Maximize Your RV Adventures with RV Trip Wizard’s Expert Trip Planning Tools!

2024-07-26
Chad

Planning an RV trip can be a daunting task, but with the right approach, it becomes a breeze. In this video, we’ll share our tried-and-true methods for organizing points of interest, mapping out a high-level route, booking detailed stops, and ensuring smooth travel days. Whether you’re a novice or seasoned traveler, we hope these tips will help you plan a seamless and enjoyable RV adventure.

Pre-Planning

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of trip planning, we start by using Google My Maps to drop pins for any locations of interest. This tool serves as a catch-all for anything interesting that might come up in our travels, whether it’s scenic spots for motorcycle rides, personal invites to moochdock at friends’ places, or must-see attractions we’ve heard about.

Using Google My Maps allows us to organize these potential points of interest without committing them to a specific trip. We create layers for different types of activities and places, ensuring we can easily reference them when we start planning an actual route. This method keeps all our ideas in one accessible place, ready to be incorporated into our travel plans when the time comes.

High-Level Planning

With our points of interest mapped out, we move on to high-level planning. This involves using Google My Maps in conjunction with RV Trip Wizard to sketch out an overall route based on general locations. These are not specific bookings yet, but rather a framework of where we want to go and in what order.

Once we have a rough route, we transfer these general locations into a Google Calendar we’ve labeled “Time Outline.” This step is crucial for validating the timing of our trip. By visualizing our schedule, we can ensure that our planned stays and travel days fit within our desired timeframe before committing to any reservations. This process helps us identify any potential timing conflicts and adjust our route accordingly.

Detailed Planning

After establishing a high-level outline, we delve into detailed planning. This is where RV Trip Wizard shines. We use it to start booking specific locations, updating our route, and fine-tuning our calendar.

RV Trip Wizard helps us find campgrounds, RV parks, and other accommodations that suit our preferences. We utilize filters like “big-rig friendly” to ensure the sites can accommodate our RV’s size and “full-hookups” for the necessary amenities. These filters are invaluable in narrowing down our options to the most suitable and convenient locations along our route.

As we make these bookings, we continuously update our Google Calendar, moving each “Time Outline” calendar entry to our “Bookings” calendar to reflect confirmed reservations and ensure our schedule remains accurate and manageable.

Planning FUN Overnight Stays

When our major stops are booked, we turn our attention to overnight stays. These are essential for segments of our trip that involve more than one travel day in a row. We love using Harvest Hosts for these overnights, as they offer unique stays at attractions like wineries, breweries, farms, and more. These locations not only provide a place to park our RV but also enrich our travel experience with local culture and hospitality.

If a Harvest Host location isn’t available or suitable, we revert to RV Trip Wizard to find a convenient RV park on our route. We prioritize parks with pull-thru sites to make our brief overnight stays as hassle-free as possible.

Travel Day

On travel days, navigation is critical, especially when maneuvering a large RV. We trust our Garmin RV GPS for reliable and RV-safe navigation. Although the RVLife App includes an RV-safe navigation feature, we prefer the comprehensive functionality of our Garmin device.

Our Garmin RV GPS provides routes that account for our vehicle’s size and weight, helping us avoid low bridges, narrow roads, and other obstacles. One of its standout features is dynamic routing, which takes current traffic conditions into account. This ensures we can adjust our route in real-time to avoid delays and reach our destination as efficiently as possible.

Using our Garmin RV GPS gives us peace of mind and allows us to focus on enjoying the drive rather than worrying about the route.

Products 🛒

Some of the links/codes on this page are affiliate links, meaning if you choose to purchase using our links, we will earn a commission.  This commission comes at no additional cost to you but helps us keep providing the content we love to share.  We recommend these products because we have found them helpful and useful, not because of the small commissions we make. 
Every product we recommend, we use ourselves.

Youtube