How to Plan a Long RV Road Trip

When you decide to camp for longer than a long weekend

Photo by Csondy from Getty Images Signature on Canva Pro

It’s summer, which means travel for my family. It also means that between commentary on life, social issues, and our years living in Texas, I will deliver two to three posts a month about our family’s summer travels until the end of the year. To introduce my posts over the next several months, here’s how we plan for long road trips.

I ran into a friend at the gym the other day and I was telling her about our travel plans for Yellowstone. She knew we would be traveling with our RV, so she asked “Are you taking all of your food with you?” It made me realize just how much planning we have to do to go on a long camping trip, and how unusual that planning must be.

After all, on the few occasions our family has gone on non-camping vacations (like our anniversary trip to Hawaii), we’ve had a rough idea of what we want to do and where we want to go, but a lot of the other details are left for decisions-on-the-fly. Even our family trip to Disney last year only required us to plan for which day we wanted to do which activity, but we were in Orlando for the bulk of our vacation. We had a significant amount of flexibility and I didn’t have to meal plan because we knew we would have to eat in the parks. In fact, the most urgent planning of the trip was the Harvest Host stops we made on the way down to Florida and on our way home.

I had a lot to learn about trip planning when Jeff and I upgraded to a camper. Sure, when we took a trip out to Yellowstone in our mid-20s with only our tent and a cooler stuffed with food to last us a week, I had to have each stop reserved along the way, but then it would be several more years before I would have to actually plan a vacation. When Jeff insisted we buy a camper, our first outing was a trip as a couple to Gettysburg. I planned a few meals and packed lunch supplies, but we didn’t really know what we would be doing from day to day. We had one overnight stop planned and then spent the rest of the long weekend at a campground right outside of the city and national park. For the next two years, the longest time we camped was three nights for long weekends. We didn’t know how to plan for breakfast, lunch, and dinner for a week at a time. We didn’t know how much we could comfortably travel in a day while towing the camper. And we didn’t know the shortcuts for affordable one-night stays. And that lack of awareness came back to bite us when we lived in our camper during the first six weeks of living in Houston.

But experience has been the best teacher. Five years of planning for Campsgiving helped us learn how to pack a significant amount of food, prepare it all outside, and make planned time for excursions. Three Christmas break trips to West Texas taught us how to cut travel time to a location directly in half and plan for a week of meals with the awareness that access to large grocery stores was going to be limited. Two-week-long trips out to Arches, the Carolinas, and historic Pennsylvania taught us how to plan easy, healthy meals and tightly pack everything we would need in our RV’s refrigerator, freezer, and pantry.

So here are my steps to planning the perfect summer RV road trip:

#1 - Know your route

With any plan, this should probably go without saying, but planning a route is harder than it looks. Start with the big picture items and Google Maps to plan the distances.

My husband decided many years ago that 300 miles was his maximum comfort distance. And while that distance has increased over the years of experience and improved equipment (bigger truck, better hitch, better cameras, etc.), I still try to keep that in mind for the majority of our trips, especially when we are planning on multiple sightseeing stops along the way.

Two years ago, when we traveled out to experience history in Pennsylvania, I picked three main points of exploration. Because the drive to Gettysburg was over five hundred miles, I split that drive in half with a stop at a state park in Ohio. When we went to Philadelphia, we camped in New Jersey so we could use that as basecamp for day trips to Philly and then Valley Forge. On our way home, we spent two nights in Harpers Ferry to explore there before one more overnight stop as we returned to Indiana.

Here’s the thing: picking your “must-stops” of your trip first will help you fill in the blanks and determine where you need to stay along the way. And it’s possible that will mean short and long travel days. When we traveled east, we quickly discovered that our travel days to New Jersey and West Virginia were short enough that we got extra time to explore. Just view it as bonus time to relax and experience what each stop has to offer.

#2 - Determine the “Must-dos”

I want to do everything. My husband has to constantly cut back my dream list when I’m vacation planning. Our original plans when we went out east two years ago was to go all the way up to Maine, but gas prices and time convinced us to cancel those reservations. When we went to Arches, I had to cut out Capulin Volcano National Monument because Jeff told me we didn’t have time for another night on the road. Instead, we stopped there the following summer while on our way home from Colorado. While planning this year’s trip out to Yellowstone, I finally cut out the Grand Tetons because we couldn’t realistically take another two days, and instead we decided to really enjoy the stops we already have planned.

Once you have your “must-dos” planned, you can be open to adding to the experiences with surprise activities. When we went to the Carolinas three years ago, we mostly planned stops and opened ourselves up to what we could do in each place, which is how we ended up watching the fireworks and visiting a distillery while we were camping in North Carolina. We didn’t know either of those were possibilities until we arrived in the campground.

#3 - Meal plan

I do not normally meal plan. During the school year, I go shopping on Sundays after church, pick out the best sale items, and that is what is going to feed us from Monday through the weekend.

But over the years I’ve learned that camping trips are an entirely different story. Our best overnight stops are at Harvest Host locations or state parks, and often the food options nearby are minimal. We need food that is easy to prepare after a day of traveling. Once we are in our choice locations, we spend entire days out exploring. Again, we need easy meals to prepare once we return to the camper. I’ve finally started planning our meals on a spreadsheet and then making a shopping list from that meal plan. Now it’s become an essential part of our travel planning. Does that mean we stick to the strict schedule? No, we change plans and occasionally find fun places to eat out while we’re exploring, but having a plan actually gives us more flexibility.

What are some of our favorites for the road?

• Enchiladas (pre-made before we leave using this recipe)

• Frozen lasagna (from Costco)

• Orange Chicken (again, Costco)

• Fajitas

• Pulled pork (we make it before we leave and freeze it until we’re ready)

• Hamburgers or brats (easy to pack and quick after a day of traveling)

• French dip (it cooks all day while you are exploring and then you come home to a hot meal)

• Sam’s Club Chicken Salad for lunches on the road

Camping road trips can be one of the best ways to see the country, but if you want it to be enjoyable, you need to make sure you have a plan. Can the plan change? Sure, but at least you have a head start for each day.

Get a copy of my planning spreadsheet below:

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