In my last post, I mentioned that we recently embarked on a cross-country road trip with our new (to us) Class C Winnebago Minnie Winnie.  We traveled over 5,000 miles in total and I had ample time and opportunity to test out many different apps to make camping and road trips easier.  So today I’m going to share with you our tested and favorite apps.  We have the 10 best road trip camping apps as of this writing in June 2022.

We used all these apps during our trip and they became our go-to’s (well except for those in the “detour lover’s” section, which I will touch on why).

Note:  Some of these apps are free but not all.  I’m pretty frugal so if I recommend you use a paid version of an app, there is a compelling reason worth the cost in my opinion.  Below is a quick summary of my takeaways on the apps and reasons why you may (or may not) find some apps to your liking.

Here is a quick sneak peek at what made my list…

 

List of 10 Best Road Trip Camping Apps

The links below are for the Apple apps so if you’re running another type of phone, there may be a comparable.  I’ve also split these up into 4 different major categories for ease of organization.  

Route Planning Apps

1. iExit (FREE) – I highly recommend this app for finding the cheapest gas along the highway you are traveling along.  The app also has features similar to GoogleMaps such as finding the nearest Chick-fil-A and Trader Joe’s.  LOL!  But we primarily used this app for gas prices.
2. inRoute ($4.99/month or $39.99/year) – This app was SUPER helpful for splitting up our trip into doable chunks.  You MUST follow their simple tutorial in order to get the full benefit of searching along your route.  The most common way we used this app was to search for places every  X # of hours along our route.  Then we would look for campgrounds in the area through the 3 campground apps we had which I will go into next. I have found a MUCH better way to work out RV routes through AdventureGenie for the same price. If you use my code, you save about $60 for the yearly service! You can read more about AdventureGenie here and get my coupon code.

Campground Review Apps

1. The Dyrt (FREE) – We used this app to check out campground reviews and amenities. The platform is very nice to work in and I started loading my own reviews in my account.  You get a lot of details on specific campgrounds you cannot get on Google.  One downside to this app is that there are a limited number of campgrounds in their database.  This app has the least amount of campgrounds in my experience but I prefer the review format. You get a lot of details on specific campgrounds you cannot get on Google.  While the reviews are great, you cannot go back and see the campgrounds you stayed at, which is a bit of a bummer. – AdventureGenie also has a campground review section and you can see all your reviewed stays. One downside to AdventureGenie is that you aren’t able to upload photos to your review.
2. RV Life (FREE) – This app has a mother-load list of campgrounds, even more than Campendium (#3) and The Dyrt (#1)!  You can also locate places to park overnight or rest/picnic areas.  However, I did not see any dump stations on the app.  There are a significant number of campground reviews, so if you tend to be overwhelmed by too much info, watch out.
3. Campendium (FREE) – Looking for dump stations, this is the app for you!  This app is comparable to The Dyrt (#1) as far as the number of campgrounds on the app.  However, Campendium does not contain nearly the number of campgrounds as RV Life (#2) in my experience.  Truth be told, I didn’t figure out this app until towards the end of our trip and have started loading our campground reviews/pictures here.

Detour Lover’s Apps

1. Roadtrippers (FREE) – If you are someone who likes to take detours and fill some time along the way, this app is for you!  We used this and I insisted we stop in Blue Earth, MN at the Jolly Green Giant Statue.  I got a kick out of it but that is not the style of my family.  Ha!  If you are game to take detours, I highly recommend this app.
2. Fotospot (FREE) – Fotospot is in the same vein as Roadtrippers (#4).  If you like detours and photo-friendly spots for your trip (camping or not), this app is great!

Outdoorsy’s Apps

1. National Parks (FREE) – For national park information, this is an excellent app.  The app will pull up parks near you and it also has a section for hikes, with basic information on the trails.
2. Recreation.Gov (FREE) –  This app includes state and national park information.  I noticed our favorite local state park (Custer State Park) is not in the app,
3. AllTrails (FREE or $29.99/year) – The free version of this app is great.  However, since I’m directionally challenged and we are often hiking in low cell coverage areas we use the paid version. The biggest advantage of the paid version is the ability to download maps to your app and alerts when you are off the trail.

That’s all friends!  As we go on more road trips and test more apps, I’ll keep you updated on our favorites.

If you have any favorites, please comment below so we can try them out as well.

Blessings!