PLANNING YOUR ROUTE

By Barry Zander, Edited by Monique Zander, the Never-Bored RVers

Today I was going to publish some of the comments received from our last blog, but a flash of thought took me in another direction.  I’ll convey your comments in the next article.

On yesterday’s trip through several desert communities, we noticed RVs on the move.  We guess that for many snowbirds, the beginning of March is the onset of spring, and maybe our Canadian visitors need to get back across the border so they don’t lose health benefits.

For most of us long-term RV touring travelers, taking off on a months-long journey can be done two ways:  planned or unplanned. Monique and I try to be spontaneous, but there are some realities that we have learned to take into consideration.

In a couple of weeks we’ll be off on a six-month trip that will take us into 20 states, the District of Columbia and seven Canadian provinces. Having two goals to achieve this year is where the

planning comes in, and spontaneity is where we expect to find adventure.  The two goals are; 1) filling out the U.S. map on our rig with all the continental states, including Alaska, and 2) experiencing the Canadian Maritimes (Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Labrador and Prince Edwards Island) plus Quebec and Ontario.  An additional goal is filling up on lobster and crab while on the East Coast.

For those of you new to RVing or heading out on your first long trip, let me share what Monique has had to contend with in sketching our route.  In other words, where the spontaneity has to step aside for planned roads and stops.

STOPPING POINTS — The first considerations to take into account are the stops we know we want to make to visit friends and relatives across the country.   We don’t want to just drive up in our 50 feet of truck and trailer and say, “What’s for dinner?”  Ergo, we have a few stops where we have a schedule to meet.  An important purpose of traveling is, for us, seeing and learning.  Rather than just rushing from place to place, we try to spend enough time in any town to experience the history and life there.

HOLIDAYS — We have Spring Break and Memorial Day coming upon us, tough times to get into public campgrounds, so reservations are advised.  Monique had to decide where we would be for those weekends and plan backwards from there. Fortunately, Independence Day won’t be a problem on this trip, since we’ll be traveling with Fantasy RV Tours from Bar Harbor, Maine, into Canada for 48 days.  They made all the reservations for us during those days, and, anyway, Canadians are not big on celebrating July 4th.

We try to make as few reservations as necessary.  However, in some places, such as Washington, D.C., Cape Cod and major attractions, we know we need reservations.  We’ll trust our instincts and luck to find us perfect places to put down our stabilizers just about everywhere else.

RESERVATIONS — Monique is new to the computer, but, boy, is she learning fast as she struggles to make necessary reservations. I’m fairly proficient with computers after 30+ years of keyboard tapping, but I know it is often a challenge to do the research and make the reservation.  So when she gets frustrated with the process, I can assure her, “It isn’t you.  It’s the system.”

I taught her something very valuable in this regard Tuesday.  When all else fails, make the reservations over the phone.  The people on the other end know the system and are usually very helpful.

Making it that much harder for her are the limited campground seasons.  We’ve spent most of our lives in southern-tier states where parks are open year-round.  In the Border States and above, we have to work with their reservations schedules, and that has been a setback in the process.  Things like, “Call back after April 1” and “Park opens May 21” mean having to decide whether to chance getting a site where we want or need to be or looking for alternatives where we know we’ll have a spot.

From our vantage point a few inches from a computer screen, we are experiencing growing concern that New England campgrounds are filling up fast months ahead of time.  Should we make reservations or just chance it?

ROUTES – We learned while in Florida a few years back to avoid toll roads when possible.  It was on the I-75 that we found ourselves being forced to line up and pay a toll for four axles every few miles.  Not always possible to get around, but it can get very expensive.

To make life easier for us, I figured out how to set the GPS for “no toll roads.”   Obviously “Camille” (as we have named our impish GPS) was not amused.  She tried to route us onto a pedestrian ferry crossing the Mississippi River in New Orleans instead of paying $2.00 to cross the bridge.

While most of the U.S. is made up of states that take hours, if not days to cross, New England is a jigsaw puzzle of states, and trying to map out a logical path isn’t easy, especially with all the other considerations on our platter.

HOOKUPS – We’re used to living one to five nights without hookups (and a month at a time in Key West), but it sure is good to plug in every few days, so that’s one more thing to plan around.  Dumpsites are rarely a problem, although traveling with a full grey-water tank can bring on a bit of stress.

TWO OTHER CONSIDERATIONS – Fuel is one of the biggest single expenses on a trip like this, a factor we work with the best we can.  For instance, if a public campground costs $20 less than a private one, but the private one is much closer to the sights we want to visit, it makes sense to pay extra for the night rather than fill up the truck an extra time.

We also need to know where we will be four or five days down the road to have our mail forwarded.  The adventures of chasing mail from town to town or staying over two nights while we waited have caused us to take this very seriously.

Does this sound like a lot of work to you?  You bet is! Monique describes it “juggling,” and there always seems to be a half-dozen balls in the air at the same time.  The most important aspect is that once we hitch up and drive, we’ll have the majority our trip sketched out and settled, so we can enjoy the journey that much more.

From the “Never-Bored RVers,” We’ll see you on down the road.

© All photos by Barry Zander.   All rights reserved

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