We follow the 2X2X2 rule when hitting the road. We never plan on going more than 200 miles, always try to arrive by 2PM, and stay at least two days. Of course we have set out to go 200 miles or so, then found something interesting a mile or 20 down the road, and ended up stopping there for a day or week. Arriving by 2 puts you ahead of the crowd, usually. And if you are blacktop boondocking at a truck stop, you will usually find a space. Staying two days gives you a rest on the day of arrival, and a day to explore the area in a relaxed frame of mind, instead of thinking about the four wheeler who paced you from the entrance ramp that day, and made you stop for a change of undergarments! <grin> Plus staying two days cuts your fuel bill in half while traveling.

The 200 miles or less only comes after you shed the "I am on vacation and only have a limited time," mentality that we are all conditioned to. That takes a bit to get over. Pushing for distance takes all the fun out of it for us.

Some other things we do to insure a space. When a major holiday weekend is coming up, we try to find a place to spend the whole weekend and one or two days after, with something in the area of interest to us. But the key, since we are retired, is to get there on Wednesday before the weekend. Most parks reserve a set percentage of spaces for drive-ins with no reservations. But I always check that we will not be moved or evicted until the following Tuesday, so we avoid the returning traffic. We almost never travel from Friday to Monday, if we can avoid it. If I wanted rush hour and weekend shopping traffic I would not have retired!

Just some things that work for us, and make it more of a pleasure, and less of a worry.

We are fully retired fulltimers when on the road and thus follow the 2X2X2 rule because we are not on a schedule. We travel no more than 200 miles per day (sometimes much less if we see something interesting to explore that we didn't know about,) stay at least two nights (cuts our fuel expense/consumption in half per month, gives us an afternoon/evening of rest, and a day refreshed to tour the area and see what surprises it has in store, and we always find something, then when we are back on the road the next day, we aren't stressed, and are refreshed,) and we always try to arrive at our next stop by two (to assure a space, before all the late folks arrive who are trying to make time.)

We have never made reservations but two or three times in five years of fulltiming all over the Western half of the US, and from Canada to Alaska, and only once were turned away, and then only had to drive a couple of miles to the next campground where we stayed.

We always get a space the Wednesday before any major holiday weekend, and take the furthest space from the laundry center, playgrounds, and CG store we can, and then hunker down there till the following Wednesday. So we aren't out with all the RV and non-RV weekend road warriors! And we can participate in whatever local celebrations are available.

We have encountered no campgrounds that book 100% of their sites, and we always pay for the week up front, so there has never been a time we have been evicted for the weekend. We have agreed to move to a less desirable space on Friday morning once, no problem for us.

So we are never on the road more than 5 hours, and never at night.   I can drive at night, but then would have to make reservations, and can't stop wherever I want that day, thus have to keep going till there, and maybe miss the serendipity of the unforeseen place or people.   One size indeed does not fit all.   So if you travel every day at say 50.00 of fuel in 30 days, it cost $1500.00.  Add in an average 20.00 per night for campgrounds X 30 days is 600.00 for a total of 2100.00 for the month.  Just stay two days and it drops to 600 camping and 750.00 for fuel and the total drops to 1350.00!!!  Now if you travel one day for 50.00 and stay a month at say a monthly rate of 250.00 your total travel costs for the month are $300.00.

 So you can adjust a lot of your expenses.  If the above figures are much different just plug in your fuel costs per day and average nightly, weekly, and monthly camping costs for your experiences and you will see the same savings possible.  Most folks add up their expenses while fulltiming and push for destinations, until they realize they can take their time.  It is just the conditioning from being in the rat race.  Leave the rats alone!