I love staying organized and keeping records. But for some reason, I’ve had a hard time creating maps of our travels that make sense and look pretty. After three and half years of it bugging me, and me doing nothing about it, I finally sat down this month and created a color-coded Master Map of allllll our RV adventures, from when we started in February 2014 to now.
Drum roll…
Map Breakdown by Color and Date
- Trip #1 (2014): February 21, 2014 to May 10, 2014
- Trip #2 (2014): May 11, 2014 to December 2, 2014
- Trip #3 (2014-2015): December 3, 2014 to November 6, 2015
- Trip #4 (2015-2016) – “Grand Loop Trip:” November 7, 2015 to July 26, 2016
- Having a Baby Break (2016-2017): July 27, 2016 to May 31, 2017
- Trip #5 (2017): June 1, 2017 to present
How We Plan Our RV Trips
A little more than a year ago, I wrote a whole article to explain how we plan our RV trips:
–>Read: “Planning Our RV Travels and the Evolving Quest to Find Balance”
Everyone travels differently due to life circumstances and priorities. And that’s okay. The key is to find what puts wind in your sails, not to follow what others are doing or what they expect of you.
What We’re Missing
We planned to hit Montana + North Dakota + South Dakota + Nebraska + Kansas + Oklahoma during our Grand Loop Trip last year. Then Baby Nomad happened. But we have big plans for 2018, which should allow us to hit some of the central northern states we’re missing.
New England in the fall has been on our bucket list since we started traveling, but we don’t have a date in mind yet. We’ll hit the rest of the states in the continental U.S. eventually.
Here’s the deal. There’s no expiration date to our travels. We’re not looking for a favorite city to settle down in. We’re not funding this lifestyle with a nest egg that’s eventually going to run out.
We don’t want or need to stop RVing…ever.
So while it’s hard to see our friends travel faster than us and see so many things we haven’t gotten to yet (FOMO!), we’re biding our time. We’ll get there. Until then, the wheels keep turning and we’re fascinated by everything we see out the window.
-B
Great job I really like how you did this!
Thanks so much, @jeffcheesman:disqus!
So, I’m assuming you’re using the Google >My Maps and pinning and editing the pin point with info and additional info. I just tried the same thing, posted apx 100 pins but only 20 are showing on the left side and on the map. Seems like the additional 80 never posted/pinned as they appeared to be saved when doing it. My question is, are you using the Google pin thing and did you come up with any “Limits”, I read that each layer has a 2000 pin limit. I tried io import from the “Google’s official point file size kept showing to big, over the 5mb limit.. Sorry for all the details, but it’s driving me Knutts.. heheh, thanks much
That sounds really frustrating, @disqus_vfZrfHqkNt:disqus! Sorry all that data was lost. 🙁 I have heard and experienced Google Maps limits, though I didn’t run into any making this map. I recently read from a fellow RVer that there’s a 10-layer limit, which would mean I’ll only be able to put 10 “trips” on this map. I was planning to test that at some point.
In a recent thread in our RV Entrepreneur Summit group, these map programs were recommended: Umap (used by Wheeling It), https://trips.furkot.com, https://mapifypro.com.
I plan to use Google Maps until I can’t anymore, and then I’ll look into another solution!
Yah, thanks Brittany, appreciate the feedback.. I was trying to avoid the UMap/Open street thing, read about it from a blog somewhere on how to do it, but heheh, thought I could get away with the Google thing… Apparently not, so I’ll just bite the bullet and learn the Umap thing… I had heard about the 10 layers max thing but also read about the 2000 limit per layer for pins which would be hard to achieve, maybe not, but it’s there for FYI. Again, thanks, I’ll try the uMap Here’s the tutorial for reference… Cheers..
https://liferebooted.net/creating-route-maps-with-openstreetmap/
I hear you. I have no desire to learn a new system either. 😉 All the best with the process, and please do check in again if you have any pointers with the system. I’m sure others could benefit…no need to recreate the wheel!
I love your map. At some point I am going to do this for our travels. My low tech method was to use a marker on a map of the USA and take a picture of it.