[Archived]

We haven’t traveled much to Florida, but our standard practice on the road was to determine where we wanted to stop for the night, take out the Good Sam travel “bible” around 3 hours before we planned to stop, pick a campground at our stop, call them to make sure they could handle our coach, and it worked great 99% of the time. The only time we had problems was when we headed to the maintenance seminar with Jeff last year. Between the 3 campgrounds by Grand Ole Opry, there was one space left. I’m sure due to the big bash downtown. Last three years or so, we have also kept an eye out whether the campgrounds would handle a 45-footer, and most would not have problems.

[Archived]

What Per said regarding time. If we make reservations for other than a destination campground ahead of time we are compelled to drive to that RV park, when we may wish to stop earlier or drive further.

Usually by mid afternoon we know how far we want to go for the day and that is when we call ahead.

[Tim]

Tim,

I think the answer depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for an overnight/couple days in a spot, you will most likely be able to find pretty much anything within a 24 hour period close to where you want to be. Some are fine for an overnight stop, others are decent for a couple days.

If you want to get a resort spot in the high season and want to stay for a couple two three weeks/month, you need to give it 6 months in advance, or get lucky with a potential cancellation just when you call.

When we travel across the country, we plan in general terms. We know when we want to leave and have a good idea when we want to be somewhere. Between that we take it day by day and useally plan mid-day where we feel we can make it to that day and start planning. Some days we get a really nice RV park on the side of the highway, sometimes we get a not so nice place that has water/power/sewage and then there are times we get a rest stop/truck stop/Lowe’s parking lot.

[Peter]

Thnaks Charles,

We’re planning travel out West (after June harvest) to several NPs so this is helpful for our planning.

[Andy]

Tim,

NP’s in the west that can accomidate a 45′ coach become far and few between. Dont expect to get into yellow stone with your rig if you haven’t already called.

Summer time in the west, everyone wants to go to NP’s for family vacations and long weekend get aways. They bookup a long time in advance for normal spots, never mind the few that can handle land yatchs.

The one good thing about the west and summer time is you dont get those pesky snow birds that go there for three months at a time. People tend to travel and spend a week or two in a single location. So there are potentially slots that you can get in if you are not tied to specific dates.

[Archived]

You probably won’t find an RV space in Yellowstone for this summer. Those sites are usually reserved a year ahead. Commercial parks in West Yellowstone, MT, or Island Park, ID, are your best bet. We had good luck with Buffalo Crossing RV park.

[Bradley]

Here’s my 2c for what it’s worth.

Ahead of my US trips, I have put together a document (which is still growing) on the places we want to visit and things we want to see. Everything from NP’s thru to cute towns, historic sites, etc. plus a whole host of places and things that I have long wished to see or picked up from a multitude of guides, blogs and other resources.

So based on places or things we wish to see, I then looked for suitable places to stay and added these to a map I put together on Google maps (see above) I tried to choose places that a) will fit a bus, b) are generally nice places to stay and c) have got good reviews. They are also sufficiently close together that we shouldn’t need to look for ‘ovenighters’ along the way. As has already been said, plans need to be fluid as you might wish to move on sooner or later than originally planned or if a place doesn’t live up to expectations. Florida in the winter and other popular places will need booking well in advance which is the only fly in the ‘flexibility ointment) I have tried as far as possible to have a reasonable amount of choice for any place we might want to stop. They are a mix of state parks, national forest, BLM, CoE, casino lots and private parks. My main resources were the PC map, Campendium, (good for state parks, National Parks and BLM etc.) and RV Park reviews. There is also a good thread on the Entegra forum (that you have probably seen) which throws up some good suggestions now and again.

Based on all the places I have so far, we have got about ten years worth of trips to get around them all!

Hope this helps.

[tom]

You know who would be a great resourse for planning, would be the family I met at the OKC “no rally” (sorry, I cannot remember their names). It’s the family with children who took a year off and homeschooled the kids and saw all 49 of the mainland states. Now that would take either a LOT of planning or they had a formula for adventure.

[Jim/Chris]

That was our very own Bill and I’m sure he’ll jump in here.

[tom]

That was Bill and his family. When we got our first bus, and before we started using it for business we spent as long as 5 weeks at a time in it seeing the country.

As business owners our life had been dictated by our customer’s needs and those of our business. When we hit the road for the first time we intentionally had no schedule other than an FMCA convention which was our first and only planned stop. On one trip we went from Jamestown NY to CA and back via Austin TX. We drove as much as 50 miles a day to 4 or 500 miles a day. We had Woodalls (no internet) and that was how we picked the place we were going to spend the night or a day or two or a few days. The best part for us is if we did not feel like driving or doing anything we didn’t and that was what the bus was all about.

[Peter]

Yes, that was us. We spent just about 15 months on the road with three kids and a dog and it was the best thing we have ever done as a family. My wife Lauren is/was the planner and navagator. She only got me really really lost in a bad way about three times in 15 months which was pretty amazing.

We started the trip with the first 3-4 months planned to the day… as we got further into I was able to talk her into winging it a bit more and rolling with it. I never got her to the we don’t know where were going to stop tonight phase before we left but we made progress and we all enjoyed the flexibility of staying longer in places we liked and leaving places we didn’t like. The good news is that there were not many places we didn’t like and lots of places we will definately go back to. We didn’t stay in any National Parks given our size and that was drama I didn’t want to deal with. We did visit 60 plus NPs, Monuments etc and they definately were the highlights of the trip. The kids got 60 junior ranger badges and we all learned a ton and have a much increased apprecaition of the country and we talk about the trip almost everyday. We have a pretty detailed schedule of where we went, where we stayed as well as a blog with videos of everything that I would be happy to share with anyone that would be interested.

The highlight of the trip was Alaska. We were on the fence as to if it would be a good idea… We talked to others here and made the decision to go for it. Its was amazing amazing place and we spent 5-6 weeks there and we will be going back with the bus again in the future. Took the Ferry out of Haines to Bellingham WA and that was cool right up until the point when the bus wouldn’t go into drive to get off…but that is another story.

This was our first trip with the whole family with the new to us bus. So needless to say we learned a lot about the bus along the way.. but knock on wood had no major issues and had the time of our lives.

We couldn’t have done it without the help of Jon, Tom, Al, Peter and so many here that helped us out along the way…

Hope that helps…

[Archived]

Thanks Bill,

I used to have the information for your blog, but my computer went kaput and lost everything. If you could send me the information once again, I would certainly appreciate it. gplachance@gmail.com

Thank you.

[AL]

Sounds terrific Bill,

Thanks for sharing … we have some Habitat builds in MN & SD and will likely head over to Yellowsone & the Grand Tetons in late August, early September.