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Old 07-14-2017, 06:04 AM   #5
SummitPond
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Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Northeast Florida/Southeast Maine
Posts: 784
We attempted to map out the entire trip ahead of time (you can call me anal). Of course things happen that one can't foresee (good or otherwise) and we sometimes change our plans to see something extra, but we were fairly accurate overall. We used the Good Sam, AAA and Google Maps utilities to scope out the trip. It has been mentioned elsewhere on this site that you can enter your desired travel mileage or time in the GS program but I never could figure out how, but it does give you fairly accurate distances between points (I find the GS distances easier to interpret than the way Google Maps presents its travel instructions). We typically traveled about 300 miles a day when we were on the road. Sometimes I would bracket a range of travel distances and use the GS (or one of the other utilities) to located possible places to stay the night. I then used a spreadsheet that listed starting location, estimated mileage traveled that day (typically taken from the GS program), estimated travel time (assuming 45 mph average, what is what we seem to make) and estimated # of gallons of gas and estimated cost for each leg. To find campsites we used the GS big book, the on-line GS site finder (integrated into the mapping program), AAA (books and on-line) and the RV Parky on-line and phone app. We typically called ahead to our next campsite the morning we left (that was the DW's job while I was driving) and only met with disappointment one time - Memorial Day weekend - when we couldn't get into the campground of our first or second choice.

Internet access from campsites was inconsistent on this trip, so having the route pre-planned helped a great deal. The RV Parky phone app was used in conjunction with the paper copies of the GS big book and AAA camping books as needed on the road when we needed to fine tune our plans. This is basically how we planned and managed the last year's trip, too (FL to CO to ME, but a different route). Back when we used the VW camper (mid-late 70s and early 80s) there seemed to be less campers on the road, and getting into a campground was much easier. I don't ever recall a full-up campground where we couldn't get in.
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