Research, Research and more Research

We now have a list of destinations, must see and want to see and hope to see.  It’s time to pull up your sleeves and dive into the Research Phase!  Next to the budget this is the most intensive phase of planning.  What are you going to do, what do you want to see, what looks interesting, where are the campgrounds, are they RV friendly?  So many unanswered questions and so many places to go so where do you start?  Good question.  You may not know but there are thousands of companies that spend hours every year planning the best trips for you, friends, families, etc.  Here are some of our favourites so far:

Lonely Planet – Just like the guide books, this site hosts a ton of information and since you can find everything from when to go, things to do and practical information it’s a great place to start!

World Travel Guide – While this site is very much like all the other travel sites, we did find a few interesting things and places to go here that we didn’t find on other sites..

Fodor’s – I didn’t think that I would like this site, simply because I always pictures Fodor’s as the travel guides for older people, but was I wrong.  We found so many places on here that we didn’t on the other sites we were on.  This has quickly become one of our favourite sites for planning.

Time Out – We used this site mainly to find out about festivals and local places to go that the other sites don’t detail as much.  We like the TimeOut magazine much more than the website.

Travel for Kids – Travel for Kids combines fun things to do with practical tips, plus best bets for family hotels, family tours, fun food, travel tools, and staff recommendations for children's books about destinations all over the world.  This is by far our favourite site so far.

These are just the sites we use, there are plenty more on the internet.  And I’m sure we will find more as we go along and we will share them with you when we do.

Next up is the most important section to us.  This is the information we gathered to make sure that what we were planning was going to be possible with our kids.  And that the wonderful world of year long travel was an experience to be shared with our kids and it would be fun for everyone!