Newly retired and trip planning advice

[dandyrandy]

We recently retired and now would like to travel and see the country. When planning a trip say two three weeks at a time should we plan all our stops ahead of time and make reservations or should we just go and take our chances?
At Xmas we made a trip to houston and planned all the stops but after the first day we had to cancel all the reservations cause we ended up driving further
Recommendations would be appreciated

[bertschb]

It really depends on what type of person you are. If you are organized, don't like surprises and want to make sure you have a place to park for the night, plan your stops and make reservations. If you like to wing it and don't want to have to be anywhere on any particular day, don't plan ahead. There is no right or wrong answer. My wife and I are planners so we plan trips in advance. The downside is we may end up in a spot we don't like but feel like we have to stay anyway. We also might find a spot we really like and want to stay longer but we have reservations down the road so we have to leave. It definitely takes a LOT of work to plan multiple stops over several weeks. We have a 26 stop trip planned for 40 days this fall. If we have a mechanical problem in the truck or something, that schedule will be shot real quick so we only plan to make reservations for a couple stops down the road at a time.

[xrated]

I'm recently retired also (April 30th), so first of all, congratulations on the retirement. We've only been camping for about three years and have never made any long trips, so it will be new to us also. We are in the planning stages right now for a trip out west in Sept. 2021. Yea, I guess you could say we are planners more than fly by the seat of our pants. From where we live, it will take 3 overnight stays and part of the 4th day to make the drive from the Knoxville, TN area to Williams, AZ....our first leg of the trip...Grand Canyon area. I've got the miles driven per day, our stops for the overnight and where we will be staying at each and every place to plan on seeing. I will be fine tuning it after I try to figure out exactly how many days we want to spend in each location. From Grand Canyon, we will be headed to Zion N.P., then over to Bryce N.P., then over to Moab, Utah and we are probably looking at around 3 weeks total from start to finish. And as Brian said, there is no right answer for either method, it just kind of depends on which way you want to do it. With our trip, since we will be hitting some of the major tourist stuff, planning ahead and making reservations as soon as we can (sometimes as much as a year in advance for those places), seems like the best plan for us since we do not want any surprises and can't find a campground close. Good luck with whatever you choose to do, and again, congrats on the retirement and enjoy.

[el Rojo]

We are the complete opposite of Brian. We will only reserve 1 spot ahead and that's even rare. Here are some tips on how to fly by the sat of your pants.

Have a guaranteed spot for the summer holidays. Mostly on private property.

We usually stop by 2 or 3 in the afternoon. 200 to 300 mile days are fine with us.

We travel Sunday through Thursday. Most times now we are headed to boondocking or private property.

There's been a few times we couldn't make it to a destination or needed to leave early...we always lost money.

Hope that helps.

P.S.

Congrats on the retirement!

[dandyrandy]

thanks everyone. i usually like to plan things out as well but if we find an area we wish to explore a bit more that would mess up the future reservations. oh well we will work it out since we have a lot of time on our hands now. XRATED you will love the williams area. we live in vegas and just took our grand kids to the grand canyon in which we took the train from williams into the grand canyon. they loved it

[xrated]

thanks everyone. i usually like to plan things out as well but if we find an area we wish to explore a bit more that would mess up the future reservations. oh well we will work it out since we have a lot of time on our hands now. XRATED you will love the williams area. we live in vegas and just took our grand kids to the grand canyon in which we took the train from williams into the grand canyon. they loved it

That's awesome. I'm trying to keep myself a bit "restrained" because the trip is still a little over a year away, but it's actually kind of exciting just doing the research and the planning part...knowing what we are going to have to look forward to.

[sande005]

I'm a reserve all the time kinda guy. Just too nerve wracking for me not to be assured of a place. Probably comes from traveling the coast highway in CA, trying to "wing it", and having a hairy time trying to find anything within hundreds of miles of where we would prefer to stop. That said, do your research for the popularity of an area. Yellowstone on a whim - nope! Most Minnesota State Parks for the weekend - nope! (unless you only tent!). Private CGs away from the hotspot - probably. And there is the whole world of unimproved (no or few hookup) camping areas.....

[Wicked ace]

Congratulations! You deserve it.
My take is I'm not big on planning too far in advance other than identifying places and things I'd like to go to, see and do. I plan about 300 miles a day for three reasons, I need to think about filling the gas tank, It takes about 5-1/2 to 6 hours and we, my dog and I, are ready to get out of the truck. Because two days back to back on the road is wearisome I look for a two night stop the second night. I look for state and county parks for short stay overs as they generally have nice facilities, are more spacious and less costly per day ( senior discounts are 'da bomb!). I try to be sure I have a destination stop reserved at least two nights in advance although I have pulled into a few national and state parks unannounced and found good sites.
Be mindful that these days because of a surge in interest campgrounds are more full than was normal previously. Also if you plan on going south in the winter you aren't the only one with that idea. I was really caught off guard at the difficulty in finding campsites in Florida last winter.

[traveldawg]

There seems to be at least two kinds of travel....

1. traveling to get someplace: When we are having to cover lot of ground to get to an area we plan to spend a lot of time in we just go day-to-day, driving anywhere from 300 to 400 miles depending on our mood, weather, and how we feel about more or less "seat time". We just decide when we'll stop for the day and call ahead to find a campground in the area we think we'll overnight at to see if they have room.

2. For locations we absolutely want to see, we make reservations. There is always more than one of these 'must see' spots, so we make reservations at our "must see" spots and try to wing it in between those places.

"winging it" is getting more and more difficult. In the past it was OK to wing it except for very popular places (National and State Parks, major attractions, etc.). These days even remote areas and less popular spots are getting booked. We ran into this last year in Wyoming and Montana and finally ended up calling ahead a week or two ahead of time once we figured out where we thought we might run into full parks.

We don't normally boondock but even a lot of boondock places and first-come-first-serve places fill up fast and require some pre-planning. We can dry camp when necessary and lots of full parks offer that option if you can't get a site with hook-ups.

[AustexGP]

It really depends on what type of person you are. If you are organized, don't like surprises and want to make sure you have a place to park for the night, plan your stops and make reservations. If you like to wing it and don't want to have to be anywhere on any particular day, don't plan ahead. There is no right or wrong answer. My wife and I are planners so we plan trips in advance. The downside is we may end up in a spot we don't like but feel like we have to stay anyway. We also might find a spot we really like and want to stay longer but we have reservations down the road so we have to leave. It definitely takes a LOT of work to plan multiple stops over several weeks. We have a 26 stop trip planned for 40 days this fall. If we have a mechanical problem in the truck or something, that schedule will be shot real quick so we only plan to make reservations for a couple stops down the road at a time.

We did it both ways. Last September/October we took our first long trip from Austin Texas to Utah. I used the RV Trip Wizard to help plan the trip out to Utah. I knew we wanted to travel 5-6 hours per day, so we planned stopes in Lubbock, Albuquerque and then to Moab. From Moab we went to Herber City, then to Tropic. One the way back we left Tropic planning to stay in Flagstaff, but we made such good time that we ended up staying in Holbrook AZ and then came on back to Austin (we had a death in the family, so our return trip plans changed).

If this is your first big trip, I would definitely would use a tool like Trip Wizard to plan the trip. As a member of our forum you are already a member of Trip Wizard. Using Trip Wizard you set up a driving radius and it will show you the campgrounds, restaurants, and fuel stations. In our case we knew how far we wanted to travel a day and about where we wanted to stop so it gave us a driving time and miles. That way we knew we could leave by 10am and have plenty of time to get to our destination. We also found that we could call a campground and cancel with no penalty since we were traveling through. The only thing it didn't show us was road construction and between Gallup NM and Moab there was a bunch. The mileage was correct but the travel time was way off.

One nice thing about Trip Wizard it shows you the campgrounds by either KOA, Good Sam's or local ownership. Then you can go to campground reviews to review the campground before you book.

Hold this helps. We are hoping to head east this fall and will use Trip Wizard again as a starting point.