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Trip Planner recommendations


snowlakemike

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Mr and MS Moderators, I apologize in that this seems almost certain to have been discussed, but I have done several searches and drawn blanks on "planner", "trip planner", and a few other variations.

 

Since acquiring my OTT, I have done my initial trip planning on Good Sam's trip planner.  It is not perfect, but has transported us some 19,000 miles without getting too unrecoverably lost. I signed on this morning to plan a route for a trip I am taking in two days to find that Good Sam plans to take down its trip planner effective April 10th of this year. They make vague promises of replacing it "in the future".

 

Which planner works for you guys? and why? I would like something that I can use on a large screen for planning, then transfer to a small screen for the trip. Wouldn't it be great if I could upload to my F-150 GPS?  Let me know of a recommendation or two that you find effective.

 

If this thread is out there, one of you

Mike and Elizabeth Smith


Snow Lake Shores, MS


2016 Ford F150 3.5 EB, max tow (20,900  miles pulling Ollie since Sept 2016)


 


 

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I’m interested in this as well. I have Gaia GPS and Garmin for offroad stuff, but I’ve been looking for a simpler program to just plot routes for general vacation planning.

 

I’m thinking about downloading Road Trip Planner to try - http://roadtripplanner.modesittsoftware.com . It’s Mac only, but if that works for you, it will export to GPS as well as Apple Maps and their own iPhone viewer. It’s from the same developer who makes the Ultimate Campgound maps that John Davies recently posted about. We usually use Apple Maps via Car Play in our truck and prefer it over Ford’s GPS even though it requires a cell signal. But it looks like Road Trip Planner might work offline as well.

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Roadtrippers may be what you want for planning a driving route, as it gives you distances and estimated driving times. They have a web site, and if you create an account and create a trip on the computer, it will sync with their highly rated iPhone app. I don't know about your F-150 GPS, but the iPhone app will open up your trip for GPS navigation with Apple Maps or Google Maps.

 

My reason for using Roadtrippers is that they can show you quirky stuff near your route, like weird museums, ghost towns, or waterfalls. We have used Roadtrippers to find interesting stops during the day, part way through our drive.

 

Roadtrippers have a lot of trip guides already put together, which can be useful to browse for travel ideas. They seem to have partnered with KOA and with Airstream, as they have KOA-branded and Airstream-branded travel guides.

 

If you sign up for an account, you will get a weekly email newsletter. For most web sites, such a newsletter immediately provokes me to hit the unsubscribe button. Instead, I have found the Roadtrippers newsletter interesting, and sometimes I have saved links to trips or destinations in my Ollie travel document. When Spike asked about Southern Utah travel, I posted the link I had saved to a Roadtrippers guide to Utah Highway 12.

 

The service is free, and their business model appears to be to get you to book hotels and restaurants from their site or app. They now have a premium version, Roadrippers Plus, for $30 per year, which I have not investigated.

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David Stillman, Salt Lake City, Utah

2016 Oliver Elite II  Hull 164    |    2017 Audi Q7 tow vehicle. 

Travel and Photography Blog: http://davidstravels.net

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I recently have planned my trip from MA to TN to pick up my Ollie. I used Google maps to plot my course and was able to save all my stopping points.

 

Here are the url's for our roadtrip.

 

https://goo.gl/maps/LDh4B5Kwkbz

 

https://goo.gl/maps/JF51kKZEzhn

 

I initially put in my starting point and final destination and used the route on the map to zoom in and find places to stay based on the amount of travel time I was comfortable with per day. Maps does a great job of showing you what is around each place you plan to stop. It does not have a UI to specifically help with actually choosing where you would like to stay and which campgrounds to choose. However almost every place has reviews and you can do a lot of research within the Maps app.

 

If you have Google Maps on your phone you can download the route and even set it to be available without internet access.

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2019 Elite II Hull 435, 2022 Toyota Tundra

 

 

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This will sound laughable to some folks, but I really like to stay analog if I have a navigator along. I use the wonderful Benchmark Recreation Atlases and colored dots. The maps are highly detailed (and much better than the Delorme versions)  but on any atlas it can be quite hard to keep track of where you are. I plot a route using removable dots so it is easy to see where we are headed.  And I add colored tabs on other pages so when we “drive off” one page it is easy to find the next one. As you drive past a “dot waypoint”, the navigator peels it off for reuse or disposal.

 

https://www.benchmarkmaps.com/atlases

 

https://www.amazon.com/ChromaLabel-inch-Color-Code-Labels-Dispenser/dp/B00N17XAZ6

 

For actual routing I use a Garmin RV 660 and just verbally tell it to take me to the next major town on the planned route. I like the maps as a backup, and for slow speed exploring in the back country where there is no chance of a cell connection... if there is nobody sitting in the right seat, this is a real pain, since the driver has to stop and study the maps. Just like in the old days.

 

I do always use Gaia on an iPad Mini 4 which is hugely helpful too. It is priceless when you are somewhere the gps shows nothing but a featureless line on a blank background. You zoom out in an attempt to see something - anything - of value and your road disappears!

 

John Davies

 

Spokane WA

 

 

SOLD 07/23 "Mouse":  2017 Legacy Elite II Two Beds, Hull Number 218, See my HOW TO threads: 

Tow Vehicle: 2013 Land Cruiser 200, 32” LT tires, airbags, Safari snorkel, Maggiolina Grand Tour 360 Carbon RTT.

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