RV LIFE: The Trip-Planning Tool We Use
It may seem a little counterintuitive to write about another website on Rolling Nichols, but this is one we actually use.
Five or six years ago, I was getting frustrated trying to plan RV trips with Google Maps. Google Maps is very good at getting you from Point A to Point B, but RV travel adds another layer. I wanted something that would help me figure out not only how to get somewhere, but how far we wanted to travel each day, where we might stop, and whether the route actually made sense for an RV.
That’s when I stumbled across RV LIFE.
A quick note before I go any further: we have no affiliation with RV LIFE. We pay for our own membership, receive nothing from the company, and there are no affiliate links in this article. I recommend it simply because we’ve used it for years and found it useful.
If you’re new to RV travel, I think RV LIFE Pro is worth taking a look at for a year. I originally bought it because I needed a better way to plan trips. Years later, I’m still using it.
See what an RV LIFE Pro membership currently includes.
Routing Built Around the RV
One of the first things RV LIFE lets you do is enter information about your rig.
That matters.
You can tell it what you’re driving or towing and enter details about the RV. It can then build a route with an RV in mind instead of assuming you’re driving a passenger car. RV LIFE’s GPS routing can account for things such as vehicle dimensions, low clearances, weight limits and propane restrictions.
You can also set route preferences to avoid tolls, highways, ferries, tunnels and unpaved roads.
See the route preferences and RV restrictions RV LIFE lets you configure.
I still don’t blindly follow it.
In fact, I don’t blindly follow any GPS.
RV-specific routing substantially improves your odds of staying on an appropriate road, but no routing system is perfect. Road conditions change. Construction happens. Map data can be wrong or out of date. Occasionally a GPS can still send you someplace you don’t belong.
The chances are much lower when you’re using an RV-specific system configured for your rig, but the chances are not zero.
That’s why the driver still has to pay attention to road signs, clearance warnings and what is actually happening in front of the windshield.
If a sign and the GPS disagree, I’m going with the sign.
The Feature I Use the Most
My favorite RV LIFE feature may also be one of the simplest.
It lets you establish driving distances and then displays them visually on the map.
Mine are normally set at roughly:
- 250 miles
- 300 miles
- 350 miles
There’s nothing magical about those numbers. They just fit the way we travel.
Once I select where we’re starting and where we’re eventually going, I can look at the route and immediately see roughly where those distances put us.
For somebody who thinks visually, this is extremely useful.
Instead of repeatedly asking, “How far is that town?” or “How far is that campground?” I can look at the map, see where our comfortable driving range falls, and start looking around that area.
RV LIFE currently lets you define minimum, middle and maximum mileage ranges and display them on the map.
See how RV LIFE’s Driving Radius feature works.
Then I can zoom into the area around that 250-, 300- or 350-mile point and start looking for somewhere to stay.
It also fits nicely with our Rule of Threes. We aren’t trying to wring every possible mile out of a travel day. We’re trying to make the travel day comfortable.
Finding the Next Place to Stay
Once I know roughly where we want to stop, RV LIFE also helps me look at campgrounds in that area. Its map tools can display campgrounds directly while you plan.
That gives me a starting point for campground research without having to begin completely from scratch.
But I don’t consider that the end of the research.
Once a campground looks promising, I may go to its own website, look at satellite imagery, read additional reviews or look carefully at the entrance and surrounding roads.
Harriet and Vern are roughly 65 feet long when connected. A campground showing up on a map does not automatically mean I want to pull into it.
RV LIFE gives me a very good starting point. Experience tells me to verify the rest.
It Remembers Where We Went
This is one of those features I appreciate more today than I did when I first subscribed.
You build a trip and give it a name. Later, the trip is still there.
That becomes surprisingly useful.
Suppose two years from now I’m thinking about a trip we took to Wisconsin.
When did we stop in Cedar Rapids?
What was the name of that campground?
How did we route ourselves through there?
Instead of rebuilding the trip from memory, I can go back and look.
RV LIFE organizes trips by status, including Active, Tentative and Archived, and archived trips can be reopened later.
See how RV LIFE organizes and archives saved trips.
That has also become useful for Rolling Nichols. If I’m writing about an older trip and trying to remember where we stopped or how we got there, the old itinerary can give me a very good place to start.
I Still Use a Separate RV GPS
Even though RV LIFE has its own navigation capability, I prefer having a dedicated RV GPS sitting in front of me while I drive.
We use a Garmin RV 1095.
It was a gift from my oldest brother. I’m not sure I would have spent the money on the top-of-the-line model myself at the time, but it has turned out to be one of the central pieces of our travel setup.
Once configured the way you like it—and it is very configurable—it becomes much more than something that tells you where to turn.
Mine displays destination information, arrival time, upcoming stops and other things I want in front of me while driving.
I even use it as my primary speedometer.
RV LIFE also offers RV-specific turn-by-turn and point-to-point navigation through its mobile app, including routing tailored to the selected RV.
See how RV LIFE’s RV-safe GPS navigation works.
For us, though, the two tools serve different purposes:
RV LIFE helps me build the trip.
Garmin helps me drive it.
And the same warning applies to both.
Neither one gets to overrule common sense.
If the Garmin tells me to turn down a road that doesn’t look right, I don’t turn until I’m satisfied that it is right. If I see a clearance sign that concerns me, I believe the clearance sign. If necessary, I keep going and find another way.
As I mentioned in Driving 65 Feet, there is almost always another road, another exit or another way to recover.
There is very rarely a good reason to force the situation.
Where Artificial Intelligence Fits
I also use artificial intelligence when planning trips now.
AI is useful for finding interesting stops, researching towns, comparing alternatives, looking for things along a route, and sometimes pointing out possibilities I hadn’t considered.
But AI doesn’t replace RV LIFE for me either.
Sometimes I simply want to look at a map and see:
Here’s the route.
Here’s about 250 miles.
Here’s 300.
What’s around there?
For that kind of visual planning, RV LIFE still works extremely well.
AI has become another tool in the box.
It hasn’t replaced the box.
A Small Naming Note
There is one potential point of confusion on this website.
We have a section on Rolling Nichols called Life on the Road. That’s simply our collection of stories and lessons about the practical side of traveling by RV.
RV LIFE, in capital letters, is the company and trip-planning service I’m talking about in this article.
They are completely unrelated.
Would I Recommend It?
Yes—particularly to somebody who is fairly new to RV travel.
This isn’t a sponsored recommendation. It is simply one of the tools that has worked well for us.
Eventually you’ll develop your own system.
You’ll figure out what GPS you like, how far you’re comfortable driving, how you research campgrounds, what kinds of roads you want to avoid, and what information matters to you.
We certainly have.
But RV LIFE gave me a very good framework while I was figuring those things out.
And even after several years of using it, I still pull it up whenever we’re planning a route somewhere we haven’t traveled before.
That’s probably the best recommendation I can give it:
I bought it because I needed help learning how to plan RV trips. Years later, I’m still using it.
