RV Canucks - RV Life, One Weekend at a Time!
Welcome to RV Canucks, the chart-topping podcast where part-time RVers Dan and Melina share their adventures, tips, and stories from the road. As weekend warriors, we show you how far you can go—whether it’s a quick getaway or an epic cross-country journey.
Join us as we navigate scenic routes, uncover hidden gems, and offer practical advice for RV enthusiasts of all levels. From campground reviews and travel hacks to heartwarming (and hilarious) stories from the road, our mission is to inspire your next adventure and make every mile unforgettable.
Hit the road with us and discover how to live the RV lifestyle—one weekend at a time! You CAN see all of North America as a part-time RV Family, it just takes a bit of careful planning...stick with us to see how!
RV Canucks - RV Life, One Weekend at a Time!
The 5 Best Road Trip Planning Apps | RV Canucks Episode 3
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RV Canucks
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Season 1
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Episode 3
On today's episode, we're talking about the five most essential websites or apps for taking a road trip. And it all starts with hauling our current trailer 3000 kilometers round trip to chase a solar eclipse. (Which was just a good excuse for a road trip and a chance to hit the road.)
It was the first time we've taken our 29' trailer and the girls on a really big trip and it was really I think a dry run for bigger things to come. We talk our five favourite apps:
- Roadtrippers
- Pilot/Flying J
- RV Parky
- Google Satelite View
- Allstays Camp & RV
We also talk about some of the best places we've had an overnight at:
- RV Express 66 RV Park in Marshfield, MO
- Enchanted Trails RV Park in Albuquerque, NM
- And of course, that famous park that has golf-cart pizza delivery - Ocean Lakes Family Campground in Myrtle Beach, SC
Finally, we answer our FIRST listener question about Bike Racks for RVs and Trailers!
Don't forget to subscribe and follow us on Instagram @rvcanucks
Get $10 off Roadtrippers Premium, just use code RVCanucks21 at Checkout!
Like what you hear? Please leave us a review wherever you listen!
Don't Forget to follow us on TikTok and Instagram @RVCanucks
You can always reach out at hello@rvcanucks.com - we love hearing from you!
https://linktr.ee/Rvcanucks
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Hello fellow travelers fellow our viewers or my good friend Donna who doesn't own a trailer but wants to we are coming to you live from the trailer in our driveway at 945 on a Tuesday evening. Welcome to Episode Three. On today's episode, we're talking about the five most essential websites or apps for taking a road trip. And it all starts with hauling our current trailer 3000 kilometers round trip to chase a solar eclipse really the solar eclipse is just an excuse for a good road trip and a chance to hit the road. It was the first time we've taken the trailer and the girls on a really big trip and it was really I think a dry run for bigger things to come and we learned a lot of little things that let us travel more efficiently in subsequent trips. But you know, we left Ontario we traveled down through the Virginia's went through some cool tunnels got to the Carolinas got to Myrtle Beach we went to ocean lakes campground we had a 29 foot trailer and I dare say it made it feel like we were in a pup tent.
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With some of the big rigs that you see down there, great campsite on the ocean. And here's the best part, folks. They deliver pizza to your campsite in a golf cart.
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I was just talking to the girls actually the other day about this trip, and it was only in 2017. So I mean, it wasn't that long ago. And they're not that little. But literally both of them said, Yeah, I don't really remember much about the ocean. But I remember getting pizza on the golf card. So clearly, it was a highlight of a trip for them. But we really wanted to see this eclipse and the covered wasn't fantastic from Ontario. And we saw on the news that the coverage down in the Carolinas was going to be somewhere around 98%. And we thought, heck yeah, let's go. And we kind of figured we had this plan in the back of our head that we wanted that bucket list trip down route 66. And that was something that we knew we had always wanted to do. Our biggest trip up to that point was that trip that we mentioned in episode one to pancake Bay with our previous pop up trailer, we kind of figured you know, it's a 16 hour drive. If they can make it 16 hours, they can certainly make it you know, 34 hours or whatever
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It was to get to California. So we use this as a really good jumping off point, one of the ways we did that was discovering some of these websites and apps to help us plan a little more efficiently. And I would say my pick for the number one app for me, it was Roadtrippers. And I'm the big planner, I'm the one who tends to plan out, you know, the detours and the points of interest and the stops to see and we can sit down as a family and take that basic map. And then we have a look at whatever one wants to see. And we figure out about how many hours a day we want to travel and we really tweak it from there. So when I discovered Roadtrippers, and honestly, I don't even remember how I found it. I think I just started doing internet searches for you know, trip planners, and I kind of stumbled upon it. And this website has been invaluable to us every single trip we've taken. we've plotted it out on Roadtrippers and we've saved the trip. So it's something that we can go back if we need to reference for a show or to give somebody a review, we can go back and pull that so what's great about Roadtrippers there is a free version and there is a paid version. We did use the free version for our first trip and then we upgraded to the paid version.
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Just unlocks a little bit more. And the great thing about it is because it wasn't just a leisurely trip down to the Carolinas, like we were on a mission, we were on a deadline, we had to be there because the eclipse was happening on a certain day in August, and we had to be there. You know, before then we had to be set up and ready to see it. So the great thing about Roadtrippers is that it gives you those estimated hours between your plot points, like we knew we wanted to make it to at least Virginia. So it would say drive time is 10 hours to get somewhere on a plot point. And you know, you want to spend about 10 hours of drive time in the day. Well, for us, we had to adjust along the way because we realized that you know, if a map says it's seven hours or 10 hours of drive time, you can honestly add one or two hours on top of that for rest stops and food stops. And you know, since that point, we've refined the way we've traveled quite a bit to kind of cut down on some of that but just being able to see at a glance for this trip, how long it would be for each point really helped us decide where our stopping points would be realistically for the night and other thing it gives you is just like the
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Best attractions detours weird abandoned places you can filter it by photo ops points of interest campgrounds, landmarks Oh, there's pre made trip guides that allow you to be spontaneous. So if you just decide you know, I have four days or I have six days or I have 14 days and I want to do a specific loop, you can pick from a bunch of pre made trip guides that are already populated with places to stay and things to see so really allows you to be really spontaneous. Just pick one of the pre made trip guides hop in your rig and go so that was really fantastic. But the best thing about it was a lot of these points of interest that we wanted to see had pictures, they had reviews, they had blog posts that people would write in and tell you a little bit about what you're expecting to see. It really took the guesswork out of the trip for us which was something that was really good. So I cannot recommend Roadtrippers enough and you can find it on the internet@roadtrippers.com and there is a downloadable app for that. So if you are at all interested even just dreaming about a trip, go ahead and start making one for free and you'll see how addictive it is. So app number two
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I guess that's off to you, Dan, for the pilot flying j, yep. And so on Roadtrippers, you can use that throughout, say the winter to plan a trip, you don't have to plan it all at once, right? You can go on and work on that on a Saturday morning with your coffee and set it down and come back to it a week later, right? Yeah, it gives you a profile, you sign in for a profile. And you basically just save your trip. And you can go back to it, alter it as many times as you want, right. And so that does bring us to App number two, which gets us into the finer details of the trip, which is where you're going to get gas. And so you know, if your marriage is going to come apart anywhere, it's going to come apart when you have to back the trailer into the campsite. Or it's going to come apart when you need to wiggle your rig into the gas pump somewhere because you're running on fumes. And so one of the things that I really like is the pilot flying j app, the app lets you do some basic trip planning. And so once you've got that trip planned out in Roadtrippers, you take a look at your route and you can plan out your stops in smaller chunks in the flying j app and you can find out where the flying j gas stations are along the way. And so we don't know
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We stopped at a flying J. But the nice thing about a flying j is you get a consistent experience and you have really friendly staff there to help you navigate your trip. It's a big help for everybody to get through the trip in what could be a stressful experience. And so we always know that as we travel down the road, we might not stop at the flying j but at least we know that there's one close by where we can add gas to the tank get topped up on snacks and everybody can use the washroom and we can move down the road stress free. Mm hmm. In this particular instance, we actually used flying j as our first boondock experience in Wytheville Virginia. I have to admit I had a little bit of reservations about boondocking I just didn't have a lot of comfort with not being in a motorhome type vehicle where, you know, our escape vehicle, if we ran into trouble is not is not accessible to us like we actually have to leave the trailer and you know, a lot of those fears are totally unfounded but it just, I had never done something like that before. So that my level of comfort with that was way down, but honestly, I would
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I'm a complete convert to truckstop boondocking. After that first night did we have a shower there? I don't think we had a shower there. But here's the really great thing about the flying j app is it lets you filter for a lot of different facilities, ATMs gas diesel RV parking. Oh dedicated RV lanes. Dedicated RV lanes are amazing propane dumping freshwater you may not need all those services and just because it doesn't have RV lanes doesn't mean you can't go there to fill up on gas. But it's nice to know what you have in advance and my really my first experience with a flying j was just outside of Custer State Park in South Dakota. I was actually on a military training exercise and we started using the flying j truck stop to have showers and I will tell you folks, the flying j truck stop showers are by far the cleanest showers you're ever going to find in your life. Brand new towels exceptionally clean. Remember they have to meet a standard here to meet their corporate obligation.
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We're not being reimbursed by flying j we just have always had a really good experience with flying j the washrooms are clean, which is really important. So you know what you're gonna get as you travel down the road, and we have shower there as a family. I just can't remember where. But it was fantastically clean, like I wholeheartedly endorse it. And one thing I would say as well, you know, especially on this first trip, we hadn't really hammered down food storage and having prepared meals, like now I make box lunches for everybody that are in the car, which eliminates the need for us to stop but having the flying j, we could filter it like there's some flying Jays that don't have restaurants they might have a pizza warmer and some Cinnabon but we wanted to stay overnight. So we knew we needed dinner when we got there, and we knew we needed a good cup of coffee and breakfast in the morning. So we stopped it on the head of Denny's and that would satisfy everybody. So really, it's a really super helpful app to have on road trips. Even like Dan said, if you're not boondocking they're staying there or fueling up there. It's just nice to know what they have that it's there. It's a good safe
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place to go. And out of all the various truckstops. I would say pilot flying j has probably been our favorite. Yep. And so I think probably the next app we wanted to talk about is RV parking, RV parking. It's a free app. It lets you find places to camp anywhere from a Walmart or Cabela's parking lot, right up to a five star RV Resort. It's really easy to use even I can use it. And so what we found on our road trip across North America, when we went out to California is that maybe you don't want to boondock because it's too hot. You want to run your air conditioner. What we found is we could get RV sites close to the interstate for less than $30 a night that had full hookups. And then sometimes we didn't even unhitch the truck in the trailer. But what we didn't know was we had power, we had water and that meant we had a shower, and that meant we had air conditioning. And I think that made for much more civilized travel. I would also tell you that if you're cheap like me that if you pull in and you pay 30
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dollars to camp at an RV stop along the side of the interstate. Everybody can eat what's in the fridge for breakfast in the morning and for dinner as opposed to pulling into a truck stop and boondocking where inevitably you're pulling your wallet out and shelling out $80. So everybody can eat dinner and or breakfast that a sit down really helps you move along a little bit quicker and a little bit cheaper. Mm hmm. Absolutely. And I think the great thing about RV park is like Dan says, It's super easy to use. It's, it's not the fanciest app out there by any stretch of the imagination. But it you basically turn it on, you tap it, it finds your location, and it will hang out and it will show you the places to stay that are within the radius you're looking at. So what we would do or how we utilized it when we were going down route 66, or the I 40 is we would just go and say, oh, we're getting kind of tired. I think maybe two, two and a half hours. We want to stop for the night. So I would look ahead on the app or Dan would look ahead on the app and we would pick a place that we thought we might want to stop we would use the RV park app and we would find places to stay and as soon as those results popped up. We
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could see reviews can see their telephone number and we would call ahead and just ask, Hey, do you have any spots for tonight, there wasn't any issues we've ever had a parks being at full capacity. So everybody was really accommodating that way. And even if they were close, even if the office was closed, we stopped at a place in Missouri, Marshfield, Missouri, we called ahead said we were coming. They said, great. You're on site 13. If we're closed, when you get here, just drive right in the front gates. There'll be a cone move the comb Park and you can come come settle up with us in the morning. There was no giving them the credit card over the telephone. There was no taking of personal information. It was essentially the honor system. And the next morning, we got up and they opened up the office and we came and settled up with them paid for a night moved along the road. We did the same thing in Albuquerque as well, pulled in late, got to our site, made dinner and went and settled up the next morning. I don't think any one of those stops cost us more than $30. Absolutely. So I think probably what I would remind you too, about this RV park app is that it's got a great review section. And so if somebody left you a review two months ago that said don't go
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To this particular retailer and use their parking lot, that's probably reliable information. If somebody says I just pulled into this campground three weeks ago, and I had a great experience, that's good rival information, just be a good traveler and give an honest review. When you've left one of these places. It doesn't cost you any money. But it helps all of us out all together, because we're all in this together. I would say that's super huge, like there was parks that were probably fine. But we bypass them in favor of parks that had recent reviews, because some of them we went on and there weren't reviews for like a year. So we would say Oh, but there's one, you know, five minutes down the road that has, you know, three reviews over the last three months. So that's one thing I would say absolutely. Be a good traveler. Make sure if you use any of these facilities that you leave a review, because it's really, really helpful for those who are traveling that road behind you. Do we want to talk about Google Maps now? Yes, we do. It's another marriage saver. Such a marriage saver. And like, I don't like to use Google streetview like this is specifically like I go on Google Maps and pull up satellite view.
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Do this if we need to gas up, you know, Dan might say, hey, we've got a quarter tank left, we're gonna have to stop for gas. And I will look ahead if there isn't a readily available truck stop that we know that we can get in and out of. And there has been a ton of times where we've had to do this particularly going down route 66, where we tried to stick to old route 66 as much as possible, their little towns, right. So if we knew we needed gas, we had to look ahead. And you can't tell anything from a map. But when once I hit the satellite view, I could zoom in and say, yeah, there's no chance we're getting the trailer in there. Or if we do get it in, we're not getting it out. So we could pick very effectively, which gas stations or grocery stores and some of these really small towns that we could get into and that we could exit out of with our sanity and our marriage intact, right because you're looking for little things you're looking for where is the outside lane of the pump? Can I drive all the way around the building? Can I park out back is there parking adjacent to a restaurant adjacent to a store
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Those are the kinds of things that help you we talked in a previous podcast about Don't be afraid to stay in a hotel. It's a great resource to scope out the hotel and understand what does the road look like going into the hotel? Is there a spot to turn around? Is there a spot to park another RV or a truck because you will often find in those images, there are already people who have done the same thing. And you can rest assured that you can do that and fold ahead and just confirm again. But it helps you pick a good spot to stop at the end of the night and not scrambling for sure. Oh, whenever I'm cranky and tired and just done. We've learned this from from from experience. Yeah. And then I would say our last pick which is similar to the RV park app, it is a paid option. It's 1399 Canadian on the App Store and it's the all stays RV and camp app and it just kind of picks up where rv parchi leaves off. Now don't get me wrong. RV park is amazing. And I have no problem using it and it's one of our favorite apps to use. But if you're looking for something specific, like you just need to dump you can filter the all stays out
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By dump and it will show you all of the dump stations. You can specifically filter it by state park or Provincial Park which RV parky isn't fantastic app they they're great at really private campgrounds small enterprises but allstays is fantastic for you know the things like you know Walmart's, it will allow you to filter, the ones that allow you to stay overnight. If you ask the ones that don't even try it. They don't allow anyone to stay over and you can also filter specifically for roads that have low clearance. And let me tell you folks like there is nothing like the horror of approaching an underpass in the middle of St. Louis when you have not measured how tall your brand new trailer is, and you don't know if you're going to make it under this 14 foot clearance rail bridge. And just so everyone's clear, our rig is probably about 13 foot six inches. Listen.
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Much like I had to take that deer square we had to cross our fingers and hope that that 30 year old sign that said it was 13 feet nine inches
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Was 13 feet nine inches but we got through unscathed. There was no backing up but it
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was under control. Okay under control. All right. So one thing I will say we didn't mention this we talked about boondocking flying Jays and I think we've talked about cracker barrels before. I don't know if we've talked about cracker barrels, but folks they make good food. They do make fantastic food. I kind of feel like we've talked about cracker barrels but it's worth mentioning again, you can boondock at Cracker Barrel cracker barrels all have RV lanes right in their parking lot. I have yet to have been to a Cracker Barrel and we eat at them a lot that don't have RV lanes. So if they're if there's RV lanes and they're open and you just run in and talk to the manager, they will let you boondock there they give you free coffee in the morning which is a godsend. If you just need to get up and hit the road. If not you go in you have a nice leisurely breakfast and get on the road when you like the all stays app also allows you to filter by larger big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods Cabela's Bass Pro Shop, so really anything that you can imagine that you might need on your road trip, it allows you to filter by that
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Those things and find them easily. So to wrap up, we have listener questions. I'm so excited about this, that you all are interacting with us and actually asking questions that we can answer. Yeah, I jump up and down when I see it. So I'm really excited about it. Take it away, Dan. Yeah, we got a really good question from a listener really from a really nice family who heard the first podcast and it got them thinking about what the right decision was for a bike rack and whether they should have one that's mounted on the bumper or when it's mounted on the front of the trailer between the trailer and the tailgate, and I'm not going to tell you what type of bike rack to buy or what brand to buy. I'm going to give you a couple of things to think about and what my decision was, you can get bike racks to go on either end of the trailer, you probably want to investigate whether your bumper is suitable for adding more weight to the back of the trailer. The upside to putting it on the back of the trailer is it's nice and low to the ground. The downside is you need to be conscious about whether your bumper can handle that extra weight and you need
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To recognize that once those bikes go on the back of the bumper and you hop in the truck or the car, you probably are not going to see those bikes until you stop again, so you don't know if they're there or not. So the other option is to put them on the front of the trailer, typically up in over the propane tanks. And I prefer to have the bikes just like my teenage girls boyfriend, see them, keep them where he can see him as what my motto is, because the rack that we selected bolts directly to the frame, it goes over top of the propane tanks, I can see the bikes during the whole trip. And it gives me great relief to know that the bikes are there and that they're not loose. And if by chance, I think something starts to get loose, it's real easy to slide over and tighten it up and not drive down the road worried that maybe something's Come on loose, or maybe we've lost something. So I get a lot of security out of that. My one consideration is with newer pickup trucks, make sure that whatever model you select gets it up and over your tailgate. And so we initially purchased a model that didn't quite get us up and over
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The tailgate of astok F 150. But we sprung the extra 20 bucks and got it up and over the high tailgate. So that's maybe just one consideration you want to ask when you're at the party counter. The other thing I would say is don't be afraid to go into a dealership and see what they have set up and ask him a bunch of questions or ask somebody in your neighborhood what works for them when you're out for your your evening walk, I think you also need to think about how you want to load the trailer. Because really, you need to think about how much weight is in front of the axles, right? Because that stops a lot of sway. So if you're going to be packing a bunch of stuff in the back of your trailer, you probably don't want to add the weight of four or five bikes on the back of the trailer as well. And I mean keeping them where you can see them. Maybe that's a trauma response from us from the headless deer and, but it really is a very good idea and something that just requires a quick shoulder check to make sure that everything's okay. And you know what if you really have to and you're driving a pickup truck, you can put them in the bed of the truck, but you're giving up a lot of cargo space and you might not be able to get your tonneau cover closed, which means you're going to lose a little bit of fuel economy. It's okay for the bikes to get wet.
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But you may be you don't want to get you know some of the other things wet if you have to put them into the trailer, you got to worry about them rattling around inside the trailer you you know you need to find space to wiggle it in like some kind of puzzle, you know, I just personally like to get them out of the truck bed on the trailer at the front where I can see them nice and secure. And we don't have a ladder on the back of our trailer. So I use our truck rack as a towel drying rack all the time. It's fantastic because when you're on the road, everything should serve a dual purpose. So I'm two thumbs up for the type of bike rack that lets you hang towels on it. Yep. So I think maybe that's our kind of our question we'd answer this week. If you want to ask us a question or hear about a particular topic. You can leave it in a written review on Apple podcasts. That's actually where our listener question for next week comes from where we're going to talk about solar panels. You can always message us on Instagram at RV connects or you can email us at Hello at RV connects COMM And we'll answer it on a future show. So stay tuned and we will see you next week. Bye. Bye bye, folks.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Hello fellow travelers fellow our viewers or my good friend Donna who doesn't own a trailer but wants to we are coming to you live from the trailer in our driveway at 945 on a Tuesday evening. Welcome to Episode Three. On today's episode, we're talking about the five most essential websites or apps for taking a road trip. And it all starts with hauling our current trailer 3000 kilometers round trip to chase a solar eclipse really the solar eclipse is just an excuse for a good road trip and a chance to hit the road. It was the first time we've taken the trailer and the girls on a really big trip and it was really I think a dry run for bigger things to come and we learned a lot of little things that let us travel more efficiently in subsequent trips. But you know, we left Ontario we traveled down through the Virginia's went through some cool tunnels got to the Carolinas got to Myrtle Beach we went to ocean lakes campground we had a 29 foot trailer and I dare say it made it feel like we were in a pup tent.
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With some of the big rigs that you see down there, great campsite on the ocean. And here's the best part, folks. They deliver pizza to your campsite in a golf cart.
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I was just talking to the girls actually the other day about this trip, and it was only in 2017. So I mean, it wasn't that long ago. And they're not that little. But literally both of them said, Yeah, I don't really remember much about the ocean. But I remember getting pizza on the golf card. So clearly, it was a highlight of a trip for them. But we really wanted to see this eclipse and the covered wasn't fantastic from Ontario. And we saw on the news that the coverage down in the Carolinas was going to be somewhere around 98%. And we thought, heck yeah, let's go. And we kind of figured we had this plan in the back of our head that we wanted that bucket list trip down route 66. And that was something that we knew we had always wanted to do. Our biggest trip up to that point was that trip that we mentioned in episode one to pancake Bay with our previous pop up trailer, we kind of figured you know, it's a 16 hour drive. If they can make it 16 hours, they can certainly make it you know, 34 hours or whatever
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It was to get to California. So we use this as a really good jumping off point, one of the ways we did that was discovering some of these websites and apps to help us plan a little more efficiently. And I would say my pick for the number one app for me, it was Roadtrippers. And I'm the big planner, I'm the one who tends to plan out, you know, the detours and the points of interest and the stops to see and we can sit down as a family and take that basic map. And then we have a look at whatever one wants to see. And we figure out about how many hours a day we want to travel and we really tweak it from there. So when I discovered Roadtrippers, and honestly, I don't even remember how I found it. I think I just started doing internet searches for you know, trip planners, and I kind of stumbled upon it. And this website has been invaluable to us every single trip we've taken. we've plotted it out on Roadtrippers and we've saved the trip. So it's something that we can go back if we need to reference for a show or to give somebody a review, we can go back and pull that so what's great about Roadtrippers there is a free version and there is a paid version. We did use the free version for our first trip and then we upgraded to the paid version.
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Just unlocks a little bit more. And the great thing about it is because it wasn't just a leisurely trip down to the Carolinas, like we were on a mission, we were on a deadline, we had to be there because the eclipse was happening on a certain day in August, and we had to be there. You know, before then we had to be set up and ready to see it. So the great thing about Roadtrippers is that it gives you those estimated hours between your plot points, like we knew we wanted to make it to at least Virginia. So it would say drive time is 10 hours to get somewhere on a plot point. And you know, you want to spend about 10 hours of drive time in the day. Well, for us, we had to adjust along the way because we realized that you know, if a map says it's seven hours or 10 hours of drive time, you can honestly add one or two hours on top of that for rest stops and food stops. And you know, since that point, we've refined the way we've traveled quite a bit to kind of cut down on some of that but just being able to see at a glance for this trip, how long it would be for each point really helped us decide where our stopping points would be realistically for the night and other thing it gives you is just like the
4:00
Best attractions detours weird abandoned places you can filter it by photo ops points of interest campgrounds, landmarks Oh, there's pre made trip guides that allow you to be spontaneous. So if you just decide you know, I have four days or I have six days or I have 14 days and I want to do a specific loop, you can pick from a bunch of pre made trip guides that are already populated with places to stay and things to see so really allows you to be really spontaneous. Just pick one of the pre made trip guides hop in your rig and go so that was really fantastic. But the best thing about it was a lot of these points of interest that we wanted to see had pictures, they had reviews, they had blog posts that people would write in and tell you a little bit about what you're expecting to see. It really took the guesswork out of the trip for us which was something that was really good. So I cannot recommend Roadtrippers enough and you can find it on the internet@roadtrippers.com and there is a downloadable app for that. So if you are at all interested even just dreaming about a trip, go ahead and start making one for free and you'll see how addictive it is. So app number two
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I guess that's off to you, Dan, for the pilot flying j, yep. And so on Roadtrippers, you can use that throughout, say the winter to plan a trip, you don't have to plan it all at once, right? You can go on and work on that on a Saturday morning with your coffee and set it down and come back to it a week later, right? Yeah, it gives you a profile, you sign in for a profile. And you basically just save your trip. And you can go back to it, alter it as many times as you want, right. And so that does bring us to App number two, which gets us into the finer details of the trip, which is where you're going to get gas. And so you know, if your marriage is going to come apart anywhere, it's going to come apart when you have to back the trailer into the campsite. Or it's going to come apart when you need to wiggle your rig into the gas pump somewhere because you're running on fumes. And so one of the things that I really like is the pilot flying j app, the app lets you do some basic trip planning. And so once you've got that trip planned out in Roadtrippers, you take a look at your route and you can plan out your stops in smaller chunks in the flying j app and you can find out where the flying j gas stations are along the way. And so we don't know
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We stopped at a flying J. But the nice thing about a flying j is you get a consistent experience and you have really friendly staff there to help you navigate your trip. It's a big help for everybody to get through the trip in what could be a stressful experience. And so we always know that as we travel down the road, we might not stop at the flying j but at least we know that there's one close by where we can add gas to the tank get topped up on snacks and everybody can use the washroom and we can move down the road stress free. Mm hmm. In this particular instance, we actually used flying j as our first boondock experience in Wytheville Virginia. I have to admit I had a little bit of reservations about boondocking I just didn't have a lot of comfort with not being in a motorhome type vehicle where, you know, our escape vehicle, if we ran into trouble is not is not accessible to us like we actually have to leave the trailer and you know, a lot of those fears are totally unfounded but it just, I had never done something like that before. So that my level of comfort with that was way down, but honestly, I would
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I'm a complete convert to truckstop boondocking. After that first night did we have a shower there? I don't think we had a shower there. But here's the really great thing about the flying j app is it lets you filter for a lot of different facilities, ATMs gas diesel RV parking. Oh dedicated RV lanes. Dedicated RV lanes are amazing propane dumping freshwater you may not need all those services and just because it doesn't have RV lanes doesn't mean you can't go there to fill up on gas. But it's nice to know what you have in advance and my really my first experience with a flying j was just outside of Custer State Park in South Dakota. I was actually on a military training exercise and we started using the flying j truck stop to have showers and I will tell you folks, the flying j truck stop showers are by far the cleanest showers you're ever going to find in your life. Brand new towels exceptionally clean. Remember they have to meet a standard here to meet their corporate obligation.
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We're not being reimbursed by flying j we just have always had a really good experience with flying j the washrooms are clean, which is really important. So you know what you're gonna get as you travel down the road, and we have shower there as a family. I just can't remember where. But it was fantastically clean, like I wholeheartedly endorse it. And one thing I would say as well, you know, especially on this first trip, we hadn't really hammered down food storage and having prepared meals, like now I make box lunches for everybody that are in the car, which eliminates the need for us to stop but having the flying j, we could filter it like there's some flying Jays that don't have restaurants they might have a pizza warmer and some Cinnabon but we wanted to stay overnight. So we knew we needed dinner when we got there, and we knew we needed a good cup of coffee and breakfast in the morning. So we stopped it on the head of Denny's and that would satisfy everybody. So really, it's a really super helpful app to have on road trips. Even like Dan said, if you're not boondocking they're staying there or fueling up there. It's just nice to know what they have that it's there. It's a good safe
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place to go. And out of all the various truckstops. I would say pilot flying j has probably been our favorite. Yep. And so I think probably the next app we wanted to talk about is RV parking, RV parking. It's a free app. It lets you find places to camp anywhere from a Walmart or Cabela's parking lot, right up to a five star RV Resort. It's really easy to use even I can use it. And so what we found on our road trip across North America, when we went out to California is that maybe you don't want to boondock because it's too hot. You want to run your air conditioner. What we found is we could get RV sites close to the interstate for less than $30 a night that had full hookups. And then sometimes we didn't even unhitch the truck in the trailer. But what we didn't know was we had power, we had water and that meant we had a shower, and that meant we had air conditioning. And I think that made for much more civilized travel. I would also tell you that if you're cheap like me that if you pull in and you pay 30
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dollars to camp at an RV stop along the side of the interstate. Everybody can eat what's in the fridge for breakfast in the morning and for dinner as opposed to pulling into a truck stop and boondocking where inevitably you're pulling your wallet out and shelling out $80. So everybody can eat dinner and or breakfast that a sit down really helps you move along a little bit quicker and a little bit cheaper. Mm hmm. Absolutely. And I think the great thing about RV park is like Dan says, It's super easy to use. It's, it's not the fanciest app out there by any stretch of the imagination. But it you basically turn it on, you tap it, it finds your location, and it will hang out and it will show you the places to stay that are within the radius you're looking at. So what we would do or how we utilized it when we were going down route 66, or the I 40 is we would just go and say, oh, we're getting kind of tired. I think maybe two, two and a half hours. We want to stop for the night. So I would look ahead on the app or Dan would look ahead on the app and we would pick a place that we thought we might want to stop we would use the RV park app and we would find places to stay and as soon as those results popped up. We
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could see reviews can see their telephone number and we would call ahead and just ask, Hey, do you have any spots for tonight, there wasn't any issues we've ever had a parks being at full capacity. So everybody was really accommodating that way. And even if they were close, even if the office was closed, we stopped at a place in Missouri, Marshfield, Missouri, we called ahead said we were coming. They said, great. You're on site 13. If we're closed, when you get here, just drive right in the front gates. There'll be a cone move the comb Park and you can come come settle up with us in the morning. There was no giving them the credit card over the telephone. There was no taking of personal information. It was essentially the honor system. And the next morning, we got up and they opened up the office and we came and settled up with them paid for a night moved along the road. We did the same thing in Albuquerque as well, pulled in late, got to our site, made dinner and went and settled up the next morning. I don't think any one of those stops cost us more than $30. Absolutely. So I think probably what I would remind you too, about this RV park app is that it's got a great review section. And so if somebody left you a review two months ago that said don't go
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To this particular retailer and use their parking lot, that's probably reliable information. If somebody says I just pulled into this campground three weeks ago, and I had a great experience, that's good rival information, just be a good traveler and give an honest review. When you've left one of these places. It doesn't cost you any money. But it helps all of us out all together, because we're all in this together. I would say that's super huge, like there was parks that were probably fine. But we bypass them in favor of parks that had recent reviews, because some of them we went on and there weren't reviews for like a year. So we would say Oh, but there's one, you know, five minutes down the road that has, you know, three reviews over the last three months. So that's one thing I would say absolutely. Be a good traveler. Make sure if you use any of these facilities that you leave a review, because it's really, really helpful for those who are traveling that road behind you. Do we want to talk about Google Maps now? Yes, we do. It's another marriage saver. Such a marriage saver. And like, I don't like to use Google streetview like this is specifically like I go on Google Maps and pull up satellite view.
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Do this if we need to gas up, you know, Dan might say, hey, we've got a quarter tank left, we're gonna have to stop for gas. And I will look ahead if there isn't a readily available truck stop that we know that we can get in and out of. And there has been a ton of times where we've had to do this particularly going down route 66, where we tried to stick to old route 66 as much as possible, their little towns, right. So if we knew we needed gas, we had to look ahead. And you can't tell anything from a map. But when once I hit the satellite view, I could zoom in and say, yeah, there's no chance we're getting the trailer in there. Or if we do get it in, we're not getting it out. So we could pick very effectively, which gas stations or grocery stores and some of these really small towns that we could get into and that we could exit out of with our sanity and our marriage intact, right because you're looking for little things you're looking for where is the outside lane of the pump? Can I drive all the way around the building? Can I park out back is there parking adjacent to a restaurant adjacent to a store
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Those are the kinds of things that help you we talked in a previous podcast about Don't be afraid to stay in a hotel. It's a great resource to scope out the hotel and understand what does the road look like going into the hotel? Is there a spot to turn around? Is there a spot to park another RV or a truck because you will often find in those images, there are already people who have done the same thing. And you can rest assured that you can do that and fold ahead and just confirm again. But it helps you pick a good spot to stop at the end of the night and not scrambling for sure. Oh, whenever I'm cranky and tired and just done. We've learned this from from from experience. Yeah. And then I would say our last pick which is similar to the RV park app, it is a paid option. It's 1399 Canadian on the App Store and it's the all stays RV and camp app and it just kind of picks up where rv parchi leaves off. Now don't get me wrong. RV park is amazing. And I have no problem using it and it's one of our favorite apps to use. But if you're looking for something specific, like you just need to dump you can filter the all stays out
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By dump and it will show you all of the dump stations. You can specifically filter it by state park or Provincial Park which RV parky isn't fantastic app they they're great at really private campgrounds small enterprises but allstays is fantastic for you know the things like you know Walmart's, it will allow you to filter, the ones that allow you to stay overnight. If you ask the ones that don't even try it. They don't allow anyone to stay over and you can also filter specifically for roads that have low clearance. And let me tell you folks like there is nothing like the horror of approaching an underpass in the middle of St. Louis when you have not measured how tall your brand new trailer is, and you don't know if you're going to make it under this 14 foot clearance rail bridge. And just so everyone's clear, our rig is probably about 13 foot six inches. Listen.
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Much like I had to take that deer square we had to cross our fingers and hope that that 30 year old sign that said it was 13 feet nine inches
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Was 13 feet nine inches but we got through unscathed. There was no backing up but it
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was under control. Okay under control. All right. So one thing I will say we didn't mention this we talked about boondocking flying Jays and I think we've talked about cracker barrels before. I don't know if we've talked about cracker barrels, but folks they make good food. They do make fantastic food. I kind of feel like we've talked about cracker barrels but it's worth mentioning again, you can boondock at Cracker Barrel cracker barrels all have RV lanes right in their parking lot. I have yet to have been to a Cracker Barrel and we eat at them a lot that don't have RV lanes. So if they're if there's RV lanes and they're open and you just run in and talk to the manager, they will let you boondock there they give you free coffee in the morning which is a godsend. If you just need to get up and hit the road. If not you go in you have a nice leisurely breakfast and get on the road when you like the all stays app also allows you to filter by larger big box stores like Costco, Sam's Club, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods Cabela's Bass Pro Shop, so really anything that you can imagine that you might need on your road trip, it allows you to filter by that
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Those things and find them easily. So to wrap up, we have listener questions. I'm so excited about this, that you all are interacting with us and actually asking questions that we can answer. Yeah, I jump up and down when I see it. So I'm really excited about it. Take it away, Dan. Yeah, we got a really good question from a listener really from a really nice family who heard the first podcast and it got them thinking about what the right decision was for a bike rack and whether they should have one that's mounted on the bumper or when it's mounted on the front of the trailer between the trailer and the tailgate, and I'm not going to tell you what type of bike rack to buy or what brand to buy. I'm going to give you a couple of things to think about and what my decision was, you can get bike racks to go on either end of the trailer, you probably want to investigate whether your bumper is suitable for adding more weight to the back of the trailer. The upside to putting it on the back of the trailer is it's nice and low to the ground. The downside is you need to be conscious about whether your bumper can handle that extra weight and you need
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To recognize that once those bikes go on the back of the bumper and you hop in the truck or the car, you probably are not going to see those bikes until you stop again, so you don't know if they're there or not. So the other option is to put them on the front of the trailer, typically up in over the propane tanks. And I prefer to have the bikes just like my teenage girls boyfriend, see them, keep them where he can see him as what my motto is, because the rack that we selected bolts directly to the frame, it goes over top of the propane tanks, I can see the bikes during the whole trip. And it gives me great relief to know that the bikes are there and that they're not loose. And if by chance, I think something starts to get loose, it's real easy to slide over and tighten it up and not drive down the road worried that maybe something's Come on loose, or maybe we've lost something. So I get a lot of security out of that. My one consideration is with newer pickup trucks, make sure that whatever model you select gets it up and over your tailgate. And so we initially purchased a model that didn't quite get us up and over
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The tailgate of astok F 150. But we sprung the extra 20 bucks and got it up and over the high tailgate. So that's maybe just one consideration you want to ask when you're at the party counter. The other thing I would say is don't be afraid to go into a dealership and see what they have set up and ask him a bunch of questions or ask somebody in your neighborhood what works for them when you're out for your your evening walk, I think you also need to think about how you want to load the trailer. Because really, you need to think about how much weight is in front of the axles, right? Because that stops a lot of sway. So if you're going to be packing a bunch of stuff in the back of your trailer, you probably don't want to add the weight of four or five bikes on the back of the trailer as well. And I mean keeping them where you can see them. Maybe that's a trauma response from us from the headless deer and, but it really is a very good idea and something that just requires a quick shoulder check to make sure that everything's okay. And you know what if you really have to and you're driving a pickup truck, you can put them in the bed of the truck, but you're giving up a lot of cargo space and you might not be able to get your tonneau cover closed, which means you're going to lose a little bit of fuel economy. It's okay for the bikes to get wet.
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But you may be you don't want to get you know some of the other things wet if you have to put them into the trailer, you got to worry about them rattling around inside the trailer you you know you need to find space to wiggle it in like some kind of puzzle, you know, I just personally like to get them out of the truck bed on the trailer at the front where I can see them nice and secure. And we don't have a ladder on the back of our trailer. So I use our truck rack as a towel drying rack all the time. It's fantastic because when you're on the road, everything should serve a dual purpose. So I'm two thumbs up for the type of bike rack that lets you hang towels on it. Yep. So I think maybe that's our kind of our question we'd answer this week. If you want to ask us a question or hear about a particular topic. You can leave it in a written review on Apple podcasts. That's actually where our listener question for next week comes from where we're going to talk about solar panels. You can always message us on Instagram at RV connects or you can email us at Hello at RV connects COMM And we'll answer it on a future show. So stay tuned and we will see you next week. Bye. Bye bye, folks.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai