2026 RV Travel Goals: Planning Your Dream Year on the Road

Plans and Goals are Important

Let’s face it, your 2026 RV travels might be more fun if you have a plan and some goals before you load up the rig and the kids and take off. Your goals could be anything that suits you.  Perhaps you want to visit all of the national parks that are within a reasonable driving distance to your home or maybe you want to visit ALL of the national parks, which is a monsterous undertaking but certainly a lot of fun just getting there and also fun to experience each of the park’s unique features.

Or maybe you just want to use your RV in 2026 to go visit some distant relative that you haven’t seen in a long time. There is no universally perfect plan for your 2026 RV travel goals. It’s entirely up to you. If you’re a birder you can plan your travels around the annual migration routes and schedules of the migratory flocks or just visit those areas of the country that you have not already explored.

Rolling Trips

We used to plan to do rolling trips. We would pick a general direction for a three or four day weekend and just head in that direction and see what we could discover. Several of these rolling trips took us to the southeast corner of Oregon, which is the least populated area of this already sparsely populated state.  We would literally just drive around on unfamiliar back roads to see what that area had to offer. It’s also a great way to find new hiking and biking trails and out of the way campgrounds and parks. 

Plan Around Your Interests

Your plans should be centered on your interests. Maybe your goal is to do some epic fishing in 2026.  You can use your RV to get to those epic fishing destinations in Wyoming and Montana, or British Columbia and Alaska. Perhaps your passion is music and you have an interest in places with rich music histories like the jazz genre in New Orleans or the country traditions in Memphis. If your passion is maritime history, you might want to head up toward the Great Lakes because they are surrounded by amazing maritime museums. 

Remember, if you set travel goals around a theme, it gives you time to do extensive research ahead of time so your 2026 RV plans can be as granular, as needed, and where you want to focus your travel budget. You can decide what attractions will be special for you so you won’t overlook them in your timeline and destination plans.

There are scenic wonders, museums, and points of interest everywhere in this country and you can find abundant resources and unique experiences for anything in which you are enthused, everything from new locations for base jumping, to butterfly gardens, to quilt shows, to museums about local shipwrecks, to stock-car racing. Perhaps in 2026 you want to take the kids to Disneyland or Disney World and you can use your RV to get you there and to provide a safe place to stay while you all enjoy the parks.  

With RVs Mobility is the Advantage

The difference between planning a regular vacation and planning your 2026 RV travel goals is in the RV’s mobility feature.  When you plan a traditional vacation, you usually need to choose a single point as your destination. But when you plan an RV trip your destination can be a broad location, like the Pacific Coast, the Gulf Coast, the East Coast, or the Great Lakes.  And don’t forget the fly-over zones between the coasts, which might be incorporated into a plan to drive the length of Route 66.

You could plan a trip along the Pacific Coast from San Diego to Sitka or along the Gulf Coast from Corpus Chrisie to the Everglades National Park in Florida. Or you could plan to visit the historic battlefields, encampments, and forts along the East Coast from Northern Maine to Southern Florida, including Williamsburg and Gettysburg.  In an RV you can cover the distance and still have safe, comfortable, and inexpensive accommodations. 

Family and Friends

If you’re planning to use your RV to visit distant friends and relatives don’t forget to call ahead and let them know what you’re planning. It would be tragic to just drop-in to “surprise” them then discover that they already had plans.  However, by being in your RV you might be able to take some of the hosting pressure off your friends and relative, because you’ll have your own place to stay.  You can eat, sleep, and shower in your RV so all the time you spend with your family or friends is quality time.  

Warning for Big Rigs

Here is a warning to you RVers who recreate in a big rig.  If you’re going to visit friends and family and you’re hoping to park your RV in their driveway be sure to confirm there’s enough room and that there are no prohibiting city ordinance or HOA rules that you might be violating. 

Also, if Route 66 is included in your 2026 RV travel itinerary, be advised that Route 66 was originally created to tie rural community main streets together across the center of the US and many sections of this historic byway goes right through the downtown blocks of very small communities.  It’s scenic and charming but many of these streets are not compatible with trucks or larger RVs.  Additionally, if your RV is a big fifth wheel trailer or motorhome your 2026 RV planning needs to always take into account the type of roadways in and around your destination.

There are excellent apps to help you avoid narrow roads, tunnels, bridges, and low over passes. RV LIFE and Garmin both have safe GPS apps that factor in your RV’s dimensions and weight.  This is all part of the planning process, so don’t ignore these details.

RV Trip to Canada

Another suggested destination for your 2026 RV travel plans is a journey north of the border to visit our Canadian friends. Be sure to set aside plenty of time to explore this great country. Whether you’re on the West Coast, East Coast, or Midwest, there are destinations north of you that are absolutely amazing and stunningly beautiful, and Canadians are a warm, welcoming, and congenial population. 

All of Canada is fun to visit and I would personally recommend British Columbia, Alberta, and all of the Maritime Provinces but if you want to travel to Quebec remember that the first language in Quebec and parts of New Brunswick is French.  If you don’t speak French, it can be challenging.  Road signs, and all printed material is in French so even looking at the menu at a fast-food restaurant will be a mystery. 

Leave Room for Spontaneity

I personally feel that planning is important and it can be fun to anticipate your upcoming adventures, but you can also go overboard with that and take all the spontaneity out of your RV experience. When you plan ahead, you’ll know what to take with you on the trip and you’ll know what scenic places you might want to visit, but don’t be so rigid that you miss the wonder and excitement of spontaneous discoveries in new places. Another advantage of planning ahead is that it might also give you an opportunity to save some money by buying tickets early for admission to popular events or destinations and by receiving early booking discounts at parks and campgrounds.  

Baseball Games and County Fairs

We have a friend who made it a goal to attend at least one major league baseball game in every major baseball stadium in the country and another couple who decided to attend every county fair in Oregon in one year.  That second goal required a lot of extra planning because there are 36 counties in Oregon and many of the fair schedules overlapped but the counties were not conveniently near one another.  But both of our friends were able to accomplish their travel goals and fair goers obtained a lot of local notoriety in the press for their efforts.

Follow Your Passions

I certainly don’t recommend anything as complex as visiting 36 county fairs in one year, but you should be encouraged to plan a year of RVing around your own interests and take advantage of the fact that your accommodations are on wheels so you don’t have to limit your travel plans to one destination.  Many of our earlier RV trips were planned around our interest in Moose hunts. 

We went Moose hunting with cameras, not guns, and we scheduled trips to all the best places to find and photograph a moose, i.e. Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks, Banff and Jasper Canada, and the states of Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho, but for over 20 years we were skunked on moose sightings, until we got to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Canada in 2024, where we finally saw 4 of these remarkable animals. 

You may not be interested in Moose sightings but you certainly have your own interests, how about the NFL Hall of Fame in Canton Ohio, or the Nascar Hall of Fame in Charlotte North Carolina, or maybe you want to see the annual return of the cliff swallows to the historic Mission of San Juan Capistrano, in Orange County California?  

I recommend that your 2026 RV planning center on your unique interests.  Identify your interests and plan trips around those interests.  You won’t be disappointed.