Frequently asked questions

VistaBound is an AI-powered RV trip planner. You tell it where you're headed, how many days you have, and how far you'll drive in a day, and it builds a complete day-by-day itinerary — routes, overnight campgrounds sized to your rig, and worthwhile stops along the way.

Yes — that's the Trip Co-Pilot. On any saved trip, open the co-pilot and tell it what you want in plain language, like talking to a human trip planner: “add a brewery on day 2,” “swap this campground for one with full hookups and shade,” or “make the trip a day shorter.” It finds real, rig-fit places (never invented ones), reworks the route, and shows you the exact suggested changes to Apply or Discard — nothing changes until you approve it. The Trip Co-Pilot runs in your web browser on desktop or phone. The free plan includes 5 co-pilot messages a day; paid plans are unlimited.

Yes. VistaBound has a free plan with no credit card required — you get the full interactive map of 38,000+ campgrounds (with reviews, photos, and filters) and can plan one 3-day trip. Upgrading to a paid plan unlocks unlimited trips, exports, trip sharing and collaboration, the photo Trip Journal, and the iPhone and Android navigation apps.

VistaBound has a free plan (browse the full campground map and plan a single 3-day trip, no card). Paid plans unlock unlimited trips, exports, sharing, collaboration, the Trip Journal, and the iPhone and Android nav apps: $12.99 per month or $59 per year (about $4.92 a month — roughly 62% cheaper than paying monthly). Each paid plan starts with a 7-day free trial, and you can cancel anytime.

VistaBound combines things most planners keep separate: AI itinerary generation, RV-aware turn-by-turn navigation with CarPlay and Android Auto, and authoritative Recreation.gov campground data — all matched to your rig's size so the routes and campgrounds actually fit your RV. It also layers on AI review summaries and a personalized Match Score for every campground, 27,000+ curated points of interest you can drop into a trip, thousands of free overnight-parking and boondocking spots, real-time trip collaboration with change tracking, and a Trip Journal that lets you document the trip with photos, share it with followers by email, and turn stops into reviews.

Yes, on any paid plan. VistaBound's Trip Journal lets you add photos and a note to each campground and sight as you travel, then post them to your trip's shareable page. Friends and family can follow the trip by email and get an update each time you post — no account needed. Loved a spot? Publish your entry as a public campground or attraction review in a tap. Trip Journal and sharing are part of the paid plans; the free plan includes the campground map and one 3-day trip.

RV Trip Wizard gives you a manual map-and-mileage planning tool; VistaBound instead generates the whole day-by-day itinerary for you with AI. AdventureGenie also plans trips with AI, but it's web-only — VistaBound adds companion iPhone and Android apps that turn the plan into RV-aware, turn-by-turn navigation with CarPlay and Android Auto. Google Maps has no RV profile at all — it will happily route a 13-foot rig under an 11-foot bridge. VistaBound is purpose-built for RVs: every route and campground respects your length, height, and weight.

Yes. Every paid plan begins with a 7-day free trial so you can plan a full trip before you're charged. Cancel during the trial and you won't be billed. There's also a free plan with no trial and no card — it stays free.

Yes. You enter your rig's length, height, and weight, and VistaBound only suggests campgrounds that fit and routes you along RV-legal roads — avoiding low clearances, weight-limited bridges, and propane-restricted tunnels.

Yes. On top of the RV-safe truck routing that respects your rig's length, height, and weight, you can set routing preferences to avoid ferries, highways, tolls, tunnels, or unpaved roads. VistaBound re-routes to honor whatever you turn on.

Yes. VistaBound has companion apps for iPhone and Android that sync your saved trips and provide spoken, turn-by-turn RV navigation, including CarPlay and Android Auto support for your vehicle's head unit.

Yes. A fuel-station map layer shows 107,000+ gas and diesel stations. Filter to the brands you use — Pilot Flying J, Love's, Shell, and more — or just gas or diesel, and tap any station for its rating, phone, and address before you pull in.

Yes. Every campground card shows estimated cell signal for each major carrier — T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon — based on the FCC's national broadband coverage data, so you can see whether you'll have a bar before you book. While you plan on the web you can also turn on a cell-coverage map overlay to spot dead zones across an area at a glance.

Yes — it's called Trip Watch, and it's on automatically for every saved trip. Two days before you leave, we email your day-by-day itinerary annotated with the weather forecast and wildfire status for each stop. Then, through the end of your trip, we keep watch: if an official severe-weather warning or a newly active wildfire appears near any of your stops, you get an alert email right away. Forecasts come from the National Weather Service in the US and Environment Canada in Canada; stops beyond the 7-day forecast window fill in as your arrival gets closer. It's free, and every email has a one-click way to turn it off.

Yes. As it plans, VistaBound checks live campsite availability for each stop's real dates and marks any that are sold out right on your itinerary — so a great-looking trip isn't secretly unbookable. On the Plan form you choose how it handles a booked-up campground: keep the pick and watch it for openings with Campsite Radar (the default), avoid booked-up campgrounds so it swaps in a nearby campground that fits your rig and is actually bookable when one exists, or ignore availability and just plan the ideal trip. Avoiding booked-up campgrounds is a best-effort, avoid-if-possible choice: near a packed national or state park in peak season everything nearby is often full too, so VistaBound keeps the best-located pick and flags it rather than sending you somewhere worse. Availability covers campgrounds that take online reservations — every federal campground on Recreation.gov plus state-park systems in 14 states; first-come/first-served sites and most private parks aren't checked. It's a best-effort snapshot, never a booking guarantee.

Yes — that's Campsite Radar. Find a booked-out campground, tell us your dates and how many nights, and we'll watch it for you: VistaBound re-checks availability every few minutes and emails you the moment a site opens — usually a cancellation — with a direct link to book it before someone else does. It works for any campground that takes online reservations, which means every federal campground on Recreation.gov plus state parks across 14 systems (California, Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Wyoming, and Tennessee). First-come, first-served campgrounds can't be watched, since there's no reservation to open. Your free plan includes one active watch; paid plans let you keep up to 25 on radar at once. Every alert has a one-click way to turn Campsite Radar off.

Campground and facility data comes from Recreation.gov, public OpenStreetMap data, and Parks Canada, covering more than 38,000 national, state, provincial, and private campgrounds across the United States and Canada. You can filter the map by brand and network — KOA, Thousand Trails, Good Sam, Passport America, and more — and VistaBound shows live availability and direct booking for every federal campground on Recreation.gov plus state-park reservation systems in 14 states (California, Arizona, Florida, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Hawaii, Wyoming, and Tennessee). Reviews and photos come from other VistaBound travelers, and each campground gets an AI review summary (VistaBound reviews, enhanced with Google reviews) and a personalized Match Score. The map also carries 27,000+ curated points of interest from OpenStreetMap and thousands of free overnight-parking and boondocking spots.

Yes. If your old trip planner can export a trip as a GPX file (most can, including Garmin's tools), you can bring it with you: open My Trips in VistaBound, choose Import GPX, and pick the file. VistaBound matches the stops against its own campground and attraction database, so the imported trip arrives as a normal VistaBound trip — complete with campground details, reviews, and availability where they matched — ready to edit, re-route for your rig, and navigate. GPX import works on every plan — the free plan unlocks the first 3 nights of an imported trip, and upgrading reveals the rest.

Absolutely. Every itinerary is a starting point — swap in alternate campgrounds, reshape the days, and tune drive times until the plan feels like yours. Changes save to your account and sync to the companion apps.