time so part of our planning process is we plan where we
want to go and then we plan where we need to make stops along the way to make
sure that we're not driving for more than that 6 or 7 hours a day
another thing that we learned very early on is to not go at a grueling pace our very
first trip out we were just so excited we wanted to go so many places and see
so many things and what we ended up doing was really biting off more than we
could chew we were planning just two or three
nights in one destination before we move on to the next and we found out it got
very tiring having to pack everything up every couple of days to move to the next
spot so now when we do our planning we're much better about giving
ourselves a minute four nights and one destination and
really what our preferable stay is is closer to seven nights so part of our
planning process is knowing how long it's going to take us to get from point
A to point B we want to make sure that we're keeping under that ideal driving
time that we want to spend behind the wheel on the travel days the other thing
that we now do is part of the planning process is looking at the different
areas that we want to be and what are some of the attractions or must-see
things in that particular area we've learned the hard way at times that you
want to be able to plan ahead for things that are in certain areas that may be
something that's very popular perfect example of this is when we were in Key
West Florida earlier this year we did not know that we needed to plan very far
in advance to be able to get tickets to the ferry that goes over to the Dry
Tortugas National Park we arrived in Key West and we had eight days there however
the tickets were already booked up and they were booked up up to two weeks in
advance we were told during other times of the
year they can actually booked up months in advance so now when we plan our trips
we try to look at things three to four months out sometimes six months out to
be able to not only booked campsites at popular campgrounds and destinations but
also at different things that are in the area that might be something that's
extremely popular to do you want to make sure that you look at those types of
things to make reservations while in advance so that you can take advantage
of doing things while you're in that area so we use several different
resources when it comes to planning our trips I've used the good sand planner in
the past and unfortunately they've discontinued it the tool that I'm
currently using is rvparke.com what I like about rvparke is it will also
help you calculate your fuel costs based on the total mileage of your trip it
also helps you understand what the drive time is from one destination to the next
this is especially helpful if you don't want to overextend yourself on travel
days and to be able to know if you need to just break your trip in half and
maybe plan on boondocking one night until that you get to your ultimate
destination or knowing how long it is from one destination to the next
the other thing that I really like about rvparke is that it shows you different
campgrounds that are in the area this can be helpful because instead of
relying on tools like google you can look at what other RViers are
saying about different campgrounds is rvparke has its own review system on the
different campgrounds that it will show you that are within a specific area once
that you've created your trip you can even take the link for your trip and
share that with family in France we've done that this year and it's a great way
to be able to let people know where we're going to be and when we're going
to be there we have several family members this year that are going to join
us along our trip route so rvparke and sharing the link it's a great way to let
them know where we're going to be and they can let us know if they would like
to join us during any of those stays that we're going to be in a specific
area so for someone that's maybe not so structured you might ask do I really
need to plan and is planning really necessary well let's just say this we've
never not had a place to stay because we have planned in advance now that's not
to say that we're always super structured and that every single stop is
always planned there are some times where we leave ourselves a few days of
flexibility or maybe we don't make reservations between one destination or
another just to give ourselves some flexibility and choice of maybe where we
might want to stay a great example of this was last year when we were
traveling from Key West up the Florida coast the original plan was to maybe
stay in Melbourne for a few nights before that we moved more north towards
the Daytona Beach area however we decided to just keep going north and
instead of staying in Melbourne we found an absolute gem of a campground in the
Flagler area Florida this particular campground did have a site open and we
were able to stay there for five nights on a campground that was right on the
beach and when I say right on the beach we were so close that in our bedroom of
the RV at night we could hear the waves crashing on the shores we would fall
asleep it was a wonderful spot and we probably would have not
stayed there had we not had a little bit of flexibility built into our schedule
so it's not saying that you have to plan everything out in every minute and every
stop has to be planned but doing a little bit of advance planning can help
ensure that you do have a place to stay especially during peak seasons for
different areas so I would love to hear about what you do for trip planning
leave us a comment below and let us know what apps or websites do you use when
you plan your trips or do you plan your trips or just go where the wind blows
you we would love to hear your comments and thank you so much for watching this video
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