Family destinations between NE PA & Austin, Tx

[rgalante46]

My wife and I are thinking about renting an RV and taking our family on a 9 day road trip this April. We have 4 boys ages 16, 14, 12 & 3. Ideally we'd like to stop in Nashville and Austin before heading home.

Any suggestions on "must see" destinations along the way?

[Southwest Dave]

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

We really don't do 'Must see's' here as tastes vary and my 'must see' might be your 'must avoid'. What I would suggest is to get a good map of the areas you are visiting and get your boys interested by getting them to research what they would like to see as well as your own choices. If you plan as a team the trip will be much more fun for everyone. You can use RTA as a research tool, searching the forums, the RTA maps and much more you will find in the tool bars and following each lead. You can scroll down this page and find similar threads to help. Of course we can help with any specific questions you might have and others will probably have their own suggestions but I hope that will help you to get started in your planning.

Although it depends on where in NE and PA you start from/go to thats going to be a lot of miles over a 9 day period, especially in a slower moving RV with 6 people, you could spend most of your time looking out of the windows. For a fun family trip over 9 days I would try to keep the mileage to a maximum of around 2000 miles so you can get outside and 'smell the roses'. Remember collecting an RV is normally later in the day by the time you have been shown around to see how it operates and get it packed up etc and return is normally before 10am so that could reduce your road time to 7.5 days.

[travelingman]

Nine days sounds like Saturday through the following Sunday. My renting experience is you arrive at the rental place Saturday afternoon and spend a couple hours there before leaving. Later, you return the RV by 11am. So, 9 days becomes 7 1/2

Is your RV center even open on Sunday? Many are not. If that’s the case, you’re down to 6 1/2 days.

Just some things to consider.

[AZBuck]

As Dave and travelingman have pointed out, it's quite possible that your nine day RoadTrip could easily become as little as six and a half days by the time you take into account the pick-up, drop-off and required orientation for the RV. But there's an even bigger problem. At 3,400 miles round-trip (I used Scranton/Wilkes-Barre as a starting point) and in a slow moving vehicle, it will take you a good eight days just to make the drive, with NO stops along the way, in Nashville or otherwise, and NO time spent in Austin other than to immediately turn around and head home. Remember, too, that in an RV you don't just pull off at almost any highway exit and go directly into a motel parking lot. You could easily spend an hour each evening getting off the Interstate, traveling down country roads to an RV campsite, getting checked in and converting your vehicle into a home. Then you have to repeat the process each morning in reverse. Frankly, I don't see how this trip gets made as you envision it. You'd need to find another four or five days, that is another week off work, to make this even remotely doable/enjoyable.

AZBuck