I’m looking at hitching up the camper* and heading from Northern California to South Carolina in a few months, and was wondering if there were any Mapquest-like trip planners that would let me input things like “I can only drive 55” and “I don’t want to drive more than 9 hours a day” and be able to plot out where I can expect to be at the end of the day, based on that daily average of almost 500 miles.
From there, I’d be able to adjust things along the lines of “If I drive only 6 hours, I’ll be able to spend the night with friends in Albuquerque” or “If I get a couple Jolt colas, I can push and get the hell out of Texas once and for all.”
Anything like that out there?
Don’t mind the red herring. I’m not looking for RV campgrounds - we’re going to be using the camper more as a lightweight cargo trailer since we own it, rather than renting a U-Haul trailer. We’ll be sleeping at motels.
As a trucker I can give you some good advice regarding your question. I have all the goodies,GPS, Laptop, sattilite controls etc. I find the best way for your trip planning is to use a truckers road map. These you can get at any truck stop. The only other info you need is regarding slowdowns due to construction. All the current info on this can be had at the State welcome center which are always just inside that states border off the interstate highway.
If you only can drive 55mph and you want to drive 9 hrs. a day you will be lucky to get 400 miles in a day. You have to figure with pee stops and eating and fueling and such you will only average 50 mph at the most. So between 400 and 450 is the best your going to do.
Microsoft Streets & Trips does this. You can adjust your driving speeds on various classes of roads, but a few years ago they changed it from actual speed numbers to “faster/slower than average, much faster/much slower than average.” Still, if you know what you’re capable of in X hours on the interstate, you can tweak these so they’re calibrated about right for you.
You can also adjust start/stop times, and add in time for x-minute breaks every y hours.
Thanks for the trucker map tip - looks like I’ll need to plan a mini road trip to the nearest “real” truck stop to get one.
As for driving time, I was planning on 9 hours of actual driving, not counting lunch and breaks to stretch the legs and drain the lizard. I’m not going to be like my iron-butt father was on family road trip vacations where the routine was closer to 15 hours a day - something like wake up and start driving at 6:00, stop for a QUICK breakfast at 9:00, drive until 1:00 for a QUICK lunch, stop for dinner at 7:00 and drive until 10:00 or until the road signs start looking like foreign languages. :eek: