In my LYRV monthly newsletter, I usually have a section called “Ray’s Pick – Helpful RVing Website of the Month”. These are websites that I find really aid us when out there traveling in our RV.
Things like finding a campsite, checking the weather, where to fill up the rig, trip routing etc. Below is a collection of my recommended links for RVing from past newsletter issues.
The vast majority of these websites I have no relationship with. For the few that I do, I have noted with a (Disclaimer: affiliate link).
1) Safe Travel USA
A really handy site to have in your bookmarks. Basically, it has all the states department of transportation websites link together in one place. Makes it easy to access highway conditions along your route. – http://www.safetravelusa.com
2) RV Park Reviews
This is one of my go-to sites for reviews on prospective RV Parks. The site is super easy to navigate. There is a map and you can drill down from different states to cities and display all the parks in the area. I find the reviews, for the most part, to be fairly reliable. I usually ignore the best and the worst for a park and concentrate on what the majority of the reviewers say.- http://www.rvparkreviews.com
3) National Forest Locator Map
Really cool interactive interface showing all the national forests, click on one and it opens up a clickable link to its regions home page. I love the topography of it as well. – http://www.fs.fed.us/locatormap
4) Mile by Mile Road Trip Planner
This is a neat trip planning site. I really like the map interface. The look of the website is a little dated but works well and has loads of information. The coolest feature on the site is the printable PDF. It will convert your route to PDF for easy printing or offline viewing. http://MilebyMile.com
5) TravellersPoint
I use this site specifically for its trip mapping feature. It allows me to record my routes and save my trips each year. Also, I can share the map with folks back home so they can follow along. – Here is my map as an example. – Ray’s RV Travel Map
6) Good RV Food
I’m the main cook in our RV family. I discovered this helpful website just a little bit ago and love it. Nicely laid out navigation and tons of recipes written with RVers in mind. – http://GoodRVfood.com
7) Frugal RV Travel
This site has a wealth of information about traveling in an RV without breaking the bank. Top on my list of resources for southwest dry campers is the Frugal Shunpiker’s RV Travel Guides. Well worth the price if you plan to do any boondocking in the US South West states. – FrugalRVTravel.com – (Disclaimer: affiliate link)
8) USCampgrounds.Info
The most comprehensive guide to Federal, State, Provincial, and Local campgrounds
I find this website especially handy for planning our boondocking adventures as it lists most of the free BLM dispersed camping spots. Lots of good info on public camping areas and it does Canada too. – http://www.uscampgrounds.info
9) RV Service Reviews
Recently, when we had a broken jack incident with our fifth wheel, one of my RVing friends sent me this great link. I was way too far off the grid to use it but it looks like a great resource. Always nice to hear real folks opinions on service places. Definitely worth a bookmark just in case you find yourself broken down and wondering where to get the rig serviced. *The site also covers Canada. – http://www.rvservicereviews.com
10) Air Sports Net
I really love this site for gathering weather information, particularly wind speeds and directions around the state I’m currently RVing in. Very simple to use interface maps. It’s nice to know what sort of winds I may be headed for during a day of towing the rig. Many times it will influence my chosen route or whether we even go. – http://www.usairnet.com/weather
11) Oh Ranger
I often use this handy website or free app to help plan our visits to National and State Parks. It provides camping information as well as ideas on what to do and places to explore while visiting the parks.- http://www.ohranger.com
12) Find Fuel Stops
On this website, you’ll find a super handy tool for locating tons of information on the truck stops and places to park the rig along your route. – http://www.findfuelstops.com
Ready To Find A Truck Stop?
To get started, enter an origin city and state, a destination city and state, choose your sort order, and press the Search button. Omitting the destination will return every truck stop within a 100 mile radius of the origin. If you are taking a route other than what we return, enter a Via city to change to your routing. You may omit city and state and just enter the zip code. Check the “Allow No Fuel” box to also see truck / RV friendly stores, rest areas, and more.
Here’s an example route from Palm Springs to Tucson. Really handy free tool!
13) Campendium.com
I discovered this website when Google searching for perspective camping spots. It kept popping up with good information when researching free boondocking spots. It has a growing database of free and public lands camping sites plus the usual RV Parks, NP and State Parks with members reviews and pictures. One to bookmark. – https://www.campendium.com/
14) Wildfire Info
This is a terrific website to get the latest detailed information on wildfires. I find it to be very well laid out and very easy to navigate. – http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/
15) Ultimate US & Canada Public Campground Project
This extensive database of campsites is terrific for boondockers like ourselves. It is free to use on the web or a small fee for the apps. You can also download the POI list to use with your GPS. Cool! I like it because it gives a nicely uncluttered map view with good info on the campsites. Also, I found the online map to be very responsive. Thumbs up. – http://www.ultimatecampgrounds.com/
16) Casinocamper.com
Handy site for searching out perspective casinos that allow overnight RV parking. Casinos are rated and reviews left by other RVers. – http://www.casinocamper.com/
17) PublicLands.Org
This is an excellent resource if you need to acquire a good old fashion paper map for an area. The site has an easy to navigate mapping feature with icons. Click on one and a pop up gives information on the site and links to more resources including a paper map. – http://publiclands.org/
18) TV Fool
This is an excellent free website to find OTA (Over The Air) TV stations in your area. When I arrive at a campsite I can bring up information and coverage maps telling me what TV stations are available, signal strength and which direction to point my roof top antenna for best reception. – http://www.tvfool.com/
19) Elevation Calculator
I find this simple little tool very handy when planning our route. I can quickly plot points along the potential roads and see what kind of grades I may face with the RV. Here is an example I put in showing the trip from Indio, California up to Joshua Tree NP. You can easily see there are a few good size hills and the elevation changes quite a bit. – http://www.mapdevelopers.com/elevation_calculator.php
20) NHTSA Website
Search for recall information – Handy website to check up on safety recalls for your RV, tow vehicle or equipment. – http://www-odi.nhtsa.dot.gov/owners/SearchSafetyIssues
21) Sani-Dumps
Here is a terrific site to find a Sani dump station near you. They have a huge database of dump locations all over the US and Canada and even some other countries. Search for dumps by city or zip/postal codes. – http://www.sanidumps.com
22) CountyOffice.org
I’ve found – a site with all the different local county offices listed, pretty accurate for my own purposes and thought others might think so as well. It has a great number of local county and state offices with phone numbers, addresses and directions nationwide – I’ve found it very accurate. At the very least, it has helped to eliminate my own headaches trying to dig up contact details when I’m trying to make a phone call. Thanks to Love Your RV reader Loretta for this website tip. – http://www.countyoffice.org/
23) Weatherbase.com
Yes, another weather-related website. You must think I’m a weather freak! But, when full timing in an RV it sure is important. This site is a little different than your average weather forecaster. You can dig deep into monthly averages and get a good feel when an area is going to be suitable for an RV visit. I like the Vacation Finder tool at the bottom of the homepage. Pick a month and input min and max temps you desire, and then the location and it outputs a list of cities. Cool! – http://www.weatherbase.com
24) NavaGuides
Handy site for looking up an RVs value. It looks like our 2011 Cougar on average is worth about 19,000 USD. Well if you don’t include all my mods and upgrades. 😉 – http://www.nadaguides.com/RVs
25) AllTrails.com
I found this website when looking for hiking trails around the Palm Springs area and fell in love with it. By far one of the best hiking information sites I’ve come across. They also have a terrific smartphone app. The features are numerous such as terrain map, elevation changes, user reviews, and photos, categories, etc. A paid version offers even more. – http://www.alltrails.com
26) RoadTrippers.com
I stumbled across this website this month while looking for interesting things to do and see as we traveled east along Interstate 10. Looks like a handy site to bookmark and they also have a smartphone app. – https://roadtrippers.com/
Roadtrippers is the nation’s fastest-growing web and mobile travel planning platform, with over 5.5 million trips booked to-date. Our unique content covers the wonderful “off the beaten path” places to visit and our unique database contains millions of the world’s most interesting locations. Roadtrippers helps people discover the world around them in an entirely new way by streamlining discovery, planning, booking, and navigation into an engaging and intuitive process. The web and mobile applications are free to use.”
27) Rambling Ralph’s
Spotted this link in an RVing forum. A site to bookmark if you are RVing out west. Lots of first-hand campground reviews and advice.
“This map includes every campsite I was in for 2006 through 2016 – about 615 of them, with no duplicates (hopefully)! About 40 of these are boondocking spots (i.e., not in a developed campground). There are very few commercial campgrounds included, as I use government (USFS/BLM/NPS/State/etc.) campgrounds almost exclusively.”
28) DogFriendly.com
Great website for finding places we can take our furry RVing companions. Quickly drill down to the area you are visiting and located places for dog walks or attractions where dogs are allowed.
Here is an example – Butchart Gardens, Victoria BC
“Leashed dogs are allowed at this 50-acre show-place of floral finery offering spectacular views of gardens. You and your pup can stroll along meandering paths and expansive lawns. But Butchart Gardens does more than just allow dogs. These dog-friendly folks have placed running dog drinking fountains throughout the entire garden. Thanks to one of our readers for recommending this place. The Butchart Gardens is a must visit if you are on Vancouver Island!” – http://www.dogfriendly.com/
29) RVTireSafety.net
A ton of helpful information and advice for our RV tires.
“About Roger
Before retiring, Roger Marble spent 40 years in the tire industry, working for a major manufacturer developing tires for applications in North, Central and South America. During his career, he worked on many kinds of tires — heavy truck, passenger, light truck and Indy-car types.” – http://www.rvtiresafety.net/
30) IconDirect.com
I was clued into this website by a commenter on the Love Your RV Youtube channel. The website is a terrific resource for folks trying to locate replacement fenders for their trailers. They sell many other plastic-type items for around the RV like holding tanks, AC covers, skylights, etc. – http://www.icondirect.com/
31) MarineHowTo.com
I stumbled across the website while looking for some information on batteries. Not only did I find an excellent article on deep cycle batteries but loads more as I delved deeper into the site. It’s about boats but much of the info is transferable to RVs. – https://marinehowto.com/
32) Worldview.Earthdata.NASA.gov
I discovered this site when looking for a satellite view of the BC fires a few weeks ago. It puts out a new image of an area once a day. They have events bookmarked showing things like fires, storms, etc. There are many layers that can be added or subtracted. You can even put together a video on a sequence of days. Pretty cool! And could come in handy when RVing, especially during wildfire season. – https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/
33) The Flattest Route
This little web application is limited in features but easy to use. I use it as an aid when planning my travels through mountainous terrain. Just input point A and B, and it displays the elevation changes along the way. Hover over the graphs to see altitude at selected points. Click and drag the routing line to change it. – https://theflattestroute.com/
For instance here is an example of Phoenix to Flagstaff, Arizona
34) Pellandent.com
A commenter on YouTube linked to this website. Looks like a good bookmark in case you need to find a weird part for the RV.
“Pelland Enterprises provides one of the most extensive lines of hard to find RV Replacement parts. If your looking for a Window, Holding Tank, Fenderskirt, or a Tub and Surround you have come to the right place. Pelland Enterprises is dedicated to providing superior customer service accompanied by superior product knowledge.
Pelland Enterprises specializes in Hehr and Kinro replacement windows. 1500+ Holding Tanks. 1000+ water tanks. 600+ fender skirts, and many hard to find RV replacement parts. If you don’t see what you are looking for please don’t hesitate to call.” – http://www.pellandent.com/
35) TidesForFishing.com
This site is useful for those RV trips that take us to the coast. While it is aimed at the fisherman, it is also handy for anyone planning activities on the coast. I was blown away by the amount of information contained on the page and how neatly it is displayed. Pick a location and scroll down to take a look. – http://www.tides4fishing.com/
36) Radio-Locator.com
Handy tool to locate what stations are available and where they are on the dial for the region you’re RVing in. – https://radio-locator.com/
37) Allstays Pro
The Pro version of the popular Allstays Camp and RV app. This runs in a browser best viewed on a laptop or desktop. It’s my go-to piece of software when researching a trip route and where to camp. It also includes the POI list from Allstays huge database for uploading into your GPS. – http://www.allstays.com/DL
Follow our RV adventures and get a new helpful website every month! Sign up for the free monthly Love Your RV Newsletter – Cheers Ray
