Trip Planning and Campground Booking/Searching

Trip Planning

• Decide where we want to travel

First we decide what general route we want to take; where we want to travel. Will we be going to a certain state or area? Or will we be taking a trip across the country?

The first trip we have definitely planned as of the writing of this article is a trip from California, across the country, to Florida. We will be making Florida our domicile state and have decided that when we hit the road in January of 2022, we just want to go ahead and get straight to Florida and get our residency set up. This will mean mostly one night stays while traveling across the country to FL. Once that is done, we will then start exploring the country. We plan on starting by experiencing the state of Florida.

Those are two different types of trips to plan; the trip to FL with mostly one night stays, and then the trip to explore FL, staying anywhere from 4 to 21 days at different spots all over FL.

I am going to detail how I plan out both of those types of trips including how I decide how long we will stay at each stop, how far we will travel to the next stop, and how I find and decide on campsites.

• How far will we travel between stops?

We decided that while we are at each stop, and we are driving in our car to explore things in that area, we don’t want to travel any more than about 60 miles in any direction to see the sites in that area. So in order to be able to see everything as we travel along, we don’t want to travel any more than about 120-150 miles in the RV between stops.

We also have decided that we want to keep our RV driving time under three hours to the next stop if possible. This gives ample time on travel day to get to the next stop, keeping travel days relaxed and easy-going. One of our philosophies is to make this full time RVing journey relaxed and enjoyable as opposed to rushed and stressful.

• How long will we stay at a stop?

How long we will stay at each stop depends on how much we want to see in each area and on what limits there are at the campground where we will be staying. For our trip to just get across the country to Florida, we will do mostly one night stays.

If we will be staying more than one night and want to the the sights in that area, I decide how many days we need in order to see the things we want to see at that stop. Then I add two more days for travel days. And then I add at least three more days for relaxing and hanging out. Like I mentioned, we want our travels to be relaxing and enjoyable.

Jerry and I developed a personal map in which we have pinned all the places and things we want to see in the states we will be visiting. On this map, we are able to do a search with a radius we choose from our campsite and it will show us all the things in that area that we have pinned. This is what I use to decide how many days we need to stay in that area.

Finding and choosing campgrounds

Next we find where we want to camp. If we are not able to stay at a given campground for the amount of days we want to stay in that area, we will find another one in that area to move to so we can explore everything we want in each area.

I have entered campgrounds of all types on my Apple Maps App (see how I did that). I have made separate guides for each type of campground and have entered and listed them on the map (Thousand Trails (TT), Trails Collection (TC), Coast to Coast, Resort Parks International, National Forests/parks, and others). I use this map to search for campgrounds in the area we will be traveling. We got the TT, Coast to Coast and Resort Parks International by purchasing a resale TT membership through Kimberly at Campground Membership Outlet kimberly@membershipoutlet.com.

I have also developed a spread sheet that lists all the National Parks, National Forests, Army Corps of Engineer, and some State Parks and more. This sheet lists where these campgrounds are and gives me all the information I need on these campgrounds (location, reviews, accessibility, whether there are hook-ups and/or dump stations, etc.) This way I am able to see these things at a glance instead of having to look it up online.

We have several RV and Camping memberships that allow us to save a considerable amount on camping costs.

Here are the steps I take to choose a campground:

1. Free campgrounds. Our first search is for free campgrounds.
   
   • First choice for us is Thousand Trails (TT) and Trails Collection (TC) campgrounds. With our memberships we can stay 21 days for free at TT and 14 days at TC.
     
   • If neither of those are available, we look for other free options. I use https://www.campendium.com/ and https://freecampsites.net/ to search for free and low cost choices. (see how I use Campendium) (see how I use freecampsites) There are also some free campgrounds at National Parks, National Forests, and Bureau of Land Management areas.
     
   • For free one night stays we have a membership with Harvest Host. They have places all over the country like vineyards, breweries, museums, and things like that, that allow you to stay overnight and just ask that you buy something at their business.
     
   • For another free 1-4 night stay option, we have a membership with Boondockers Welcome. Boondockers Welcome has private property owners that have room for an RV.
     
2. If there are no free options available, my next choice is for a low cost campground in one of our memberships or in a National Park or other low cost campground. I search in all the following options:
   
   • We have memberships with both Coast to Coast and Resort Parks International, both of which we which we received with our Thousand Trails membership which we bought resale through Kimberly at Campground Membership Outlet kimberly@membershipoutlet.com. With these memberships, we can stay at their campgrounds for up to 14 days for $10/night.
     
   • We have an America the Beautiful Senior National Parks Pass with which we get 50% off all campgrounds at National Parks, National Forests, Bureau of Land Management, and US Army Corps of Engineers. Many of the campgrounds in these areas can be found and reserved at https://www.recreation.gov but not all of the camps are reservable so you have to use the individual websites to search for all available options. Also many of these campgrounds will also show up when searching on https://www.campendium.com and https://freecampsites.net.
     
   • https://www.campendium.com/ for other low cost searches.
     
   • We have a membership with Passport America with which we get 50% off Passport America campgrounds.
     
   • We have a membership with Escapees with which we get from 15-50% off Escapees campgrounds.
     
3. With all of these options, we are always able to find camping for $0-$15 per night.
   
4. Additional things to consider when choosing a campground:
   
   • Accessibility. Some of the National and State campgrounds are only accessible by dirt road so I always pay attention to the reviews on Campendium and FreeCampsites to see what the accessibility is. And I figure out what distance is on dirt to determine whether we want to chance it. I am also watching for ruts, narrow roads, low hanging branches, etc.
     
   • Hook-ups. We have solar panels on top of our RV so we are able to boondock (camp without hook-ups). If we are going to choose a campground that has no hook-ups and it does not have a dump station, and there is not a dump station within maybe about 10 miles, we can probably stay about 7 days before we will need to move to another place. But if there is a dump station available we can stay longer.
     
   • Reviews. I always check the reviews on the campgrounds and if there aren’t any reviews, I would rather choose one that does have reviews and of course, has good reviews.

Trip Routing/Mapping

We use RV Trip Wizard website to map out our route. This is an awesome tool. It is part of RV Life which is the App we use for GPS. They work together. Click here for details on how I use this tool.