If you are planning a long-term RV adventure, one of the most important aspects is deciding on your route. We had a good idea where we wanted to go, but linking them together in an efficient way, while taking the seasons and climates for all of locations into account can become a challenging task. Winging it isn’t always an option either, because many of the popular stops will fill up months in advance.
I started my process by creating a map on MyMaps.Google.com and marking the points of interest where we’d like to visit. I created layers on the map for things like the highest peaks in the US, top rock climbing areas, can’t miss mountain bike trails, etc. However, when we started linking these together into an RV route, we quickly discovered that Google Maps won’t allow you to add more than 10 stops to a route. When you have as many stops as we plan to make, that doesn’t really meet our needs.
I tried a handful of different apps, and the best option I found is RV Trip Wizard. I’m not going to go into too much detail on this post about the app being that’s not the main focus of this post. I do think, however, that it’s worth mentioning it in case you’re hitting the same struggles that I was. If you’d like to find our more about RV Trip Wizard, I have a writeup on it available here.
Our 2023 plans may look a little chaotic at first glance, as it zig zags across America. But I assure you, there is method to the madness.
After spending the last few years in Florida, we’re eager to set out on our adventure as soon as we can. However, we didn’t want to get too far north too quickly. If we did, we’d have to deal with sub-freezing temperatures at night and we haven’t made the necessary preparations for yet. The last thing we need to deal with while we’re just getting started on our adventure is something like frozen water lines in our motorhome.
Florida is great for water sports, but it doesn’t have much to offer the inner rock climber/mountain biker/trail runner/etc. in me. With our planned route, I should have plenty of opportunity for all of those. We will be visiting some some of the top adventure sports destinations in the US!
Another thing we’ve been missing is our friends and family. It has been years since we’ve seen many of them. We haven’t been back to Minnesota where we grew up in well over a decade!
Our 2024 plans have a lot of stops on it. Currently, these are just pins in a map where we’d like to stop and a rather efficient path to take them all in. This route is a little more challenging logistically. Not only does it need to take into account the seasons and climates, but also the micro-climates that come with oceans, mountains and the various elevations of the place we want to visit.
Our current strategy is to hug the host as we work our way north. This allows us to take advantage of the temperate climates that the ocean provides so that we can plunge head first into the more mountainous stops during the rather short season that they are accessible in an RV. I’m looking forward to dusting off my alpine gear for some of these stops!
The actual route and stops on it may change a bit as we work through all of the specifics, make reservations, etc. Stay tuned for future updates!
