How To Plan The Best Driving Route For Your RV

Welcome to our How-To Series. In this video series, we will explain the many how-tos of Airstream Living. From full-time RVing, to travel, to living in a tiny space we will share what we have learned from living this lifestyle. We encourage you to comment below with your own advice on this topic, as well as any other How-Tos you would like to see.

This week’s topic is How To Plan The Best Driving Route For Your RV or Airstream. The first step in planning your route is figuring out your starting point and ending point. We try to limit our travel days to about 3 hours and plan accordingly. Meanwhile, remember that when driving an RV you tend not to go the speed limit on some roads, therefore make sure to expand your time estimate based on this.

The second step is using a GPS or map to figure out your route. We use Google Maps to start. Once we see the route it plans we check AllStays to ensure that the route looks good in terms of road restrictions, low bridges, and road grades. We will also google the route if it looks particularly curvy or we have any questions. In general truck routes are okay.

Once we have the route planned we use AllStays and the RestStops app to find our planned stops along that route. We aim for 1 stop every 1-2 hours depending on how we are feeling. Not all Rest stops have truck parking so make sure to check ahead. If we need to find diesel on our route we will use AllStays to find gas stations with RV lanes or at least truck parking and an RV dump (this implies they are big rig friendly). If we don’t have the Airstream attached we use GasBuddy to find the best prices.

A last note, remember to plan WHEN you are going too. Avoiding rush hour in cities when you are able makes for a much nicer driving day.

This week’s links:
Google Maps
AllStays
Rest Stops App
Gas Buddy