Everyone who travels with their RV has a style of travel planning. From planned out to the last detail to winging it, people have their own way. While RV travel planning can be stressful in some ways, it needs to happen even on a minimalist level.
Leaving a campsite and driving with no plan on where to stop next is a recipe for disaster. So many factors lend themselves to avoidable mistakes & disappointments if you have somewhat of a plan in place.
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6 RV Travel Planning Mistakes to Avoid
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Having No Place to Camp
If you drive until you are tired and then look for a campground – you might be out of luck! Depending on your route, you might not be anywhere close to a campground or even place to safely boondock. Even if you like to boondock, planning ahead to arrive in a place you can do that legally and safely should be done.
No Site Available at the Campground You Want
Even if you know there are campgrounds and RV parks along your chosen route, depending on the season, there may not be one available. During the main RV season (May – October) many RV groups and events happen and take up a lot of space in campgrounds and RV parks. Not to mention the high quantity of RVers on the road. Calling ahead and making a reservation can save you from disappointment or worse yet struggling to find a place to stop when you are already tired and wanting to stop.
It is getting more and more important to plan farther ahead to where you want to be and where you are going to stay. Especially in camping season, campgrounds around fun destinations, cooler climates in the summer and warmer climates in the winter fill up fast!
While trying to get back ‘home’ (where our kids are) for a visit for a month. Even three months out, we struggled to get a monthly spot at our favorite RV park. We had to call around and find a place that is not a convenient location to camp. Not planning ahead caused an avoidable mistake for us!
So, if you do plan ahead, how do you keep track of your plans? We developed an RV travel planner that helps with these RV travel planning obstacles.
We found ourselves calling campgrounds, getting rates and then turning around and calling them back to find out more answers to questions we had.
Get our free Campground Reservation Log below to keep track of your campground reservations. This will help you cover all your questions for the campground when you call with one phone call and make it an easy reference for your travel planning.
Get a FREE Campground Reservation Log
Once we started using that, we felt we need something more comprehensive. So as a solution to our own RV travel planning needs THE COMPLETE RV TRAVEL PLANNER was born!
We wanted to keep track of where our reservations were. We wanted to plan our daily tasks and activities. We wanted a complete travel planning system for our RV life. Check it out and see if would help you in your RV travel planning.
There is a FREE RV Travel Planner Companion App in your app store! This app is our Campground Reservation Log in digital form so you can keep your reservations on your phone.
Luann Street
Where the Streets wander
"Calling ahead and making a reservation can save you from disappointment at not having a place to camp."
Driving Too Many Miles in a Day
If you make a personal plan of average mileage you feel you can comfortably drive and not feel too tired to enjoy yourself, you are doing yourself a favor.
Our personal average daily mileage is 300 miles. We prefer less than 200 but if we are driving to a destination that is farther away we set our limit to 300 in order to cover the mileage necessary to get there.
Driving an RV, whether it’s a class A motorhome, 5th wheel or travel trailer, is hard work. Many mental aspects are involved driving for hours in something that is bigger than a car and also towing something long. So many variables to consider and can be mentally exhausting. This can lead to mistakes and avoidable accidents.
We actually learned this the hard way before we became full-timers! We planned a trip to Prince Edward Island Canada. Totally RVing newbies, we planned 10 hour driving days. We wanted to get the most time possible on PEI so we wanted to get there! Not realizing how tired and slow RV travel feels and is, we (mostly Bryan – he was driving) felt exhausted every night and didn’t get to enjoy the process at all!
Luann Street
Where the Streets wander
"Enjoying the campground is the part of the RV lifestyle that is as important as getting to see things along the way and at your destination."
Not Stopping Before You Get Tired
As stated above, if you plan ahead, you can stop while you still have the energy to set up camp, still have daylight, time to cook dinner and sit around a campfire.
Enjoying this part of the RV lifestyle is as important as getting to see things along the way and at your destination.
Not Consulting the Weather Channel
Not all weather-related travel is avoidable. But for the savvy RVer, you can make a plan around the weather forecast.
Now, I realize you can’t avoid running into rain or thunderstorms or even wind events. Weather changes are not controllable, but you can prepare by looking at the big picture weather where you are headed and decide if it’s a good time to go there.
Seemingly obvious things like snow & ice storms, hurricanes, windstorms, and tropical depressions can be planned for and possibly avoided.
When you RV your mindset is often ‘vacation brain’ but keeping up with the weather is important! Get some great weather safety tips at Campground Weather Safety Tips
Planning Too Many Activities at Your Destination
Another RV travel planning mistake is not seeing everything you wanted to see when you traveled somewhere! That makes me crazy! I hear about great things all the time from other RVers about place to visit and things to do! Most often it’s not about where we currently are but in a state/place miles away.
How can I remember when I get there? A unique feature in The Complete RV Travel Planner is a place for you to write down those great recommendations by state so you won’t forget when you visit.
Planning your daily activities when you are visiting a place is important if you don’t want to miss some great things! Sometimes destinations like Washington DC, Mackinac Island, MI, Orlando, FL all have many cool things to do! How do you sort it out and make sure you actually do what you want to?
When you are in areas with many things you want to experience, planning out your days can help you make the most of your time there. THE COMPLETE RV TRAVEL PLANNER has weekly and daily sections for you to write down what you need to do, what you want to do and where you are doing them!
Avoiding the travel planning mistakes above can make using your RV to travel a pleasure.
While it might be fun to fly by the seat of your pants, you can make the process more pleasurable by planning ahead (even if it’s minimally), keeping track of your reservations and fun things to do when you arrive.
You will enjoy your travel more!
More Full-time RVing Goodness for You!
~Read/Watch/Listen~
I LOVE this post! It’s great advice for those of us who are part-timers and need to remember to plan ahead! 🙂
Thanks Becky! We have made these mistakes and hope people can avoid them!
I love this post.very down to earth suggestions! Keep up the great work!!!
Thanks Barbara! We appreciate the feedback. We are just keeping it real! 🙂
I used your reservation log last year on our cross country trip. What a time saving document it was–planning out our campsites got sooooo much easier with written info in front of me. No more double booking, etc. We carried the reservation log into the front desks– several campgrounds wanted to know where we got this as they thought it was such a good planning tool.
Thanks, Becky, for making my life easier!!!!
Patricia, thank you so much for the great feedback! It has definitely helped us in our journey!
Good reminders. As we plan to visit other states I now do two primary things to figure out what we might like to see and do. I go on Wikipedia and look up museums for a state. I do a copy and paste into a document and organize by cities. I then go into Trip Advisor and look up those towns for more items. I always find other places that I would never have known about. Yes, it is time consuming but we will never have to say: “What is there to do in this area?” It also helps us determine good areas to camp as we mark on a paper map to see what is nearby.
We love the idea of setting a daily limit for driving. We have set our daily limit at 6 hours of driving max and we prefer three hours. Thanks for the tips!
It makes travel no much nicer doesn’t it? Otherwise you can get worn out!