ContinuousTraveler.com

About ContinuousTraveler.com

We (Tom & Kay) live and travel full time in a RV (recreational vehicle). Our Oregon drivers licenses list our home street address as "Continuous Traveler". Continuous Traveler is an official Oregon DMV designation for an Oregon resident with no fixed address. In our case, our home is our RV, and our home moves frequently.

The Problem

I like to plan ahead when we travel. Part of the reason for planning is that we travel much later in the day than most folks do. If we do not call ahead at least the day before arriving at an RV park there is a good chance that we will not get a spot (for this same reason we tend to avoid parks that do not take reservations). Another part of the reason for planning ahead is that I am simply obsessive about planning ahead when we travel.

As an old software geek I like to use a computer to do the planning. I use various computer programs to find RV parks, determine how suitable the RV parks might be, figure out the GPS coordinates of the RV parks, plan a route, make reservations, etc.

I ended up using Google (Search, Maps, Earth) and the web sites of individual RV parks more than any other tools. Second place goes to Trailer Life Directory. Once in a while MapQuest, TerraServer, or others come in handy as backup sources.

I would put our itinerary in a spreadsheet as I worked it out. It made it easier to figure out the schedule and to made it easier to change our stays and recompute dates, mileages, and such. Then I was able to just e-mail the spreadsheets (or PDF's of the spreadsheets) to whoever needed to know where we would be, and when.

I also posted schedules on web pages on our little LAN in our fifth wheel for my wife and I to refer to. These pages contained:

  • My comments about the RV parks.
  • Reservation information.
  • Links to the RV parks web sites.
  • Links to local weather.
  • Links to online reviews.
  • Local groceries, pharmacies, repair shops, etc.

We useed these pages a lot to check our schedule; to get more information on an RV park; to check the weather report at the next few RV parks; etc. And it was nice to be able to "print" the itinerary as a PDF file and send it to anyone who needed to know where we would be when.

So what was the problem?

  1. It was very awkward using a spreadsheet for planning trips and collecting all of this information.
  2. Then creating usable web pages from the spreadsheets was a bit more difficult than it should be.
  3. And each change in the itinerary required going through the cycle again.
  4. Sharing the itinerary web pages with only selected friends and family was difficult.
  5. The only computer program I found to do RV trip planning ran only on Microsoft computers. I'm a Mac/Unix guy.
  6. I'd rather have all my planning tools online in any case, with the ability to selectively share our itineraries with others.
  7. I have too much time on my hands.
  8. I love to write software.

The Solution

In the summer of 2006 I found a really fun new "toy" for developing database-based web sites. I developed a little "in-house" application for planning RV trips. Crude as it was, I thought it is quite useful. It seemed like it might be useful for other folks also.

ContinuousTraveler.com was born in the fall of 2006 to bring the travel planning application online.

As I develop the site, I will explore ways of making the planning process easier and more fun.

Development will happen gradually and sporadically. As I said, Kay and I are "fulltimers". We spend a lot of time towing and touring, then a lot of time stopped. There are weeks when I do nothing but work on software. Then there are weeks when I barely touch a computer.

About Us

If you want to know more about who we are, see these web sites: