Our Space
Here's our Hemet home at Golden Village Palms. Even when all the space around us is filled it is still a spacious park. Right now we have an acre of empty spots surrounding us giving a great view of clouds, mountains and sunset. The "pole" beside Mr. Blue is a 40' palm tree where Sir Mockingbird likes to serenade us.
The planning for our trip to Illinois via Montana began in earnest yesterday. It's a total of 2800 miles. The only concern I had was where to be over July 4th weekend. After plotting it out we decided to stay in Missoula, MT at Jim and Mary's Resort, about 20 miles from our daughter Laura. We've been there before and love the open spaces and the unique floral landscaping. It is also satellite friendly and convenient to town and Montana scenery for day trips.
Planning for a long trip requires a lot of resources. I have the Trailer Life CD which shows campgrounds on a good mapping program. I also have DeLorme street mapping software which has good GPS mapping. In addition I use half a dozen campground books, some of which are memberships like Passport America, Camp Club, and Coast to Coast. But the best quick and dirty planner is to use the Good Sam website Trip Planning tool. I think you need to be a member but it's only about $20, well worth it for all the discounts and info. The trip planner includes references to the Mountain Directory for steep grades and curves, rest stops, Good Sam campgrounds and mileage out and back which is very helpful in estimating how to break up the travel days.
To estimate these long trips I start by allowing 100 miles a day. So this trip will take 28 days. In reality we drive 200-300 miles a day on a cross country trip, then stop for a day or two. Or drive 300 miles a couple of days in a row, then stay for a week. My first estimate gives us plenty of time and flexibility.
We'll take a week to get to MT, stay a week and then two weeks to get to Illinois. We've been stopped here so long that I'm a little nervous about getting our "breakdown" routine working again. We've accumulated a lot of stuff! We might have to pack stuff in our new storage unit :). I'm thinking the biggest change will be having to plan meals for a few days out. Right now we have restaurants and stores across the street so we have too many "spur of the moment" meals. But we're ready for a change of pace :) Actually, it's "time to get out of Dodge" because it's heating up here in Hemet.