In my last post about our future west trip, I shared about how I use Good Sam Trip Planner. In that post I mentioned that I created a series of documents that assisted me in the trip planning process. They include a spreadsheet, calendar, and important info document.
Spreadsheet: When I started the planning process I created a spreadsheet that had days 1-60 in the first column on the left side. As we honed in on where we wanted to go and what we wanted to see on the trip, I listed in the second column what we were doing for each day–whether driving, touring, or taking the day off. The third column listed the drive time and miles for any driving days. The last column listed the campground that we were staying at that night. The final product looked something like this:
| Day | Destination | Miles & Drive Time | Campground |
| 1 | Home to A | 95; 1:20 | XYZ camp |
| 2 | Tour A | XYZ camp | |
| 3 | A to B | 316; 6 | ABC camp |
| 4 | Day off | ABC camp | |
| 5 | Tour B | ABC camp | |
| 6 | B to C | 286; 4.25 | GHI camp |
| 7 | C to home | 286; 4.25 | Home |
Calendar: In addition to planning our itinerary, sight seeing stops, and campground stays, I also had to consider Kristin’s day job. This meant that on certain dates she would need to have a definitive “day off” from touring and driving to remotely log in and do work. The only way that we could both visualize this and make the trip work with Kristin’s work calendar was to create a trip calendar. So I used a blank calendar template and included only two pieces of information: the day’s schedule and the name of the campground where we were staying that night. Here’s an example of what the calendar looked like:
Details Document: This document compiled a whole bunch of important details into one place rather than having a bunch of random notes scrawled in a notebook. I decided to organize this information by each campground that we were planning to stay at. For each stop, I looked up the following information:
- Dates staying at this campground:
- Town/City
- Campground:
- Name
- Physical Address
- Mailing Address (in case we need to have supplies or medications shipped to us)
- Phone number
- Website
- Name of person I talked to for the reservation
- Reservation Confirmation #
- Cancellation Policy
- Rate
- Deposit amount
- Major parks in the area
- Hospital/Urgent Care (name, distance, level of care)
- Things to do (if different from major parks)
- Shopping (mainly grocery stores and Walmarts)
- RV Repair
This level of planning does take extra work, but by being prepared and organized we can anticipate a much smoother experience on long-term camping and touring trips.
Photo credit: freedigitalphotos.net, by aopsan
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