Half the Fun of Full-Timing.

Planning is just as much fun as the experience

Trip Planning (Quicklinks)

Destinations

Planning Spreadsheet

Helpful Apps

What To Do

Where do you start? How do you plan? How do you decide where you want to go? All valid questions, and when we decided to full-time I couldn’t find a good resource to get started. These tips might save you some time.

The planning part of the trip has been just as enjoyable as the execution. It is different than taking a vacation - in that case, you know where you want to go and generally plan the shortest or fastest route to get there.

Living on the road requires an adjustment to that mentality. The journey becomes just as important as the destination, and it takes time to enjoy the amazing sites along the way.

Sometimes destinations are obvious, but what do you do when you have options? Here’s some ideas on how to plan your travel destinations.

Family. This is an obvious one, but think outside the box a little. How about visiting a cousin that you haven’t seen in years? Catching up on distant relationships is kind of fun when you have the time and flexibility to plan those trips. And if you’re interested in family history, plan trips through the small towns along the way and visit cemeteries of those who have long since passed. You never know what you might find that increases your knowledge of your own family history.

National Parks/Monuments/Historic Sites. The US National Park Service has a Passport book that lists all the National Parks and Monuments and has space for placing a passport stamp for each of the parks. The United States is blessed with tremendous national parks and each one has its own uniqueness.

State Parks. Some of the state parks we’ve visited have been the most treasured. For example, Long Pool Recreation Area in Arkansas, Natural Falls State Park in West Siloam Springs, Oklahoma, and Topsail Hill State Park in Santa Rosa Beach, Florida are just some examples of the outstanding offerings that state parks have to offer. Be sure and check the length of your rig with compatibility with the state park - many of these facilities were built before any requirements to handle the length of modern RVs.

Tourist Destinations. If you’re full-timing, why wouldn’t you plan to visit Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, and a myriad of other historically significant locations in our nation. Granted, some of the larger cities can be challenging when looking for a place to base out of with your RV, but there are other options. Look for a campground that is still a reasonable distance out of town and consider renting an AirBnB or hotel room in the heart of the city for your touring.

If you’re interested in Walt Disney World for example, Fort Wilderness is on Disney property and once you’re set up you’ll never need to drive anywhere using park-provided transportation services. While not all theme parks provide this kind of convenience, they usually have some pretty good options.

Resorts. There are beautiful RV resorts near destination cities such as Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Gulf Shores, South Padre Island, Mackinaw Island, the Florida beaches and the west or east coast. Plan your destination to one of these resort areas and use that as your base to discover the hidden treasures of the area.

Presidential Libraries. I highly recommend visiting presidential libraries when you are in the vicinity - in fact, we’ve talked about planning our trips so we can visit all the available presidential libraries. No matter what your politics, presidential libraries are fascinating museums and collections of important historical significance.

Favorite Places. Before we ever started full-timing, Yellowstone National Park was our favorite place on earth, having visited it three times before 2016 when we retired. That’s why it became a destination on our first full-time adventure and continued to be part of our regimen for the next two years. Make return trips to your favorite places to visit and you’ll discover even more about why you like it so well - especially having a little more time and flexibility.

Owner Rallies. I strongly recommend you join the owner’s group for your particular brand of fifth wheel. You’ll meet people of like minded kindred spirits, and many owner groups organize rallies where factory technicians and representatives are present. Often times repairs or upgrades are provided at no charge or at highly discounted prices. It’s hard to explain the benefit of attending an owner’s rally unless you’ve been there.

I have often joked that if we were to buy a new fifth wheel, I would purchase about a month before the owner’s rally, take it out for a shakedown a couple of weekends, and then pull it down I-80 in Indiana on my way to the owner’s rally. That would shake everything loose that needs to be fixed, and I wouldn’t have to hassle with warranty work through the dealer network.

Where Do You Want To End Up? That’s your starting point. For example, we knew our first winter of full-timing we wanted to end up in the Orlando, Florida area, and we had about four months to get there. We started planning backwards from the goal of reaching Orlando around November 1.

Use the obvious milestone markers to assist in your planning, like grandkids, birthdays, holidays, distant relatives that haven’t been visited in years, etc. and plan backwards from that place and date. Then go to work planning the trip.

I created a spreadsheet using Google Sheets to keep track of our reservations and locations. The spreadsheet has all the information I need for relocating to the next destination, and I can highlight any row that still need attention such as reservations that have yet to be made.

Simple things like staying multiple days in a location have the potential for creating errors in your planning. That’s why I specifically list the day of arrival and day of departure.

If traveling on a Friday, I can expect campgrounds to be crowded with people coming in for the weekend - not a good situation if we’re staying at a Thousand Trails preserve where sites are first-come, first-served. And I’ve found the column for travel time to be helpful in planning our departure time. Be aware that times from Google Maps are based on traffic and speed limits, and since we’re usually traveling below the posted speed limit on the interstate these times are not accurate. But generally, a 4 hour travel time is a 6 hour day; 5 hours travel time is a 7 hour day, and 6 hours is an 8 hour day.

Once we have a destination in mind, I use the these tools, in order, to find a place to stay:

Thousand Trails - we’re already members and can stay up to 21 days at no charge, and can stay back-to-back at another Thousand Trails with no waiting period.

Passport America - we became Lifetime Members and generally receive a 50% discount on Passport America campgrounds.

AllStays - for a one-time fee of about $10 in the app store, this is the most comprehensive tool I’ve found. It not only shows almost all campgrounds and resorts, but also shows locations of Walmart, Costco, Sam’s Club, Pilot/Flying J, low clearance warnings, and a host of other things.

And finally, Google is your friend. If you can’t find anything satisfactory through AllStays, try Google for campgrounds near your destination.

We generally like to travel about 300-400 miles a day at the most, or between 4 and 6 hours if possible. We’ll extend when necessary, but shorter days are preferred for a few reasons.

• We never like to arrive when it’s dark. Driving through an unfamiliar campground at night is one of the easiest ways to damage your rig.

• It gives us flexibility to stop if we see something interesting along the way.

• We don’t have to leave at the crack of dawn - we can usually plan about a 9:00 am departure.

• An earlier arrival gives us time to relax, wind down, take it easy and go for a local walk rather than being pushed by the arrival time to have to get to sleep.

Besides the obvious National Parks, Monuments, and theme park attractions, we like to see some of the local flavor or frequently-missed oddities. Trip Advisor, Roadside America and Atlas Obscura are a few of our go-to websites for finding or experiencing the unusual.

A good way to learn the local flavor is a simple discussion at a restaurant or campground. Ask the host what you should not miss while you’re there.

We had an interesting experience in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 2018. After touring Plimoth Plantation, we decided to visit the Grist Mill in town which is also included with admission to the plantation. Visiting with the “millers” at the mill, we discovered that one street over was one of the oldest houses in America, built around 1640, that was open to view. The owner of the house invited us to look, and suggested we visit the old burial grounds across the street where many of the early pilgrims are buried - also (unknown to us) it was the original site of the Plymouth colony. While looking through the cemetery we noticed an archaeological dig sponsored by a university and the students were eager to share their findings with us of pottery shards and housing foundations from the original Plymouth colony. None of this was found because we saw it on a website or tour book - it all started from talking with locals.

Remember, Google is your friend. It can be difficult to sort through the paid advertising or promotions, but doing a search for the oddball things in a location can be like a scavenger hunt, and it’s all part of the fun of planning.

NEXT: Meal Planning

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