This is the first blog in the Yellowstone | Tetons trip series.
When we started eyeing the summer of 2020 for retirement, we both agreed that Yellowstone would be a perfect place to kick off retirement travel. Initially, I plotted the trip using Google maps, just quickly putting in a starting point of Cold Spring to Yellowstone and Grand Tetons, returning same route. From where we live in central Minnesota, if you got to Yellowstone first, it routed us through North Dakota, and if you go Grand Tetons first, it routed us through South Dakota first. But at least that gave us an idea of distance, and approximate drive time (more on that later).
Initial route planning on google maps.
Throughout the years and for many different excursions, I've used different tools/apps for planning trips, depending on the need. I used Trip Advisor when it first came out - contributing reviews when I could, sucked into the gamification of the site until I realized the points you earned were really worth nothing. I've used Pinterest for ideas on where to go, recommendations on sights, views, activities, etc. I started using Roadtrippers when it was first released in 2012. The first big road trip I planned with Roadtrippers was a 2700 miles family trip to Boston via Chicago, returning via Niagara Falls, then Toronto, and back through Michigan. For that trip we drove our van and stayed at hotels along the way - I used Hotels.com to find our place to stay for the night - for the most part in real time, booking about an hour out when we had an idea of where we would be. For our first long RV adventure to Zion (someday I'll add a blog about that), we used Roadtrippers, but found the RV park options and reviews pretty limited. I also found that booking last minute for an RV spot is not quite as fun as it seems, especially at popular National Parks.
Honing in on Dates and Places
From a timing perspective, we agreed to enjoy our summer at the lake, yet take advantage of relatives in town for the summer to watch the dog while we traveled. So we targeted being in Yellowstone on Labor day, in theory after the family summer travel season. I reached out to the Gulf Stream Vintage Cruiser group on Facebook - a wonderful source of tips, mods, recommendations - on where to stay near/in both Yellowstone and Jackson. I took those recommendations and cross referenced with yet another planning tool, RV Parky to come up with the two places we wanted to reserve; Yellowstone Holiday RV Campground & Marina in West Yellowstone, and Colter Bay Village RV Park in Jackson. I added a few stops to get the driving hours per day somewhat manageable, applied dates to the way-points, and had a solid plan. Solid enough to start making reservations.
I knew that for a popular National Park like Yellowstone - you have to plan ahead - like way ahead. Late in December 2019, I thought hey, I've got the plan. I've got some time, and I'll be ahead of the game and make our September 2020 reservations at these two National Park locations. It was a good thing I did - when I called, both places were filling up already. With these two places locked in, I intended to leave most of the other places as 'targets', and make reservations along the way...then as the summer of 2020 proved to be the summer of RV Travel - I decided to lock in a few more of the dates, especially around the places we wanted to go over the Labor Day weekend.
Adding in National Parks
Another factor that influenced our route and planned stops was a cute poster I found on Instagram (ok it found me) from Howdy Ranger. This checklist - I love me a good checklist - made me rethink some of the dates, and since we were virtually driving right by two other National Parks (Theodore Roosevelt in ND and Wind Caves in SD), I now had rounded out our travel plan, making the trip there and back more than just 'getting there'.
National Parks poster from Hey Ranger.
I mentioned using Pinterest for planning and collecting ideas and tips for travel. I leveraged the Topics feature to organize the content. In addition to these valuable tips, we added links to the most current Geyser information, current road closures, and trails we wanted to scope out using links to AllTrails.
My Pinterest board for this trip.
While most of the tools I use I have intentionally focused on free apps. In fact this Blogger tool is free. The one tool I did end up paying for is Roadtrippers. I had used this app for years, and at the time I had the ability to add an unlimited number of places to a trip. About 4 years ago, their model changed to only allowing 7 places for free - anything above that you would need a subscription ($29.99 annual). I tried figuring out how to plan a daily trip into Yellowstone and Grand Tetons - I tried Google Maps with multiple color markers (could not see the places and could not add places), I tried using RV Parky (could not add the same location multiple times in the trip) - all to no avail. I decided in this case - the subscription fee was worth allowing me to plan as I am used to doing - and I will make sure to use up that fee with trips! In fact, for this trip the Grand Prismatic Overlook (not the path next to the site) was not in Roadtrippers. I submitted a ticket, and the place was added within a week (#4 below).
Planning sites for one day using Roadtrippers
The Birth of MOJO PlannerTM
Another planning/expense tracking tool we've been working on together using Google Sheets is what we are calling MOJO PlannerTM - (Managing Our Journey Outlay). We are using this to track fuel, RV Park fees, food and liquor, misc expenses during our travel. This was inspired by an article I read about RV Travel written by John Roth, who owns Get Rich Slowly....I don't endorse or even use his service - I just happened upon this article about him selling the business and traveling full time in an RV. While finances and expenses are discussed throughout, it's the spreadsheet he shows in "The Great Reckoning" that peaked my interest.
Portion of the expense tracking spreadsheet.
Of course, in his article it's just an image of a spreadsheet - I did comment on the article asking if he would be willing to share the original file - no response. These headers did provide but enough information so we could try to recreate. It's a work in progress, and this trip will be the first time we're applying real data to it. Yes, we are both pretty geeky and interested in figuring out stuff like this - but we are also recently retired, and although we've planned pretty meticulously for retirement at 55, we want to ensure we are tracking to the assumptions we've made to ensure we don't run out of cash at 56 😜.
I used another tab in the MOJO PlannerTM to plan meals. Sounds kinda crazy - but we knew some days were going to be long travel days, some not so much, and some days we wanted to enjoy a bite out. So which days should be a grilling day vs. a bring prepared food day vs. eating out? And this becomes important when determining what to bring, and for eating out during COVID, where to make reservations. So I used the estimated drive time (+20%) to help determine not only what to bring (mostly frozen meats, some fresh produce) and when we could/should make reservations.
Meal planning based on travel time each day.
Maybe I'm way over planning - but hey, I'm good at it. Eventually something like this - hopefully with less manual manipulation - will be part of MOJO PlannerTM.
With that we had a solid plan and enough information to feel like we knew where to go, when we'd be there and to make the most of this first big trip of our retirement. Next up - the first LONG day of travel and Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
What tools or resources do you use to plan trips? How do you select RV parks? Enjoyed this post? Never miss out on future posts by following us.
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