How do you decide where to go?

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airborne_spoon

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I'll be living in my trailer full time in a few months an i have a few places i plan to go but nothing after that? How do y'all determine where to travel to, and how long to stay there?
 
I’m still working so we can only roll out when I have vacation. Living in southwest Florida, it takes a couple days to get anywhere. That limits our trips to about New Mexico west and Pennsylvania north for the typical 10 day vacation trip. I don’t like to exceed 250 miles a day (might miss Happy Hour🤪).

So far it’s just a few days in each location, or maybe just one night.

When I retire in 3 years, look out! Wife and I plan on California (winter), Idaho and New England (summer), with weeks-long stays.

To answer your question, we like to eat regional food and plan our stops/stays accordingly.
 
A lot of our trips are driven by the weather. But first by asking, where do we want to be? Winter in the Northwest....well, we'd rather be warm and dry. Regions of the Southwest are perfect for that. Or, we want to see a destination like Glacier. Well, Glacier is busy and/or snowy, so we try to hit the between period and see it when kids are back in school, but before the weather turns too chilly. Or beating the crowds on an early season opener.
 
I’m still working so we can only roll out when I have vacation. Living in southwest Florida, it takes a couple days to get anywhere. That limits our trips to about New Mexico west and Pennsylvania north for the typical 10 day vacation trip. I don’t like to exceed 250 miles a day (might miss Happy Hour🤪).

So far it’s just a few days in each location, or maybe just one night.

When I retire in 3 years, look out! Wife and I plan on California (winter), Idaho and New England (summer), with weeks-long stays.

To answer your question, we like to eat regional food and plan our stops/stays accordingly.
Yeah my plan is for about 200-300 miles a day. I'll be retiring in April so free time is the only time I'll have. In CA the winter winds are intense at least in So-Cal where I am, so be aware of that whenever y'all come this way.
 
Winter it's elevation. The lowest we can get within 2 to 4 hours is Moab at 4,000 feet. Try to escape the colder 0F high altitude locations and can get as low as we can go at 4,000 feet altitude camping. Use to be able to boondock around Moab, but now it's 6,000 feet elevation at the closest and it can get too cold. Got so sick of the negative Fahrenheit cold we headed to Saline and Death Valley to escape. It was 14F with snow where we camped in Death Valley near Telescope Peak.

Summer it's elevation. The lowest we can get within 2 to 4 hours is Moab. Try to escape these hotter 100F low altitude locations and the Moab (Colorado Plateau) region is where we don't go. It's the High Country at up to 12,000 feet altitude camping.

Spring and Fall it's mud and snow. Mud in Moab and mud and snow at the higher elevations. Got to watch the weather. There's flash flooding in the Colorado Plateau. Bentonite clay mud when wet sticks like peanut butter on tires and dries like concrete.
 
I'll be living in my trailer full time in a few months an i have a few places i plan to go but nothing after that? How do y'all determine where to travel to, and how long to stay there?
I like nice weather in the middle of winter, so I go just about anywhere that has warm weather this time of year. I am not picky about where I go. I will stay here for a week and then to Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

Perhaps I will head into AZ after that. OPCNM and West Tucson are a couple of places I like to visit.

-Don- Salton Sea SRA, CA
 
Winter means just the lower tier of states if you don’t want cold, and even then you have to check the elevation. Spring, summer, and fall opens up the rest of the country. We like to structure a trip around an interest. For example, we like history, so we have done a few trips following National Historic Trails. Maybe you want to wander to bluegrass festivals or areas to collect fruit from pick your own orchards or visit all the military museums in a four state radius. Just wild examples, but choose your interests and make a list.
 
How do y'all determine where to travel to, and how long to stay there?
I took an early retirement at 57 and part of the process was attending a preretirement seminar. One of the things that we were taught was that one needs to have at least a few plans and goals in order to measure the success of our time. I suggest that you first consider what things you enjoy and and what your hobbies are. One of the things that I have always enjoyed is wildlife related activities so we spent a lot of our time as resident volunteers at national wildlife refuges around the country. We would visit the USFWS volunteer site and look for refuges in areas that we had never been and contact them. You may also want to consider signing up for information from Volunteer.Gov to get information on a long list of possible places to volunteer. If that sort of thing isn't of interest to you, you might want to play golf in each state, visit major league baseball parks, state capitals, or maybe see how many of our national parks and monuments you can visit. We also mixed parks, national monuments, and historic sites into our planning. We usually planned to spend at least a month in any major targeted area and often as much as 3 months. We would try to visit everything of interest within 100 or 200 miles of each of our stops. We always planned to travel into the north in the summers and somewhere south for winters. There are so many opportunities to volunteer, or to just visit new areas. You must have had dreams in your younger days of places you wanted to see and things that you dreamed of doing that you can now use to develop your plans?

We spent 12 years on the road fulltime and in those years we spent 1 month or more in 39 states and spent a week or more in 49. We visited 34 national parks and 36 national monuments, and many state, county and assorted other parks and historic sites. I only wish that we were still on the road but age and health issues got in the way.
 
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then you have to check the elevation.
Such as here, 200 feet below sea level. Very nice sunny day here with a light wind. 67F here right now, 72F for tomorrow with a real feel of 73F. As shown here.

I am staying here for seven nights. Only $196.00 for the week, $28.00 per night (if age over 62). Come first, first serve. Do NOT waste your time with trying to book online for here! Always plenty of empty spaces here. The website always says nothing available. Perhaps this is why there are so few here! So I hope they never fix that. And it's not me, the camp host here noticed the same thing on the website. I was just chatting with her.

But not a whole lot to do around here, but I never have an issue with that. I always find things to do anywhere.

-Don- Salton Sea SRA, CA
 
I suggest seeing some of the National Parks and Monuments. Get a yearly pass or a one off seniors pass if you're eligible.
 
I took an early retirement at 57 and part of the process was attending a preretirement seminar. One of the things that we were taught was that one needs to have at least a few plans and goals in order to measure the success of our time. I suggest that you first consider what things you enjoy and and what your hobbies are. One of the things that I have always enjoyed is wildlife related activities so we spent a lot of our time as resident volunteers at national wildlife refuges around the country. We would visit the USFWS volunteer site and look for refuges in areas that we had never been and contact them. You may also want to consider signing up for information from Volunteer.Gov to get information on a long list of possible places to volunteer. If that sort of thing isn't of interest to you, you might want to play golf in each state, visit major league baseball parks, state capitals, or maybe see how many of our national parks and monuments you can visit. We also mixed parks, national monuments, and historic sites into our planning. We usually planned to spend at least a month in any major targeted area and often as much as 3 months. We would try to visit everything of interest within 100 or 200 miles of each of our stops. We always planned to travel into the north in the summers and somewhere south for winters. There are so many opportunities to volunteer, or to just visit new areas. You must have had dreams in your younger days of places you wanted to see and things that you dreamed of doing that you can now use to develop your plans?

We spent 12 years on the road fulltime and in those years we spent 1 month or more in 39 states and spent a week or more in 49. We visited 34 national parks and 36 national monuments, and many state, county and assorted other parks and historic sites. I only wish that we were still on the road but age and health issues got in the way.
I will be retired at 38 so I'll have quite a bit of wandering around time before i get around to settling down. I've thought about volunteering for Spartan races to get a crapload of free races then see how many trifectas i can do in 1 year. My goal for 2022 was to do 2 trifectas which i was successful and even did an extra 2x 15k tough mudders too.

My hobbies are brewing beer which i cant do on the road as it requires too much equipment i cant bring around with me, and outdoors stuff. I was thinking of hiking the tallest peak in each state even though places like Florida 350 ft is the highest point lol.

I suggest seeing some of the National Parks and Monuments. Get a yearly pass or a one off seniors pass if you're eligible.
I have the free lifetime national parks pass (America the beautiful or whatever its called) so I'll prob use that a few times, i just wish it gave a discount on camping not just free entry. But the NV pass is nice as it gives free entry and camping and its only $30/year.

Growing up we traveled every summer so I've actually been to a lot of the parks around the country, but it will be nice to see them as an adult with a different perspective.
 
You could try visiting all the breweries 😁 We try that.

Look at photos online and see where you fancy.

Do some routes done by others.

Check blogs for ideas.

Check out Campendium for free camping spots. Lots of other websites do same. Boondockers Welcome is people giving you a free night on their property.

Lots of forest campgrounds are cheap too.

Passport America and Goodsam give discounts on RV Parks.
 
I was thinking of hiking the tallest peak in each state even though places like Florida 350 ft is the highest point lol.
That would be a good start to a plan. If you were to route to a few of those locations, you could then fill that in with things like brewery visits and maybe a race or two. As to brewing beer on the road, Mark Nemeth of the Escapees organization used to brew beer in his fifth wheel when he was fulltime. Just find a spot that you could enjoy for 6 weeks or so and move once it has been bottled.

Surly at 38 years old you still have a few things that you haven't yet done which you would enjoy?
 
I have sons in Ohio and in Napa, CA, plus I like to alternate winters in Florida and the desert southwest. I tend to bounce around to see kids and grandkids, plus, I have a couple of places I really want to go to that I missed because of COVID--western Canada, for example.

Weather is also a big one. I cannot spend winters in Ohio or in Michigan where I am from, so I tend to spend summers there. And I have most of my doctors in Ohio, so I need to stop there for a few weeks each spring or summer to catch up on tests and appointments.

There are also places I really just like to go to and spend time--like Zion, Valley of Fire in NV, and Willow Beach near Lake Mead, etc. Ditto for several places in Florida, so I make sure I hit them every year or two.
 
That would be a good start to a plan. If you were to route to a few of those locations, you could then fill that in with things like brewery visits and maybe a race or two. As to brewing beer on the road, Mark Nemeth of the Escapees organization used to brew beer in his fifth wheel when he was fulltime. Just find a spot that you could enjoy for 6 weeks or so and move once it has been bottled.

Surly at 38 years old you still have a few things that you haven't yet done which you would enjoy?
Yeah if i had something large like a truck and a 5th wheel i could see easily brewing. but my space is a bit more condensed so i have to use it efficiently. Just sitting at home looking at my brewing stuff it takes up a good bit of space. So I'm done brewing till i get around to buying a house somewhere.

After being in the Army for 20 years and traveling around the world there isn't much I've not done or seen, same with foods I've eaten more animals than most people can even list lol. That's why i kinda want to just drive around and relax for my retirement.
 
Depends on what one likes to do.

We like caves, natural history museums, art museums, living history museums, aquariums, botanical gardens, wildlife refuges, oceans, lakes, rivers and places the dog can go with us. I like to add a restaurant to the mix (onlyinyourstate is my best source along with google maps.... high star count with lots of reviews is the tipoff to a good local restaurant). We also like places that are not wall-to-wall people. We don't care for shopping or drinking.

For locations, I like to look at onlyinyourstate.com and pinterest as a starting point. I use mymaps (google maps) to create a state map filled with places I find interesting. I add nearby campgrounds/rv parks and restaurants to the mix. the campgrounds (CG) and RV Parks (RVP) are renamed to have a prefix in front of the name ($30 BR/W/50/30/S CG name). I also note the month/year in the notes along with any needed info (cash only, reservation only, max length). These get saved in state travel directories. I have several state directories that I add info to whenever of hear or read about a place that sounds interesting.

When I decide to go to a specific location, I pull up the relevant state map. Then I do a little more research on the area I'm going to. Add any additional places, check that my info is correct, updating as needed and then make a copy. The copy is named by the destination that I am going to. It will have fuel stops and everything else in the state directory but my driving route will be only on the destination map. I break my travel trip down by days going (usually WB) and returning (usually EB) (WB1, WB2, EB1, EB2).

I normally pick a town and use that town as a base for daytripping to the surrounding area. Saves me fuel costs and I think paying site rent for a week or month is a much better idea than paying nightly. I break my daytrip route by days (D1, D2, etc).
 

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