How To Plan An RV Trip

Part of the fun of RV vacationing (at least it's fun to me) is planning it out.

Getting maps, tour guides (from AAA), making campground reservations (where necessary) and finding area attractions is all part of it.

For those new to RVing, RV Lifestyle has broken down RV trip planning into five easy steps.

They begin with:

Planning an RV trip can be overwhelming, especially when you’re first starting. You realize there are a lot of logistics to consider, like where to stop, how far to drive, and how to balance the budget.

Unlike other RV planning guides, I’m not going to list obvious steps, like “pick a destination” or “look for things to do nearby.” Rather, I’m going to address the logistics that will actually provide a framework for your entire trip. 

Before I get into those 5 easy steps, however, I want to offer you the easiest solution to your road trip planning needs…

To read more, go here.

The Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks

Above, The Beast with Lassen Peak in the background. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

For many, summer vacation means heading out on the road to visit a national park or two, or three.

To aid RVers in their pursuit of an enjoyable time visiting and camping in a national park (provided one makes a campsite well in advance), National Parks Traveler has a new ebook called The Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks. 

They posted an article about it and they begin with:

Exploring the National Park System by RV is one of the quintessential approaches to visiting national parks, monuments, national recreation areas, and other park system units that combined represent what Wallace Stegner defined as the best idea America ever had.

Out on the road throughout the parks, it’s easy to see how he came to believe that. From majestic peaks and raging rivers to deep forests, sinuous canyonlands, and sweeping prairies, the park system preserves many of the best vistas, culture, and history the United States has to offer.

To help RVers explore these lands and destinations, the National Parks Traveler editors and writers have sifted through the National Park System and come away with the definitive RVing guide to the parks. This Essential Guide To RVing In The National Park System presents RV enthusiasts with a rich collection of articles exploring the park system by RV, camper, or trailer that is supported by a directory packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

Through a table of contents that divides the country geographically, you can quickly find the park you want to visit, click on its link, and find both an overview of that park along with a chart of campground information ranging from hookup availability, generator hours, ADA site availability, nightly fees, maximum RV length individual sites can handle, and much more.

To read more, go here. 

Gallup Adventure Guide

Above, the guidebook cover.

One of the items that the Red Rock Park office gave me yesterday was a copy of the Gallup Adventure Guide for Summer 2018. This has to be the most useful guide I've come across since I've moved to New Mexico.

It spotlights "10 Adventures To Do In Gallup".

They are: Experience Native Dance, Hike @ Red Rock Park, Explore ArtsCrawl, Bike Or Hike @ High Desert Trails, Go Wander @ Gallup Flea Market, Go Into The Zuni Mountains, Hit A Rodeo, Giddy Up (horseback riding), Shred @ The OHV Park and Climb A Rock.

Here is a scan of one of the pages for Hit A Rodeo:

And here's a page of other summer events in Gallup:

Looks like there will be plenty to see and do this summer.

New Book By The Yosemite Conservancy

Above, low clouds shroud Yosemite Valley. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

When planning trips to any of our national parks, one really doesn't have enough reference material to aid in the planning.

Happily, a new edition of a guidebook on Yosemite National Park by the Yosemite Conservancy is now available.

The Sierra Sun Times reported:

March 27, 2018 - In 2017, US national parks hosted 330 million visitors, 4.3 million in Yosemite alone. Anyone heading to the crown jewel of the national parks system needs to know with where to go, what to do, where to stay and to eat, and all the other details that make a vacation in a popular park more enjoyable. For years now, Yosemite visitors have relied on the advice in The Complete Guidebook to Yosemite National Park, published by Yosemite Conservancy.  

This eighth, revised edition includes all the major and minor recent updates, such as the new concessioner, Yosemite Valley road changes, how to visit the newly restored Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, and Ackerson Meadow, a lovely destination now open to travelers. 

To read more, go here.

2017 Good Sam RV Travel & Savings Guide

Since I've been planning on next month's trip to Idaho to see the total eclipse of the sun, I've been making use of the 2015 Good Sam RV Travel & Savings Guide to locate campgrounds in areas I plan to visit.

It dawned on me that some information may be very outdated. Campgrounds close, get bought out and new ones open. I felt that buying one every year is probably redundant. But perhaps buying one every other year would be more practical. The Guide also shows which campgrounds and RV parks give the Good Sam Club discount.

So, I bought the 2017 edition. I thought it would keep me busy tonight putting in the stick-on state tabs that the directory comes with. Those tabs come in handy to look up campgrounds in different states. But, there's only one problem: it came with no sheet of peel-off stick-on state tabs. The 2015 edition did, but there's none for the 2017 edition.

Oh, well.

It appears the Good Sam Club discontinued the tabs. They started including those back in the 1980s as I recall (I bought the Guide every year back then).

Still, I have more up-to-date campground information for this year's trip north for my trip planning.

National Geographic Guide To National Parks

Above, Yosemite's North Dome. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The Buffalo News has an article on the latest edition of the National Geographic Guide To National Parks of the United States.

The writer of the piece, Scott Scanlon, may have been in Yosemite National Park at about the same time as I was in 2015. He had lunch at the Ahwahnee Hotel, I opted for breakfast instead.

He wrote this about the book:

National Parks have the ability to astound, often greatly. I have learned that it pays to seek out the experts in places like Yosemite, Acadia and the Grand Canyon, not only after you arrive but preferably before you go. 

The eighth edition of the "National Geographic Guide to National Parks," issued to mark the 100th anniversary of the founding of the National Park Service, is an invaluable starting point to help you get the most out of a visit to the parks. A used edition can be found online at only about one-third its original cost. 

Its glossy pages boast more than enough tidbits to make its purchase on amazon.com a better and more reasonable investment than lunch at the former Ahwhanee. (Though, if you ever go to Yosemite, I encourage you to book a lunch reservation. It's much less expensive than dinner.)

His article recounts a visit to Yosemite by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 1983.

To read more, go here.