We received this letter from Meg L. a few weeks ago, and know many of you (all of us included) share the same frustrations regarding RV planning.
We’ve covered the subject before, but have never opened the conversation up to you. Read Meg’s letter below, then please leave a comment and share your thoughts. Do you feel the same as Meg? Are you having a hard time being spontaneous? Do you feel like you’re missing out on things because you didn’t book far enough in advance?
My husband and I have been full-timing in our fifth wheel for almost six years now. What drew us to this lifestyle was the freedom to go where we want, when we want, and most always have the option to stay a little longer if we liked a place, or move on to the next place if we didn’t. But lately, that freedom feels like it no longer exists.
As everyone knows, campgrounds are booked months in advance, and popular places fill up instantly the moment reservations open. Even boondocking spots are getting crowded! I now find myself staring at spreadsheets and reservation systems instead of going on all the adventures I actually want to go on!
It’s starting to feel like the spontaneity that made RV life so appealing is slipping away. We’ve had to skip places we really wanted to visit because we didn’t “book early enough.” And I know we’re not alone! Everyone we talk to on the road seems to be juggling calendars and backup plans, too. It’s not fun!
I’m wondering: Has anyone figured out how to keep the adventure alive without feeling like a travel agent 24/7? Are there tricks to staying flexible without missing out on reservations, events, timed entries, etc.?
RV life is still our dream, and we still love it, but it’s become a heavily scheduled one, and that’s not something we love about it anymore.
Have something to get off your chest? Write to us! Send us an email at editor@rvtravel.com and share your thoughts. Thanks!
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RVT1218
I’m not a full-timer, but got my class c “B.C.” (before COVID). Recently I got a TOAD I can drag along…but! I thought the planning ahead part is how it’s SUPPOSED to be. For me there wasn’t any different. I live on the East Coast, where the only option for not having a reservation is Wal-Mart or Cracker Barrel. I guess for some people, the “new normal” is just other people’s “normal”…
We also rely on Harvest Hosts which has greatly relieved the anxiety of not having a place to stay for the night.
I feel the same as Meg
What I read in the letter was “all the popular spots”. And maybe it is my imagination, but thought I heard “at all the popular times”. Willing to bet last minute hotel-staying folk don’t get to waltz in unannounced either. Our house is technically within the broad boundaries of a National Historic Park. It is a destination as opposed to someplace you go through on your way elsewhere. It is high tourist season. No reservation in July & August? Enjoy your drive through and back out on more crowded roads. Early June or mid-September when school is back in session can be a whole lot less crowded experience to stay and explore. It is still planning of a sort but go where the crowds are not.
I am a planner, so figuring out where we want to be, what we want to see, and booking months in advance is my normal practice. But even then, flexibility is the key. We don’t demand FHU, just 50 amp electric and have taken 30 amp for shorter stays. We pick an area to visit and will drive 50+ miles, if needed, to things we want to see, which allows more flex in camp choices. We prefer simple camps, so not demanding pools, pickleball courts, etc.
I just talked to another camper in a NY state park on Lake Erie within 50 miles of Niagra. She said they never make advance reservations and while the covid boom was tough, she has no problems now stating 50% occupancy as common in many parks.
I can certainly empathize with Meg on this one. “Logistics Fatigue” is real.
Unlike a house, an RV owner needs to determine where that RV will be parked every single night. Regardless of health, wealth, weather, wisdom or even use.
The more frequently you move it, the more time you’ll spend researching routes, fuel stops, grocery stores and places to park that thing. You can ad-hoc to make your final decision “spontaneous” but no matter what, you will choose a place to park. There’s no skipping that.
The best relief to logistics fatigue is to put time between moves. If you set up and tear down just once a week, that’s 52 entries in the spreadsheet per year. That’s too much.
💯 agree, I’ve become a fulltime travel agent; spontaneous travel no more, just constant research trying to find affordable sites & availability only to get there & be disappointed with the quality of campgrounds! It’s maddening & I want to quit RVing!
As something of a control freak, I have always needed to plan ahead and know where I was going to sleep every night, ever since we got our first motorhome in 2017. Yet, even with typically planning several months ahead, I’m still finding sold-out campgrounds. We recently decided to cap off a 6-week upcoming trip with a stay at New River Gorge. I located a campground that looked great but they weren’t yet taking reservations for the dates of our trip. When I went back later to make my reservation, they were already sold out. Disappointing but we decided to do New River Gorge later and swapped our plans there for several nights in the Smokies in TN.
Our plan is let’s get to this general area and not stress over all this other planning stuff.
I camped with my parents growing up. We traveled over a good portion of the western us tent camping without reservations. We even camped outside the Seattle world’s fair. My wife and I started camping with a tent, then moved up to a poor man’s class B and finally to a travel trailer. We used to be able to get in the truck and head somewhere and get a campsite with no reservations but times have changed. In our area we can usually get reservations a month out, but I miss the days of just deciding on Thursday to go and being able to find a campsite when we got there. The thing that really bugs me is getting to a place and seeing all the sites that are reserved but no one shows up.
Sometimes it seems to me (with only my opinion to back this up) that people unable to fine a campsite are too particular in their needs. Learn to compromise a bit and more sites/locations open up to availability.
over-population is a bitch
BINGO>
Cost of average housing going from 5 to 6 figures is a [bleeped] too.
I have been RVing for 21 years (Motorhome) and I found out about traveling to popular spots on my very first trip. Back then the popular spots during the “season” were just as crowded as they are now. This is nothing new. I would much rather have the stress of planning ahead so I can enjoy the trip than the stress of trying to find a place to stay during the trip.
I hear large 5th wheel go smaller if you want spontaneity you can’t take a full size house with you everywhere you want to go
When we started RV’ing in 2014 we were able to “wing” it except on holidays or during peak season if we wanted to visit the popular national parks. We full-timed like that for 8 years, making most of our reservations along the way. My heart goes out to travelers today and I don’t think I would enjoy it like we did if we were just starting out now. Since we’ve camped in all the lower 48 plus all over Canada, we can pick and choose where we want to go now and don’t mind making the reservations in advance, as we have settled into “part-time” status. I do believe that if you look for more of the mom & pop style campgrounds you do find better luck (and service) vs the more advertised ones.
Another “glitch” that has popped up in recent years is the increasing number of transient workers, traveling consruction workers, nurses, etc that are increasing the camping congestion. I recently tried to book a site 60 miles from our home for a month while undergoing medical treatment. We checked 25 camogrounds within 10 miles of the city we were traveling to and not a single opening due to there being 3 major construction projects in a 30 mile radius. We ended up commuting 5 days a week for 4 weeks.
And naysayers accused me of being negative about the so called “glamping” racket…imagine that.
I don’t see making reservations as being a chore. To me it is part of the RV experience where we have the opportunity to choose where we want to go next. Here on the west coast making summer reservations is best done in Jan – Feb as so many parks are full up. While I am not a full timer, we are on the road about 200 nights each year, I have a list of places that we have stayed or would like to go to in the future so planning is really about choosing which park shall we go to this time?
Personally, Deb and I plan our trips and have yet to make any “let’s go” style of heading out the door with only a destination in mind and no reservations made. But having read the comments made so far, there are suggestions that sound possible for the no reservation mode with flexibility being key. What we did for our trip of over six thousand miles from late April to the end of May this year was to make Plan A and Plan B. Reserved primary spots but keep an eye out for where the nearest Love’s travel stops were so if Plan A site was not available for what ever reason, we could try Love’s, and so on. Ask around on this site and others or when meeting fellow RVers about what they see and do.
We bought our first motorhome in 1988 and have had mh’s ever since. All these years we have rarely made reservations. We travel mainly west of the Rockies and frequent BLM and USFS campgrounds. Lots of them are fcfs. We arrive at the beginning of a week and are able to find available campsites on weekdays. If we want to stay longer we have that option since they are fcfs. We still feel that we have that freedom from years ago although being retired makes spontaneity and flexibility much easier. I agree, if I was still working reservations would be needed for week-end camping.
We find a quiet out of the way place to hide out in July and August. Research places of interest to hit just before or just after their high season. But our biggest secret is the daylight time we weren’t aware of. As we traveled we realized in some places it was still light at 9:00 at night. We started going into places like Glacier Park at 5:00pm. Still had full light and we were almost the only people there. We had the entire place to ourselves. We miss out on a few sunrise or whatever usual shots that people go for. But it was something special to have that beauty literally to ourselves to enjoy. And no crowd frustration!
We book the sites we know we want well ahead of time- like this year for The Tetons and Yellowstone and then Morro Bay in California. The rest of the time we tend to boondock – we have a Class B and often stealth camp overnight in residential areas.
With 19 years of RVing under our belt, we have seen it all. From 2006 to 2014 we traveled to all 49 states with reservation made in advance for only major holidays (not for Thanksgiving or Christmas). Never got turned away. 2014- 2020 was about the same. Then COVID HIT, and folks discovered RVing. It hasn’t been the same since. Without a reservation, especially for any weekend, you are out of luck. FYI – Unfortunately, the level of responsibility, respect for your neighbors, site cleanliness, and respect for nature have “gone down the drain.” It is sad.
Even boondocking/dry camping is becoming more of a challenge to find a nice spot by a lake or creek for a few days.
First, it depends when you go, where you go and how big your rig is. I prefer making reservations. But we go in spring and fall. If camping locally, we go in on a Sunday and leave on a Thursday or Friday. And we prefer state and federal campgrounds over private campgrounds. Our TT is 26 ft long and will fit at a lot more places than a 40 footer. Weekends can be hard to get in some areas and at certain times of year.Because of how we do it, I have had no trouble booking sites from a few weeks to a few days ahead. Since all federal parks now require reservations, I know people that pulled up to the gate, checked reservation.gov and booked a site right then and there.
We are not full-timers. I always rough out our itinerary only making reservations in when I know we want to be near a popular place at a specific time. When we are on the east coast, I do make reservations. Out west, we are spontaneous, and usually have plenty of boondocking options even near the Grand Canyon. When we began RVing, we didn’t need to get reservations months in advance at Oregon and Washington state parks in the summer, as we do now. I don’t think anything has changed much.
We chose to be workampers and applied and were hired for summer jobs in areas of the US we wanted to explore. Our workamping jobs were always for less than 40 hours/week (typically 24 hours each). This gave us the security of an RV site and the opportunity for weekly adventures throughout the summer.
RV travel means trade-offs. I like to have certainty of where I am staying, so I book 6 months out, or more. Some states open reservations a year out, some more than 6 months, many 6 months, and some shorter timeframes. Recently, we were coming back to Colorado from Indianapolis. I had reservations at two state parks. Each day, the wife wanted me to drive further, so the next day would be shorter. So, I looked ahead on the road and found some private parks, and called them. We found availability (Tues and Wed nights) at all we called. We paid more for them than the state park campgrounds we reserved, and we lost the state park fees. But, DW was happier, and we got home earlier. Tradeoffs.
Thank you for sharing your experience, Meg L! DW tends more toward your ideal way of traveling. I want a bit more “certainty” than that implies. I can accept the odd day or two between reservations that we just “wing it,” but a steady diet of such “general” planning would be extremely unpleasant for me. I suspect that you are right in concluding that you must make extensive plans with reservations, depending on where you travel. We tend to stay in the southeast and are part-timers (~60 nights/year), so likely much different than you. Have a great week and safe travels!
Use harvest hosts. Hit your favorites at low periods . Stay longer at favorite sites
We’re full-timers. I love planning! It’s part of the fun.
I agree with Randy G. It depends a lot on how and when you do it. If you’re towing a city block that needs a nuclear power plant to make it work during peak season you’ve got issues. I have a 19 foot Revel 4×4 with a 320amp lithium battery. I’m currently outside Glacier with no reservations and it’s mobbed. Using Gaia and OnX I’ve found plenty of beautiful places to spend the night. It’s exactly the freedom that the RV lifestyle is suppose to be. The fact that I can’t haul a ton of stuff with me is part of the part of the bargain of being free.