ST. TRAVELS

This blog is about how we planned our 10-week travel and includes a few recent experiences.

Spreadsheet:  Our long trips are well planned using a detailed Excel spreadsheet that included distances, driving hours, GPS coordinates, moon phases, elevation, average temperatures, and sunrise/sunset times.  With this, we can see how long our drive days will be using our own calculation of tow-speeds and how much daylight we have available to us.  Our son, Chris, provided some of the brains with moonphase and sunrise by GPS lookup, and Ted augmented that with additional columns and calculations. 

Route:  Several months in advance, we build a list with our ’need to be there by this date’ for destinations of importance, e.g. be at Casper, Wyoming for the solar eclipse... those are added into Google maps, along with all the national parks we want to visit, and then we adjust the order to create the most efficient route.  With that overall plan in mind, we then add cities where friends live, to expand the route.

Lookup tab: To easily adjust the schedule for how many nights we stay at any location, we need flexibility.  So most details about each location are built into a second “lookup tab” in Excel.  That way, GPS info, weather, elevation, and places to stay will follow each city/place, regardless of where we move it within the scheduling tab. 

Dates: We can then determine how many nights we want to spend at each national park and friend’s city. This info is organized in the main tab of the spreadsheet, which is driven by consecutive dates. We also plan our travel to be about 350 miles per day or less, so we may add ‘stopover locations’ – those one-night in-route overnight destinations – which affects the scheduling of everything else. The fields in this main Excel tab include:  date, place, and mileage to get there.  All other information on every location is populated by vlookup.  This allows us to change the trip without ever losing vital location-specific information.  

Camping spots:  Options for each stopover are determined using three travel apps on the web: KOA, GoodSamClub, and RVparky.  These provide location of parks and information about each park.  I generally disregard individual reviews, but do look for parks that receive overall average scores of 4 or 5 stars (of 5 stars). Ted documents his preference of our overnight locations into the lookup tab. 

Reservations: The first half of the trip becomes rather solid but the second half is always flexible. So Ted makes reservations for the first critical week of travel, everything in August before school starts, and all weekends in September.  Reservation date changes generally don’t have change fees, only cancellation fees.  

Second Half: During our trip, when we approach the mid-way point, we do reservations maybe five to ten days in advance for weekends.  Popular places may be done sooner, and then we adjust things as the second half of our trip as we gain or lose days.

Example:  Here’s an example from our drive to Tucson during the second half: 

We began our drive to Tucson without any reservations.  We arrived at 5:30 p.m., having called a place just a few hours in advance.  The woman at this snowbird RV place (filled with mostly monthly renters, not overnight visitors) said she had room, so without a reservation, we did as she instructed us to do.  We pulled to the gate and pressed the code to call her.  No one answered the call.  No one came to the gate.  The gate did not open.  We repeated this, four more times over ten frustrating minutes.

Plan B:   So it was onto the backup plan.  First, Ted had to back up our 25′ trailer onto the city street from this gated entry where no turnaround was possible.  As we drove, no one answered the phone at 2 of the other 3 options.

More Searching: We searched, using our GPS unit, for a Starbucks to regroup, use wifi to search additional places, and get the frustrated driver in city traffic a coffee.  It was only 2 miles away.  After several turns, Ted turned left at the next stoplight, and looked in surprise as we were now entering the Davis-Monthon Air Force Base and there were military guards with guns, only four cars ahead of us!   The GPS had directed us to a Starbucks on the military base!!!   Fortunately, they had a U-Turn lane for surprises like this, and off we went.

Seeing that the next Starbucks was a long ways away, we loaded the GPS for the nearest McDonalds, and drove another two miles.  When we arrived, it was torn down for construction and replacement. Great.

In frustration, we pulled over into a vacant lot, and set up a cell phone hot-spot, to find alternatives, chose between two, and talked to a guy who said they had room and he’d be at the guard shack gate to welcome us.

Five miles later, we got in, set up the trailer, got settled, and sat outside enjoying the 85 degree heat after sunset with a cold brew.  This park is mainly used by snowbirds from the northeast U.S. and Canada, and everyone was delightful.  Luckily, we are old enough to stay here as the minimum age in places like this is 55.  LOL.  

Trailer Setup: 

When we arrive somewhere, we combine efforts and usually do a setup in about 30 minutes  (T=Ted task, S=Sue task):

• Ted is the sole driver for the car and trailer by unanimous agreement;
• Position the trailer in the parking spot (T);
• Discover if leveling of one-side is required (S) and if so, then add leveling wedges under the two wheels on that side (T);
• Place the safety wheel blocks (S);
• Raise the trailer to remove the 2 load balancer bars and sway bar (T);
• Begin moving backpacks, the cooler, and Ted’s guitar into the trailer (S);
• Unhitch and unplug the trailer from the car (T);
• Level the trailer from front to back (T & S);
• Lower the trailer stabilizing feet on the trailer (S);
• Move the car a little bit away from the trailer to take off the hitch (T);
• Hook up the trailer electric cable (S);
• Rinse and hook-up of the trailer water line (T);
• Extend the slide-out (S);
• Store the hitch equipment in the trailer storage compartment (T);
• Check if any items in the refrigerator have moved (S);

Well, this post turned out to be boringly long.  If you made it to the end here, then thanks for your patience.  Send me an email with your comments or questions!  Thanks!