How do you find all those things to do? <- That question is thrown at me a lot when I share my planning for vacations. Now, to understand a little bit about me and my proclivity for planning you have to understand some about me as a person. I'm a type-A, first born, gen x'er with control issues and a need for dopamine. All that incredible craziness lends itself to one thing... an organized planner.
I usually start with a single location or 'thing' we want to do and build from there. Our first outing with the RV will be to Little Elm, TX. Never heard of it? Me either prior to a Tikbook (I'm not referencing the actual platform or I'm sure we'll all be spammed with things) post about a Harry Potter Experience. I started researching to see if, and or when, it would be coming to western NY and found no such plans. So, was born the first trip to Texas for myself and spawn.
From that first single activity I will build a travel plan, be it flights and airports to hotels/motels/unique stays/etc. The activities are the best part to start researching, though. I open a Google Sheet, or use Excel for those of you with Microsoft products, and start logging ideas. I try to capture all the information I'm going to want later for planning. This includes addresses, links, costs, type of 'thing' it is, and any special notes. Don't make decisions on if you're going to do a 'thing' yet, just add everything that's interesting to the spreadsheet. You can sort and mark those you aren't going to do later. For now? FIND THE FUN.
For this trip I knew we'd be driving the RV so I started scoping out places about 300 miles apart, to account for our daily traveling after work. This is how I stumbled upon HarvestHost and boondocking. Because I've done the work and research for you I won't send you off into the wilderness that is the internet to look up anything, unless you're like me and will do the research anyway. But, once I had an idea of where we'd hit on the way to Texas I started looking for things to do, places to see, strange and unusual side stops for Dallas and surrounding areas. Why Dallas? Well, because Little Elm, the whole reason for the trip, is just north of Dallas.
For those of us that didn't know that Dallas and Forth Worth are basically two large blobs of cities connected together... there are a TON of things to do in those two cities. We're a big animal and aquarium family leading me to find those locations first. Then weird/wacky things to do that look fun, like Meow Wolfs. Atlas Obscura is a fantastic source for off the beaten path and weird things to do.
I'm also planning for evening trips to see something to full weekends from sun up to sun down. I grab everything I can find that looks interesting and add it to the sheet.
Once I have as many activities as I can stomach looking at, it's not a hard and fast rule, I start using the internet to nail down where I want to stay during the actual 'trip' part of the trip. You know, that part where you're done driving TO a place and you're doing the things?! Stay with me, it's worth it.
Most campgrounds have decent websites now, so find a few you want to stay at and start the booking process, or you can search for the following to find free, or nearly free, stays with an RV:
Boondocking
Dispersed camping
RV primitive camping
Dispersed camping will find you state and federal lands that allow free dry camping. I defined dry camping before but if you didn't read the other posts, here it is: camping on the RV's own power without water, electric or sewer hookups. You're on your own, boo. Pack in and pack out everything you need.
Boondocking is basically the same thing but you're staying in someone's driveway, in a restaurant's parking area, etc. Camping at Walmart is boondocking. There's a few really great websites that help with this. I'll add the links as I talk about them.
RV primitive camping is the same thing as dispersed camping but might be on private or local land.
Add a new tab to your Google sheet for stays. Start collecting your information of where, what, etc. As you can see for Little Elm we're using a couple of apps, HarvestHosts and HipCamp. This really is because I couldn't find dispersed camping close to Dallas. For Louisiana and Utah, if you hang in that long, you'll see we're staying in far more of those locations.
Are you already overwhelmed or bored? I'm not going to hold it against you. Most are glassy-eyed by now when I'm animatedly talking about planning vacations. Hang in there for the actually PLANNING pieces or go watch some cat vids. I'm cool either way.
Open another tab, yes, tab #3 in your Google Sheet. This is going to be your Schedule tab. This is where you're going to finalize your stays, pick your activities and get your proverbial ducks in a row. I do this in two stages. I log all my stays first, add in if I have reservations, etc. Then go back in and try to organize the 'things' into days. Yes, I map the entire route with all the stops, stop laughing you never know when you might need that information.
I also have a reservations tab, but you can do all of that on the schedule tab without too much more work. I ensure I have pdf's of the reservations in a folder (same folder where this sheet is going to be kept) and really a pdf of anything else I can think of. Maps of parks, public transportation schedules, etc. Yes, I know, you can just get that on your phone. But if I'm stuck someplace without internet I want to be able to keep going.
And yes, I have an atlas in the RV with a highlighted path marked through the states. Stop judging.
Even with all of that I have a paper copy of the plan, but it's not really needed. I have an irrational fear of not being planned enough.
Hopefully this was useful, or at the very least entertaining. If you're looking for a trip and don't want to do the planning send me an email. My rates are reasonable.
