A step-by-step Guide to Planning an Unforgettable Road Trip
Embarking on a road trip is an adventure like no other. Our family has been on quite a few and we are about to enter into the world of full-time RV and road trip life. The freedom to explore at your own pace, discover hidden gems, and create lasting memories makes road trips an appealing choice for families.
Proper planning is crucial to ensure a smooth and enjoyable journey. In this guide, we’ll share our favorite road trip planning tools and the steps we take to plan memorable vacations. We will cover everything from route planning to accommodations and safety considerations.
STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR DESTINATION
The first step in planning a road trip is deciding on your destination. Consider your interests, preferences, and the time available for the trip. Whether it’s exploring national parks, visiting iconic landmarks, or discovering quaint towns, choose a destination that aligns with your interests and offers a variety of experiences.
If you still aren’t sure where to go or what is close to the route you are taking, I suggest Roadtrippers.
From trip inspiration to planning and post-trip notes, this is the app you need. Roadtrippers is a user-friendly platform that allows you to plan your road trip, discover attractions, find accommodations, and create a custom route with various points of interest along the way. I love that is app has so many filtering options to help you find places along your route like attractions, outdoor places of interest, restaurants, hotels, activities, and shopping. It is as easy as typing in your starting point and destination and then, BOOM. Road trip ideas at your fingertips. You can also check out their pre-planned trips for just about anywhere in the country.
STEP 2: EXPECT TO BE FLEXIBLE WITH YOUR ITENERARY
While a structured plan is important, leave room for spontaneity. Instead of a rigid schedule, create a flexible itinerary with key destinations and attractions you’d like to visit. This allows for unexpected discoveries and changes in plans along the way.
This is especially true if you are traveling with kiddos and/or an RV. We have found that our route often takes up to twice as long as Google thinks it might with stops and added time for traveling so heavy.
STEP 3: PLAN YOUR ROUTE
For this step, we use a combination of Roadtrippers and Google Maps. Joel is a Google Maps guru and spends a lot of his spare time just searching the map for fun. The nice thing about combining these two apps is that Roadtrippers can account for your route being RV friendly, help you find really popular and lesser known attractions, and help keep you on track with an adjustable radius for how far off your route you want to go to see something. Google Maps has other capabilities like accounting for road closures and traffic problems, as well as real time navigation while you are driving.
STEP 4: RESEARCH ACCOMMODATION OPTIONS
Regardless of the length of your road trip or mode of travel, you will need to find accommodations. If you are RVers like us, I recommend a combination of Roadtrippers, Campendium, and Google Maps.
Roadtrippers is a good tool because you can filter your map view to show campgrounds or hotels along your route and adjust the radius from your route as I mentioned before. In our experience, however, Roadtrippers just can’t provide as much information for campgrounds as our next app choice, Campendium.
Campendium, which is completely built from other campers’ experiences and reviews, is definitely our favorite for finding campgrounds. It provides a ton of information about each campground like last reported price, amenities, and reviews from real campers. We also found that Campendium’s app was a bit easier to use with a lot of really up to date information. Campendium is also able to show you BLM land, has a filter for FREE CAMPING, and has seperate icons/filters to show public land, RV parks, overnight parking, and dump stations.
Again, we mostly use Google Maps for routing, timing, and navigation, once we find our stops in one of the other apps. Joel does prefer to search for things in Google Maps, but I usually have better luck finding what we are looking for.
STEP 5: SAFETY PREPARATIONS
Safety should always be a top priority during a road trip. We use Google Maps to share our location with friends and family and are sure to keep others up to date on our travels. You’ll also want to carry a well-stocked emergency kit, extra water, and whatever else you may need for your vehicle, RV, car, truck, etc. Additionally, if you are not using navigation that can identify RV-friendly routes, closely check your route before leaving to ensure you are driving a safe route for your equipment (low bridges, 4×4 roads, and other hazards are often not accounted for with many navigation systems).
THE PLANNING TOOLS WE CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT
Throughout the process of planning an epic road trip, there are 3 apps without which we couldn’t possibly be successful: Roadtrippers, Campendium, and Google Maps. Each has pros and cons and I’ll go into that a little here.
Roadtrippers
The Roadtrippers app has a free version that allows to you add up to 7 stops per trip. This was just not enough for us to plan a cross country trip so we opted for Roadtrippers Plus. The paid version is affordable (just $35/year), especially if you have a big trip coming or are full-time RVers. The paid app offers no ads, up to 150 stops per trip, offline maps, new map styles, collaborative trip planning, RV specific routes, and special discounts. Not to mention that the paid version of Roadtrippers includes the upgraded Campendium membership as well!
A few drawbacks for this app for us were less information on accommodations, not the most reliable navigation, and some outdated or misleading information about attractions/restaurants. Because of these drawbacks, we always double check our stops and routes with Google Maps and our campgrounds with Campendium.
Campendium
For us, Campendium has been a staple since we bought our travel trailer. The free version has more than enough information to find campgrounds near your destination with whatever accommodations you require. You can even check the cell service as reported by actual campers, not service providers.
The only downside to this app is that it is just not designed to help you plan the actual road trip part, that is not its function. It exists to help you find camping accommodations in a certain area and it does an amazing job of that. However, if you are planning a road trip, you will need to supplement the information from Campendium with either Roadtrippers, Google Maps, or both.
We used the free version for the first few years we traveled and only just upgraded this year when we got Roadtrippers Plus because it was included. Our favorite paid feature was probably the BLM land map, helping us to find free boondocking spots.
Google maps
I’ll say the least about Google Maps because it is probably the most well known option. We like to use it because you can plan multiple stops, save the map to your device, share the map with others, and use that for real-time navigation. In my opinion, it has the most reliable navigation of any app and far exceeds the capabilities of our Garmin, built-in vehicle navigation, and the Roadtrippers navigation option.
We also like to double check routes, stops, accommodations, and satellite images in Google Maps before hitting the road to avoid any surprises, as well as share our location with family and friends for safety purposes.
TIME TO GET PLANNING!
With careful planning and preparation, your road trip can become an unforgettable adventure filled with beautiful landscapes, exciting experiences, and cherished memories. Embrace the journey, remain open to spontaneity, and enjoy the freedom that road tripping offers. Happy travels!
