Community Forums

TJ53152 · 02-25-2020, 08:07 AM

Good Morning,

My wife and I are in the process of selling our house and working with Cole on the design of a new 42' rig. We have little RVing experience but through the abundance of information available here, other forums and youtube, I've learned a great deal over the past year and gotten much more comfortable with the thought of hitting the road full time. However, one area that I'm not yet comfortable with is the trip planning process. I'm hoping that this group can share their planning process and experience to get me going in the right direction. Some of my areas of concern are 1) how far in advance do you make reservations, 2) what planning tools do you use, 3) what "gochas" should we be concerned with 4) what navigation tool do you use, etc. We will have a large solar system installed so that we boondock as much as possible, so any thoughts there would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your insights.

Terry

travelorer99 · 02-25-2020, 08:34 AM

I can give you what has mostly worked for me. I after 3 years now full timing am kinda finding my grove. I simply go on my phone and use google maps, I look for water, as I love the water, then just put in campgrounds and they pop up and check pics and prices, then I pop in grocery stores, as I don't want to drive 60 miles one way to the store. Only a few times have I went to places and the place did not look like it did in the pics, and left. I do monthly and seasonal. . KOA prices are nuts. For the summer, the world is at your feet. For warm in winter, plan and call early. FL seems busy and expensive, AZ is really costly and busy, unless boondocking. I love southern TX, for the winter, as everything is priced a lot lower
and less people. Im at Rockport TX now, this campground has functions 2-4 of them a day, 7 days a week, great free library. Grab a book and chair and drive half a mile and sit by the water and read.
Congrats on your choice.

Hans45 · 02-27-2020, 11:57 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TJ53152

Good Morning,

My wife and I are in the process of selling our house and working with Cole on the design of a new 42' rig. We have little RVing experience but through the abundance of information available here, other forums and youtube, I've learned a great deal over the past year and gotten much more comfortable with the thought of hitting the road full time. However, one area that I'm not yet comfortable with is the trip planning process. I'm hoping that this group can share their planning process and experience to get me going in the right direction. Some of my areas of concern are 1) how far in advance do you make reservations, 2) what planning tools do you use, 3) what "gochas" should we be concerned with 4) what navigation tool do you use, etc. We will have a large solar system installed so that we boondock as much as possible, so any thoughts there would also be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your insights.

Terry

Terry, good luck with your fulltiming preps. It took me about 16 months to go through that entire process until the day that I picked up my Summit last April from Camp NH. You may have already considered this, but I would recommend feeding your solar system into a large Ah LI battery bank. Also, a standby generator would be a useful addition for boondocking. I have the 6.5kw LP Gen and added a rear mounted 100lb propane tank for additional propane reserves.

I did find that advance reservations are helpful if you are determined to be in a specific spot at a specific time. Some U.S. and Canadian government parks and state parks have reservation timeline requirements, others are FCFS. Canadian provincial parks for the most part are of the FCFS type. If you are thinking about doing monthly or seasonal stays at parks that accept that kind of reservation, you will usually want to make those at the beginning of the year once the park has determined how may monthly sites will be available for the upcoming months. For relatively short or overnight stays, my preference is the KOA system or state parks.

Finally, there are some excellent online references to boondocking and fulltiming, too numerous to list here. I would also recommend joining organizations such as the Escapees Club which has valuable references on their online sites.

Good luck planning,
Hans

mjdenn · 02-28-2020, 07:54 PM

TJ

Congrats on your decision to hit the road. We don't do much boondocking. The first point I'd make is that size can matter. The number of available spots decreases as you get longer. If you intend to go to popular spots such as the national parks, Banff, Balloon festival than we reserve as early as possible. If your plan is to stick to the back roads and travel during the shoulder season you should be ok with short reservation windows.

Leftys · 02-28-2020, 08:14 PM

We only make reservations a few hours in advance unless it’s a very busy time or very busy area. The Goodsam app is about the most useful there is to find parks. Boondocking in a 42’? Where? Staying off grid without a generator requires a lot of batteries - make sure you do your math correctly. May be more cost effective to pick up a generator. Again do the math - you want a Honda 3500 at least.