2024 Spring/Summer RV Trip Planning Begins!
Spring is coming and our plans for 2024 have been started! One of my favorite things to do is plan out our adventures. I use a website and app called RVLife to first put together an overall plan for the trip, picking somewhat random stop spots along the route we want to take. I love how their trip planner shows you where you can go within your driving window from a specific spot. This helps you pick your next stop making sure you can get there within the timeframe that you are comfortable with. For us, that's 5 hours of driving max per day.
As you can see in the screenshot above, it also gives you fuel alerts and other alerts on parts of the route that can't abide by the settings you have set. For example, see the three !!! above?
I have my settings set to avoid unpaved roads and these parts of the route have unpaved roads that can't be avoided.
My favorite part though is that you can put information in the settings about your rig. Then use the RV Safe GPS feature that will route you around low overpasses and other issues that may affect you based on the data you provide about your rig.
Budgeting
You may notice a few other settings in the screenshot above. If you setup the Expenses tab, you can plan out the budget for your trips as well. This is probably one of my favorite parts of the application. It showed me that this trip will cost us approximately $13,000 (not including food for 2) during the course of 6 months, which helped me figure out if we could afford it.
For this trip, I first put together a Spreadsheet listing my pay dates. We try to only travel on the weekends after I get paid, and then stay somewhere in between. Once I had those pay dates, I counted how many times I will get paid in the timeframe we plan to travel and divided the total cost by that number. In my case it was 17 Pay dates. Dividing $13,000 by 17 means we will need approximately $765 per pay date plus food expenses in order to afford this trip.
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Payday
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Expenses
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Destination
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3/22/2024
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$ 765.00
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Carlsbad, New Mexico
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4/5/2024
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$ 765.00
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Texas
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4/19/2024
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$ 765.00
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Tampa, Florida
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5/3/2024
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$ 765.00
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Orlando, Florida
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5/17/2024
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$ 765.00
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North Carolina
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5/31/2024
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$ 765.00
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Alabama
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6/14/2024
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$ 765.00
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Tennessee
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6/28/2024
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$ 765.00
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Michigan
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7/12/2024
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$ 765.00
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Colorado
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7/26/2024
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$ 765.00
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Wyoming
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8/9/2024
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$ 765.00
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Glacier County, Montana
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8/23/2024
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$ 765.00
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Washington
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9/6/2024
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$ 765.00
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Oregon
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9/20/2024
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$ 765.00
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California
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10/4/2024
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$ 765.00
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Las Vegas
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10/18/2024
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$ 765.00
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Zion National Park, Utah
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11/1/2024
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$ 765.00
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New Mexico
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Total
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$ 13,005.00
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This is just the beginning. As we get closer to our departure, I will also use this application to contact the Campgrounds we intend to stay at along the route and make reservations. Here is an example of what you can see and do from the application to reserve your stays.
Here are some of the things I look for in a good spot:
Well, that's it for now! I can relax until it's time to get the rig ready to depart. Not really, we have maintenance to take care of, reservations to make, and fun to have until then.
Happy Travels!!
Disclaimer: The link above is an affiliate link for RV Life. If you use it to sign up for RV Life Pro, I will get a small commission, however, the cost to you doesn't change.