(I Don't Know) How to Plan an RV Trip Without Pulling Out Your Hair (Part 2)

If you haven't, may I suggest you click here to read part 1 of this post. I'll wait. 

So you're caught up? Good. On we go. 

While we're in California, we want to do things like go to Universal Studios and go to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter (of course), see the San Diego Zoo, LEGOLAND, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and of course see several of the national forests and parks that are there (Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and don't forget the Giant Redwoods).

I also have a couple of friends I want to visit that I haven't seen in years, and of course there are the beaches, My problem lies in that California is a huge state, and instead of starting in the north and wandering down at a leisurely pace, we're basically having to skip a bunch of those things and go straight to Los Angeles right away, if my realtor is correct in her estimation. Then we have to decide whether to go north or south, and if we want to continue around parts of California or head through to Arizona and then New Mexico before heading to the midwest to see our families hopefully.

I found this terrific website called Roadside America - it basically lists all the cool and unusual roadside attractions in every state - and I found so many great things I want to see! Including - did you know that George R.R. Martin bought a bowling alley/artists' haven and has turned it into a sci-fi children's museum/interactive art space? Neither did I! But Roadside America did, and now we HAVE to make it a part of our trip somehow!

It's called The Meow Wolf Arts Complex and House of Eternal Return, and you can read about it here. They also have their very own website (of course) here.

My brain works like this: try to find the most efficient (while also being scenic) way of getting from point A to point B, etc. Try not to go too fast, because we need to pace ourselves so we don't burn out and also allow for lots of recovery time because of chronic illness. So starting from the middle is essentially scrambling my circuits, because there is no way to suddenly make this trip efficient. And we might have to skip some things that are REALLY important to me to see and do.

So as of right now my brain is still trying to process how to make this trip one where we can see all we want and do all we want and still have enough down time and not spend too much time on the road or relocating. I haven't figured it out yet, not by a long shot.

But I do have some tools to help, and I thought I'd share some of them.

In a fit of frustration and bewilderment, I searched YouTube for "how to plan an RV trip" and found this video:  


From there I found a great hour plus long chat from one of my favorite RV YouTubers, Technomadia, and I actually listened to the entire thing until the end:


I found both of these to be helpful, and after watching the first video, I:

1) Started making a private map of all the places I want to go in Google Maps "My Maps" feature. I'm still figuring out how to use this more effectively, but right now I'm digging how I can color code and choose my own icons for each place on the map. So I can place something and see where it is, places I want to go only.

2) Went to the Good Sam website and began taking advantage of their trip planner (we were already members). This one is useful for mapping fuel stops along the way, realizing you're in an RV and not a car, and some of the campgrounds.

3) Went ahead and sprung for the membership for RV Trip Wizard (I like that it also helps calculate distance traveled per day and fuel costs as well as other expenses (provided you know what they will be ahead of time). It also accounts for the height of your RV and lets you avoid routes that may have low clearances, You can also tell it to avoid toll roads, which may save some $ in the long run. It's fairly clunky as apps go, and their website needs a lot of help, but I do like the features and the simplicity of it. Hopefully I'll figure out how to use all the useful features that make it worth the $.

4) Discovered that Trip Advisor is the Yelp of destinations, and tells you where to go in any city in any town anywhere. I have fallen down several rabbit holes on that site. I haven't used their trip planner because it doesn't seem to be useful to me but I do like that you can make a little interactive map on your profile of where you've been and where you hope to go. It's kind of cool to see that.

So I've started at least, and am feeling a bit less overwhelmed with it all than I did the first day I started planning. I know RV parks can fill fast, so I need to book ahead, but I have a slight advantage of traveling in the "off" months, even though the states I'm traveling in DO have more likelihood of hosting the fulltimers. (They're the warm places!)

Now I just have to get my head around what's going to be the best route for us with the most downtime that's also still got all the fun stuff.

So what do you use to plan your RV or other road trips? How do you keep your sanity while you do it? I need all the help I can get!

(I Don't Know) How to Plan an RV Trip Without Pulling Out Your Hair

So here we are, in the final stages of getting our house on the market. My husband is losing his mind (and body) to the exhaustion of getting all the things just so for the house, so it can go on the market. We have an amazing property, so we know it will sell fast, especially in this market of low inventory and high demand.

And I seem to be losing my mind to a later departure date than intended and a specific time frame in which we need to be almost  thousand miles from here.

Wow. As I'm typing this post, a perfect example of how our life has been working just happened. The refrigerator in the RV started leaking water. Or rather, my husband noticed that is has been leaking water, so this means of course STOP EVERYTHING NOW, because water leaks = mold, and we can NOT have mold in the RV. No.

I just had to interrupt the writing of this post to go do some research really quickly about the possible causes of water leaks in RV fridges and what can be done about them. It's the freaking ice maker that I've rallied against since the beginning - no good can come of a water line running into an appliance with no plumbing when you're driving down the bumpy roads of the world. I'm NOT a fan of ice makers. No.

Right now he is out there trying to cap these lines and do a quick fix that will work for now, but we are replacing this fridge. I've had it with this nonsense with this damn RV fridge. Pretty much no new decent coaches are made with RV fridges anymore - they use residential ones. Because they are BETTER. Even for riding down the road in an RV, which they aren't particularly made for. And all you have to do to make them work in an RV is add latches to he doors. No, they can't run on propane, but no one seems to care. Left and right everywhere I read, people are replacing their RV fridges with residential ones. Especially the full-timers!

Now, where was I? Planning the RV trip (if we ever actually leave). 

My original plan was for us to amble down the Oregon Coast (I thought we'd be leaving in early October, which is THE best month of the year for the Oregon Coast - it was going to be perfect). We'd stop at all the cool beaches and wander through the small beach towns and take lots of great photos to share on Instagram and here. We'd stay a week here, two weeks there, and make our way down the coast and into California, where we'd continue at that pace until we finally arrived in Los Angeles at the beginning of November. (My event is November 5th). 

But when I told my realtor I expected we'd be closing on the house by October 6th, I imagined her laughing inwardly as she informed me that it often took around 45 days to get the loan through once the house had an offer. Which puts us at more like October 25th.

I have an event in Los Angeles November 5th. It's enough of an event that I REALLY don't want to have to cancel. I cannot fly to LA for ALLTHEREASONS, so that's out. For this event, I'd like to be settled into an RV park at least 5 days prior, which only really leaves 5 days to drive down from Oregon to Los Angeles, California. And that means skipping the entire Oregon Coast, Northern California (the Redwoods) and my friends in those areas.

DAMMIT.