Reservations when you travel?

[firedaniel]

We have been active Rvers for about 5 years now. The wife and kids love it. We are looking to make a long run from Dallas to Yellowstone in June. We have our spot in Yellowstone but no reservations on the trip up. Should we? Just curious on the long drives if you just drive till you get tired and stop at a KOA or Walmart? What do you guys do?

[frozen]

Get early starts, then find a campground early in the day for a better chance at finding an open site. It's good to have a few hours to relax and enjoy local attractions.

[OldCoot]

Just stop when we get tired and find a campground. Don't do parking lots of any kind, Walmart, Fly J, Pilot, Cracker Barrel, etc.

[youroo]

Have never made reservations,no Wal-Marts,(2) Truckstops,Lots of travel miles! Youroo!!

[Old car]

We usually have the trip planned and know where we want to stop so we make reservations. On a few occasions we stop early and hit a KOA. Have never been turned away.

[asquared]

Same as OC. We have the Next Exit book that allows us to start looking imparts when we know we are going to want to stop in the next couple of hours. We look up the campgrounds we find in there on campgroundreviews.com and if they look ok, we call to see if they have space available. If they do and have a reasonable overnight rate, we book it and stay the night. FHU is not needed so we try to reduce cost by seeing if they have a water/electric site available. If the site is long enough, We don't even unhook except the pigtail. We plug into water and electric and don't set anything else up. We make an easy dinner and settle in for the night. We leave early the next morning. The less you disconnect or set up, the quicker and easier your morning departure is.

[wbdavey]

Used to plan reservations for every dayof the trip. Found that stressful when: weather or traffic slowed progress and arrived at the planned stop very late... OR no traffic, no weather, no pee stops, making fantastic time and arrive at the planned stop at 3:00 PM... New approach is to stop at a rest area about 3:00 PM and use the GPS to find a campground 2 hours down the road. Call the campground and make reservations. Very low stress.

[OldCoot]

Same as asquared except we don't call ahead, we just find a cg and stop. Don't even unhook the pigtail, just put the landing jacks down, hook up water & electric, put the slides out, eat supper and go to bed. Usually leave between 6 am and 7 am. Takes about 5 minutes to get ready to hit the road. Do check all the lights while unhooking water and electricity.

[ependydad]

Similar to asquared, we don't make reservations for travel days. Unfortunately, we aren't morning people, so getting on the road before 10am is a challenge for us- we would rather get a later start and just drive longer/later.

Since we stop late and need to do an after hours checkin, we'll call around at about 4pm to find a place to stop for the night. Even in the case of a Walmart stop- I want to make sure that it allows overnighting.

We rarely do Walmarts, truck stops, or rest areas simply because we aren't setup well for it. (No generator and just a single battery.) So conditions have to be "just right" temperature wise.

At campgrounds, like asquared and OC, we do minimal setup- often times just electric since we often run with water in our fresh water tank. We do put landing gear and stabilizers down to minimize movement as we walk around inside.

[mark0224]

Good topic It's one of those thing I have yet to do , I had figured about traveling about 5 hrs a day max , mostly because that's all I figured the wife can take, with a couple of pit stops along the way, again because she can't sit that long. It may take me 4 days to do a trip like Florida but I'm going to be in no hurry to get where I'm going will be retired in 17 working days.

[MeepMeep]

Originally Posted by mark0224

Good topic It's one of those thing I have yet to do , I had figured about traveling about 5 hrs a day max , mostly because that's all I figured the wife can take, with a couple of pit stops along the way, again because she can't sit that long. It may take me 4 days to do a trip like Florida but I'm going to be in no hurry to get where I'm going will be retired in 17 working days.

Sounds like you've got the formula down before you even get out there. I love listening to campers talking about "making good time" now that I've learned to relax by leaving around 9 or 10am and putting into a cg between 3 and 4pm. We typically cover between 250 and 350 miles per day - if we feel like it...... Congrats on your upcoming retirement and enjoy your new adventures!

[R&J Silverback]

I like some sort of plan. a good app on the phone that might help is called RVparky.com we find this app very helpful and it is FREE.

[bubbles]

Originally Posted by firedaniel

We have been active Rvers for about 5 years now. The wife and kids love it. We are looking to make a long run from Dallas to Yellowstone in June. We have our spot in Yellowstone but no reservations on the trip up. Should we? Just curious on the long drives if you just drive till you get tired and stop at a KOA or Walmart? What do you guys do?

On that destination trip we do Overnight RV, Amarillo; Strasburg, CO KOA and Rawlins, WY KOA or RV World Campground. 287 north from Rawlins to Tetons and Yellowstone. We typically do not un hook for overnight except maybe to hit the Big Texan in Amarillo. Start from Waco.

[Long Leaf Piners]

We did an over 9600 round trip miles from North Carolina to California and points Southwest, by doing what Old Coot, Asquare, and others suggest. No parking lots, either.
Traveling with two dogs, they help us find stops along the way-along with easy refueling stops (thanks to "Next Exit").
We usually are on the road moderately early, but stop early (around 3-4pm) by calling ahead on a daily basis as we travel along. This gave us time to explore local areas, park easily, have a great supper, and be back on the road, reasonably early.
We did reservations at Grand Canyon, so we could stay on the property-well worth it; but otherwise daily stops were easy.
Just have fun...and take your time. That's what RVing is for!

[Jim34RL]

Will I am a planner and my DW and I like our comforts, that why I tow a 5er. I like full hook-ups and do not like to un-hook for the night when we are staying for one night only. So we do make the reservations to get pull thru sites and travel only 300 to 350 miles a day to make this less stressful on us.

[dcheatwood]

I've stayed in we several Walmart and camping world lots for a quick nap. Get coffee inside the next morning, with whatever else i want then hit the road. Camping world sometimes has electric hookups.

[mark0224]

Originally Posted by MeepMeep

Sounds like you've got the formula down before you even get out there. I love listening to campers talking about "making good time" now that I've learned to relax by leaving around 9 or 10am and putting into a cg between 3 and 4pm. We typically cover between 250 and 350 miles per day - if we feel like it...... Congrats on your upcoming retirement and enjoy your new adventures!

Thanks first of all.
I think I need to get one of the "Next Exit" books to know where and when to stop. One thing we have planned was having the smallest amount of food with us and buying what we need for that night just before we stop for the night to cover the next morning and only carrying enough water for the days pit stops keeping the load as low as we can.

[bend302]

Like a lot of you, we only drive 5 or 6 hours per day. We get started about 9:00 or 9:30 and usually stop around 12:30 or 1:00 for lunch. Then we decide where we want to stop and call ahead for a pull through. When we travel known routes like home to FL, we know our stops and will call early to assure a place. We find the snowbird migration times tend to flood campgrounds along the North-South routes.

We don't do Wal-Marts or other parking lots either.

We love the Next Exit book and use a Good Sam campground app on the Ipad to look for campgrounds when in unfamiliar territory. The GPS also is a help.

Bill

[DXSMac]

I just drive until I'm tired. I haven't had an issue. However, if you need to "drive" during a major holiday, get reservations SOMEWHERE and just sit until holiday is gone, then keep driving. I got caught in this once when I drove to Kentucky for a volunteer job. I didn't need to show up until July 8. But I didn't have reservations for July 4th. Let's just say..... the only thing I could get was some really SEEDY place in West Virginia and I shut the door and didn't come out for three days! Not to mention, my cable hookup didn't work at that "seedy" place and.... you don't want to know how they got cable to me..........

[PNWTraveler]

Just completed a three week trip and this was the big question. We often didn't stay where we originally intended. But we did have a couple of occasions when we wished we had made reservations. (i.e. Sedona during Spring Break on a weekend)


Obviously you need to be cognizant of very popular destinations and travel dates.
It is wise to have reservations for weekends, and/or at National or State parks during peak travel times.


I wish campgrounds were more like hotels where they usually allow you to cancel a reservation before 6 pm on the day of arrival with no penalty.


We made a couple of reservations where we realized that we may have to forfeit our first night if we didn't show. Occasionally this is okay, but it would run into real money if we had to do it very often.


We were early in the season for the first week of our trip and many campgrounds weren't open; but those that were had plenty of room. We only had to resort to a parking lot (Little America, WY) once. Not too bad if all you want to do is sleep.


We noticed what we called the 9 am exodus from most campgrounds. So, if you are looking to score a spot in a first come first served popular destination, arrive at 9:01 am and hang out. (At Willow Flat Canyonlands NP you probably need two stakeouts with walkie talkies and even then, good luck!)


Here is a question: has anyone ever approached a hotel and asked if you could spend the night in their parking lot for a nominal fee? If so, what response did you get?