RV Podcast #320: How to Plan an RV Trip [THE BEST TOOLS]

There can be a lot of stress when you start to plan an RV trip. But I want to share a series of unique tools that greatly streamline your RV Trip Planning. Jennifer and I have been using a tool called RV Trip Wizard to help plot out our RV travel routes and stops for years now. But since the product has been bundled into a whole suite of other related resources, its value has greatly increased. The umbrella program that I’m talking about is RV Life Pro, a $49 a year subscription that contains a slew of tools. They give you a week's free trial to be sure you like it. That's the Interview of the Week topic in Episode 32o of the RV Podcast. Also this week in the Podcast, we answer RV questions, offer tips and trip suggestions and deliver the RV News of the week. You can listen to the entire podcast in the audio player below. RV Life Pro Tools to help you Plan an RV Trip The collection of RV tools built into the RV Life Pro platform consist of lots of different elements. Here are the ones Jennifer and I like and use the most when we sit down to plan an RV trip. RV Trip Wizard The RV Trip Wizard app helps plan an RV Trip with ease This is route planning software built specifically for RV travelers. It uses distance rings to show exactly where you’ll be at the end of your driving day to choose the ideal stop.  When you plan an RV trip with RV Trip Wizard, it sets distance rings showing you where you should stop. If you click on the icnns, they bring up campgrounds and other points of interest you want info about. On-screen, you actually see the Route you are taking, with campgrounds, G=gas Sstops, points of interest and more. The software is customized to your RVs height and weight. That means that the routes calculated for you avoid low clearances, steep grades, weight limits, and propane restrictions. See the Route you are taking, with Campgrounds, Gas Stops, points of interest and more. The RV Life GPS App When you plan an RV trip with RV trip Wizard, it can be loaded on the RV GPS app This turns your smartphone or tablet into a GPS.  It accesses the trips you planned with RV Trip Wizard and plots them out. It helps you find the perfect places to stop by searching through a database of more than 20,000 state and national campgrounds and private RV parks. You can filter by price, rating, amenities, affiliations (Good Sam, Passport America, KOA, FMCA, & more), kid friendly, pet friendly, or big rig accessible. The app offers tips and suggestions about what to do, where to eat, and places to visit near each campground. And if you have a question about a particular RV Park or campground, simply ask your question a get answers from other RVers who have camped there. The Maintain My RV App The RV Life Pro subscription also shows interesting things to see in the areas you will be visiting This is a cloud-based service that works on your tablet, computer, and smartphone.] It tracks upcoming maintenance dates and sends detailed reminder emails, showing what needs your attention, and also the last time you performed that task, its costs, and related documentation. It also turns data into reports that let you access documents and see key dates instantly. RV Communities Connections This is a link to more than 20 different RV communities, most of them built up around specific RV brands and models (like Forest River, Jayco, Thir, Keystone, etc.) What’s helpful about this is if you have an issue on the road or a question about your RV, you can quickly and easily connect with owners of similar models to get immediate advice. You can try out the RV Life Pro app for free. CLICK HERE to go to our affiliate link. In Episode 320 of our RV Podcast, I interviewed RV Life's Patrick Buchanan on how to use RV Life Pro to Plan an RV Trip. Here's a video version of the RV Podcast interview on How to Plan an RV Trip. Here's a transcript of the interview: Mike Wendland:           Well, joining us right now from RV life is Patrick Buchanan. And we're going to kind of walk through how easy it is now to plan an RV trip. I've done it before with paper maps and books, and it works. It's kind of fun. I still like to carry paper and all that stuff, but on the phone like this, this is the way. Patrick, you've put together quite a suite of RV planning information, and we'll put a link to that all in the show notes and in the description below. Patrick, talk a little bit about how technology has made it so easy to plan a trip and to get your navigation directions, and talk about RV Life Pro. Patrick Buchana...:        Well, thanks Mike. It's great to be here again, and I hope your audience enjoys this time. So, we really turned a major corner really last year and into this year when we were able to bring together the RV Trip Wizard, which is that a web-based trip planning tool, now we've had for a number of years, but we were able to marry that with our RV life GPS app. Whereas you used to, and still can of course, plan your trips in detail with the RV Trip Wizard, you now can navigate those trips that you've created right there on your phone with an RV safe GPS. Solving the frustrating problems with RV GPS systens                                     As companies like Rand McNally and Garmin have kind of gone their own ways and followed their own path so to speak, taking that trip, you spend all that time and Trip Wizard, creating that trip with all the nuances and the details and every facet that you want to have in there, exporting that to a GPS has been always an exciting challenge to say the least. Mike Wendland:           I don't know if I'd use the word exciting Patrick. Patrick Buchana...:        Well, I was trying to a friendly word. Mike Wendland:           I would have an ING at the end, but it would probably start with frustrating. Patrick Buchana...:        Yeah, very much so. It's gotten all but impossible now as some of those brands, and certainly it makes sense for them, to keep you in their ecosystem using their tools. And unfortunately, they're just not as good, and they're a little bit cumbersome and they're just not complete tools. They want you to essentially drink their Kool-Aid through the whole process, but really that pitcher is only about half full.                                     So, we were excited and we actually accelerated our team to pushing that RV life app out there soon. It's available now and it's included, so it's no longer a separate subscription to get the RV Trip Wizard and then get the RV life GPS app. On its own, it's got a lot of great features. It's a standalone GPS. You can find a campground, hit go, and hit the road. The beauty of it is being able to find the trip in the Trip Wizard that you planned. Everything's in the cloud now, so you'll pop up in your phone. You find that trip that you spent all that time planning and just hit go, and you navigate that trip right on the phone. So that one, two punch has been a game changer. The integration of different tools for planning an RV Trip Mike Wendland:           And there's some more, I'll come back to that. Let's kind of back up a little bit and first talk about the fact that this is all integrated now in an app. RV trip planner, RV Trip Wizard has been my go-to planning tool now for a couple of years. It's just really nice. I have a rule, Patrick, called the three 330 rule where I urge my folks and we follow it as best we can. Use Mike's 330 rule when you plan an RV trip! Don't travel any more than 330 miles. Stop by 3:30 in the afternoon, whichever comes first. Then you're not worn out. You can see the area.                                     And what I loved about RV Trip Wizard and still love about it is that I can set a circle of 350 on my route. And then right from that app, I can find places where I can camp along the way, and I've loved that. But now, instead of having to open up that app on a tablet while we drive, it's all on the smartphone. And I think the other thing that has made this really possible for you guys is the popularity of things like CarPlay or Android auto, which now integrate your mapping systems directly into your vehicle GPS. So we planted on RV Trip Wizard, give everybody a 15 second overview of what that does, besides being able to set a 330 mile radius. Patrick Buchana...:        Well, the radius is in fact the biggest feature and I actually use hours for mine. So I set mine for five hours and with stops, that's maybe a six hour day, but it accomplishes the same thing. The quick and dirty explanation of what Trip Wizard does, it shows you exactly where you're going to be at the end of your driving day. And it shows you those campgrounds that are in that area, so you can choose it and add it to your trip. Lather, rinse, repeat. You just do it every day. The tool helps you find campgrounds as you plan an RV Trip Mike Wendland:           But none of this would show you the campgrounds. You can then click on those campgrounds. And that's another part of this whole RV Life Pro app that you get, because you can now bring up data on those campgrounds, and you can then book your campground. But it's so nice to be able to click and see what those campgrounds are and not have to keep switching between devices and phones. Patrick Buchana...:        Well, it really is. There's really kind of two layers to that. That first click gives you a quick picture and a rating, three stars, four stars, five stars. And it sort of says, "Okay, do I want to investigate this one further?" And then I click more details and now I can look at reviews, and I can look at amenities, and I can look at a bunch more photos and things like that. And that helps me make that decision.                                     Once I finally, I decide, yep, that's where I'm going to stay, then I hit that add to trip button. Also in that data is that campgrounds website and phone number,