Newbie requests help on solo trip across the U.S.
Hello,
Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'm hoping you'll be able to help me make my first trip across the U.S. a good one. I'm new at RVing and taking it slow. What I'm hoping for is to steer around heavy weather and steer clear of roads that are closed.
What's the best method for staying ahead of troubled roads? While my Garmin 760 LMT routes me around roads known to be inappropriate for RVs, that doesn't help for roads that have closed recently. I have been able to find DOT local highway conditions for UT and CO. Is there a real time tool out there that will help a new navigator?
What's the best way to plan for weather? The 10 day forecasts I have found are for cities rather than regions. My weather alert apps help me when local weather problems crop up but there's no sense in driving into a problem if simple planning can avoid it. What are the best tools for this job?
At some point I step back and laugh at myself for taking so long to plan. I imagine experienced RVs have their route planning down to a science. I'd like to get on the path to that process. I'm not looking for shortcuts, I want to learn the details, the thinking behind them and take intelligent steps. What I don't want is to go around in circles, waste hours and days searching fruitlessly for information means and methods that are well known already.
I'm hoping to develop a route planning process that efficiently gives me enjoyable and event free travels. For me, on this trip it's as much about what I don't want to see as what I do want to see.
I'm ready willing and able to learn.
controlling what you can, and accepting what you can't
Welcome to the RTA Forum!
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I imagine experienced RVs have their route planning down to a science.
This line really stuck out to me, because I really think it's at the heart of your problem: Planning your route isn't a science, and in fact, most people don't plan everything out to every last detail. There are people who don't make their plan until they wake up that morning - or change their plan because they feel like turning right instead of left.
The beauty of being on the road is the ability to discover what's out there. People frequently come on this forum and ask things like, "tell me where to find the hidden gems," when by their very nature, anything that people would respond with is no longer a hidden gem. The hidden gems are what you find by allowing the road itself to be your guide, and stopping when something catches your attention - even if it wasn't in your original plan. If you are focused on scheduling out every last detail, you're going to miss a whole lot.
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I'm hoping to develop a route planning process that efficiently gives me enjoyable and event free travels. For me, on this trip it's as much about what I don't want to see as what I do want to see.
If your goal is about efficiency and event-free travel, then you're kind of missing the point. If you are already focusing on what you don't want to see, then you have already closed yourself off to countless potential opportunities. At some point, you are just following a schedule and checking things off a list, now the beauty of a roadtrip is that you get to approach it anyway you'd like and if you want to schedule out every last detail you are free to do that, but to me, that's not really much of a roadtrip.
I would strongly suggest you read this article (which is a bit like a mission statement for RTA): The Art of the Roadtrip.
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What's the best method for staying ahead of troubled roads? While my Garmin 760 LMT routes me around roads known to be inappropriate for RVs, that doesn't help for roads that have closed recently.
First off, what kind of "troubled roads" are you expecting? With the exception of seasonal road closures, there are really not much in the way of large scale road closures. You may have construction, or perhaps a weather related issue, and in most of those cases there is a posted detour. Those sorts of things are also typically posted by the DOT road condition site, but honestly, it's really nothing that I ever worry about, so I really don't have a better answer than that.
What I will tell you is that you should never blindly follow what a GPS tells you - especially in an RV, even if it will supposedly route you around routes not appropriate for RVs. A GPS is a great tool, if you take the approach that you decide where you want to go and how you want to get there, and then use the GPS to meet that goal. If you allow the tail to wag the dog, by just doing what the computer tells you, you can quickly find yourself in a place you shouldn't be, especially not in an RV. Paper maps are a fantastic tool that still can't be completely replaced by computers and GPS.
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What's the best way to plan for weather? The 10 day forecasts I have found are for cities rather than regions. My weather alert apps help me when local weather problems crop up but there's no sense in driving into a problem if simple planning can avoid it
Again, I'm not exactly sure what you're hoping to find. Yes, most web/app based weather forecasts are generally based on cities, but the weather for a city is generally applicable for the region. The weather in Denver usually isn't much different than the weather in Colorado Springs. I'll also say that 10-day forecasts are barely worthy of being a rough guide - until you're about 3 days out, forecasts just aren't very accurate, and if you're concerned about severe thunderstorms, then you're looking at same day before you'll have anything even close to accurate (especially because you're typically talking about a pretty small area). Again, I don't have much more to tell you, because, other than a check of forecast for the area I'm planning to spend the night, especially if I'm camping, it's never something I've worried all that much about or every found to me that much of an issue.
