Trip Planner

[Ray]

I was wondering what on line or computer based trip planners everyone use's.

I am interested in several features - a couple being:

#1 Plot your trip start/finish and then break it into segments based on the amount of miles or hours you want to drive each day so you can search for stop/overnight places and POI's at those defined distances. (But not get off your main course)

#2 Search a selected radius from a start point based on miles or hours of drive time - then select a destination/stop point, and find local POI's.

#3 What are the favorite and most used features of the trip planners you use.

On # 1 Sometimes I know I want to go to a particular destination but want to only drive a certain amount of miles or hours and then stop for the night.

On #2 Sometimes I just want to go someplace and the only requirement maybe direction (ie: n/s/e/w/sw/nw etc) but I want to know where I can get in a certain amount of miles or hours - then I would do the same radial search for he next day.

Thanks, Ray

[jeffcarp]

I use Google Maps for the route selection because I feel like it is so accurate in terms of ETA and real road speeds (vs posted speed limits). It is important to do the Google Maps route based on the specific time of day you want to travel so that travel time through cities is taken into account if it hits rush hour.

Once I know the route, then I review stopovers by adding interim destinations in Google Maps and confirming the drive times to those stopovers.

Once I know my general stopover areas then I select specific places using both RV Parky or All Stays Camp and RV on my Android phone.

I reinsert those stopovers into Google Maps to make sure the specific campground isn't aren't too close or too far from my ideal stopover point.

Once I have all of my stops then I enter them into my Rand McNally RV while driving. I also use Google Maps while driving for real time traffic.

[Ray]

Thanks - I should have mentioned I have a Rand McNally RV GPS as well - Not sure if that opens any options or not

Sure would be nice to be able to plan a route for a 1000 miles or so - then mark that route at driving intervals of mile/hour's - and then zoom in on those pin pointed intervals and look at 30 mile radius to find places to overnight.

Maybe I am dreaming

[jeffcarp]

It is a worthy goal but unfortunately it is very tedious to do on the GPS device. Rand McNally does have some online trip planners that allow you to transfer the selected stops to your device but unfortunately it is not suitable for transferring a specific route. Even though the trip planners allow you to easily modify your route by dragging the route to different roads, it doesn't transfer that route to the GPS. Basically, when you transfer it all you are transferring is your stops and then the GPS recalculates a new route between those stops using the algorithms built into the device.

The Rand McNally GPS does a good job of finding locations along your route and showing you the distance of those locations but there is a big problem in using that for trip planning. Once you find your first stop and insert that into the route then when you do your next search along route the GPS does not search past your first stop. Therefore, the only way to do this is to build your stops backwards from your destination and it is just way too cumbersome to be useful in my opinion.

The personal conclusion that I have reached is that it is really hard to beat the user friendliness of Google Maps when you are trying to figure out how far it is from point A to point B.

[baxmd]

Here is a post I submitted earlier about the trip planner we use (www.rvtripwizard.com):

We just got back to Maryland after a trip to Iowa. I used RV Trip Wizard online to plan, which is a subscription service. We like state and local campgrounds and found some incredible places using this. It lets me choose our preferred travel miles in a day (actually, you can choose 3 limits which show up like a bulls eye from your starting point), which type of parks I want displayed, along with points of interest, gas stations, etc. It uses Google, so if you have the time you can likely do the same planning without the service, but I found this easier. Even if we feel like winging it, I like knowing ahead of time what parks are in the area. It has a tutorial on the site that can help folks decide it it's worth purchasing. It seems like a mom and pop operation, so don't expect mind blowing graphics.

~Paula and Tom

[richnwendy]

Paula and Tom,
Thanks for trip planner recommendation. RV Trip wizard program is great; easily mapped out first part of our upcoming x-country trip. We're *still* trying to learn Rand McNally that came with BF.
Rich & Wendy

[robert newby]

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[ddbowen]

I also us google Maps for initial planning, but I use "InRoute" on my iPhone to plan all the interim stops. It is worth checking out for $0.99. Very simple to use and easy to change on the fly.