Cross Country RV Travel Route
This was our first cross country RV travel route from Colorado, down to Arizona, up through Montana, and all the way to east coast!
We hit the road in May of 2022, and since then have traveled over 16,659 miles (excluding day trip drives), been to 22 states, had 51 stays (friends' homes, campgrounds, overnighters at farms and vineyards), and seen at least 40 sites (national parks, historical places, and cities).
It’s been an incredible whirlwind!
This is our mega list of all of the places we stayed.
Note: this isn’t necessarily a route we’d suggest. :) We had the intention to come back periodically to Colorado for family so that we wouldn’t miss some important events (such as birthdays and weddings). We also had to pick a weekend to be in Wisconsin for the family cottage that was free on the schedule, so that huge, fast trek from Montana to Wisconsin wasn’t exactly ideal.
That said, maybe this list will prove helpful as you plan visiting various states and you can easily cut out the big leaps we made and take your time instead. Our east coast tour definitely hits the highlights (though we still rushed through one too many stops).
For a complete Google map of all of our stays and the sites we saw in the area, see below!
NEW MEXICO & ARIZONA
Orange Pins
Santa Fe Skies RV Park in Santa Fe, NM
Lost Dutchman State Park in Phoenix, AZ
Verde Ranch RV Resort (close to Sedona, AZ)
Zane Grey RV Village in Camp Verde, AZ (also close to Sedona, has trees, and is lovely!)
Grand Canyon: Trailer Village RV Park
COLORADO
Green Pins
Echo Basin in Durango, CO (LOVED this place! And close to a National Park)
Four Seasons RV Park in Salida, CO (not great, but it at least fit our rig and was close to beautiful Salida)
Cheyenne Mountain State Park, Colorado Springs, CO (we love how nice and big and well kept this state park is!)
Mountaindale RV Resort, Colorado Springs, CO (this is often our home base)
WYOMING & MONTANA & NORTH DAKOTA
Light Green Pins
Gruner Brothers Brewing in Casper, WY (Harvest Host)
Fishing Bridge RV Park, Yellowstone NP
Ruby Valley Campground in Sheridan, MT
North American RV Park in Coram, MT - Glacier National Park
Medora Campground in Medora, North Dakota (near Theodore Roosevelt National Park)
EAST COAST TRIP
Yellow Pins
(We stayed in New York for quite a while, but stayed with family.)
Vermont: Horseshoe Acres (NOTE: Cannot say this is big rig friendly! They took us up a SUPER steep hill and we scraped our fifth wheel BAD. You can see that most rigs scrape given the evidence on the road. But, it’s a BEAUTIFUL campground! So if you’re 35’ or under, you should be safe… OR pick a site that’s not on the upper level).
New Jersey (close to New York City): Butterfly Camping Resort in Jackson, NJ
Pennsylvania/Philadelphia: Hidden Acres Campground in Coatesville, PA
Washington D.C.: Cherry Hill Park Campground, Washington D.C. (closest campground to the city, and very beautiful and safe)
Virginia: American Heritage RV Park in Williamsburg, VA
Monticello, Charlottesville KOA (visit Thomas Jefferson’s home)
West Virginia: Little Beaver State Park (close to a National Park for a quick day trip)
Traveling to and from Colorado (favorite stays)
Blue Pins
York, NE: Diamond B Horse Motel
Buzzed Bee Meadery Inc in Des Moines, IA
Camp-a-While in Lincoln, IL to visit Springfield, IL (small little RV park, but affordable and close for popping over to Springfield)
The Ark Encounter: Whispering Hills RV Park in Georgetown, KY (The Ark Encounter is in Williamstown, KY)
The Gateway Arch in St. Louis: 370 Lakeside Park in St Peters, MO
Our Map
Color-coded pins are the places we stayed
Purple pins are the things we did
Click on the little white arrow graphic in the top left to toggle the pins for stays and sites on/off to view.
For a video recap of our adventures, check out our YouTube video!
Cross Country RV Trip Planner
Knowing HOW to get across the country and find the places to stay can be challenging! Here are my top apps for helping us plan our routes:
This is great for adding in your start and end, putting in your specifications regarding how many miles you want to drive every day and your price range, and getting suggestions all along your route! While you do add your RV specs, we find we’ll still get RV park suggestions that don’t fit our rig.
It also only pulls up RV parks that have been submitted to The Dyrt. So utilize Google if you just aren’t getting the options you need on your route.
It’s really great to SEE your route with their map option, and has always given us a confident starting point in our planning!
When we were first starting out, we noticed this was the big app that everyone we followed recommended! We can concur, it’s a really good, in-depth app for planning your routes.
It’s also great for viewing RV Parks based on your memberships and discounts.
This one we actually don’t have personal experience with, but we’ve heard some great things about it! Mostly that it’s good for finding those “hidden gems” and really neat places to visit (not just about booking your RV park stay).
Of course, our go-to is a good Google Maps search as well as Campendium.
We usually organize a Google Doc with a complete list of every stay, the park’s contact information, and any special notes we need to know ahead of time like early check-in policy, cash only, Good Sam discount park, etc. It works really well for us!
As our first cross country travel route in our fifth wheel, we loved our time hitting all of our major bucket list items. From the mountains of Glacier, to the volcanos of Yellowstone, and to the early history of Jamestown… we’d do it all again in a heartbeat if we could!
