If you are thinking about a trip whether it is for the weekend, the month or a year you will want to have a basic itinerary. You can use the internet or camping books to research or one of the many phone apps that have been designed to make it all just that little bit easier. The Wikicamps Trip Planner is a valuable tool that can make planning and recording your travels a bit easier.
Wikicamps Ap
One of those apps is wikicamps which can be downloaded for android, iOS and is also available for PC. You can use it for free but it is well worth the $7.99 to purchase. With the free app you will not have all the functions.
We have been using wikicamps app for many years and it is our bible. It is used to start our research on places of interest, campsites and information in a general area. We find the trip planner is an invaluable feature of wikicamps.
This post is a guide on how to use the Trip Planner on the wikicamps app. Remembering this is how we use the app and how to get the information we want. It is a personal choice on how to research and plan your trip, so some of the steps we do you may wish to do differently.
Icons
Looking at your map you will see many different coloured icons and they are all as important as each other. The include campgrounds, points of interst, toilets, dump points, caravan parks etc.
When you click on one you will see the features of that site. Things like cost, pet friendly, toilets etc.
Remembering that all these sites have been added to wikicamps by you the traveller. So if features change or the site no longer exists please remember to update. (this will be covered further in the post)
Trip Planner
We do alot of researching around the areas we are interested in travelling before the Wikicamps Trip Planner gets started. The new version of Wikicamps is a bit different.
The picture below shows what we have under our Trip Planner. If this is your first time of use it will be ready for you to insert your first trip.
Starting a new trip
When you are ready to begin your trip you will first need to fill in the details of your trip. You will need to choose a name and attach a photo which will personalise your plan.
Adding places to your trip
To begin the trip you need a starting point.
If starting from home you can add it onto your Trip Planner. You can search for your address and place a marker on the map.
Building your trip
Once you have added your starting point it is time to build your trip.
As you build the trip don’t forget there is nothing set in stone. Everything can be changed by adding, moving or deleting. You will probably do many of these as you go.
We will now add some camps and points of interest to our trip. There are a few different ways to add places. You can either 1. use the search function, 2. move around the map to pick your spots 3. place a pin on the map and filter places. We use the first two options in our planning.
Adding the first camp
We are now ready to add our first camp to the Trip Planner.
The next screen will give you options on how you would like to insert into your trip. Below is a description of each choice. We will usually choose the ‘Use Smart Insert‘ .
- Use Smart Insert allows the program to insert the site in the most logical position in the trip.
- Before Progress Bar. We will look at the progress bar further in the guide but it is the line showing where your trip is up to. This bar can be moved as you travel. With this selection it will show that you have already visited.
- End Of My Trip. If the site you are adding to your trip planner is the last place to visit then you would choose this option.
Now you can continue to search and find sites to add to your trip to build what will be amazing! Remember that you can also add to your trip as you go.
Other features
Not only does the Trip Planner show you your camps etc but it will also keep track of your km’s and the fuel you will need between stops. You will need to input your average km’s per litre and an average price for fuel. This of course is not going to be exact but you will have at least some idea of km’s and cost of fuel.
You can edit any section of the Trip Planner as you get braver to change things up a bit. Experiment and change things, if they don’t work you can change them back.
Final steps
Your trip is now well under way and the time has come to go out and drive it.
When you go back into your Wikicamps Trip Planner you will notice the green line on the map. This line shows how to travel to each trip selection in the most logical way.
The thick green line called Trip Progress Bar can be dragged down as you visit each place. This will allow at a glance where you have been and where you are still yet to go. As you drag it down the line on the map will change to red. This line is also visible when you exit the planner to your main map so at a glance you can see where you are on the map.
One more feature to know about your trip planner is that you can change the order of any of your selections at any time. If you press and hold any site you have added to your planner you can drag it to which ever position you would like.
A different way to record
If you do not want to plan your trip before hand you can use the trip planner as a diary as you go. As you visit places or stay at camps add them to your trip with notes on what you did.
You would add the tab ‘Before Progress Bar‘ because you have already visited the site.
We hope this guide helps you to get the most out of this travel app.
For more tips related to travelling you can check out
Understanding your caravan electrics
This is a great read has helped me even more. A water app would be really helpful like the fuel app. I do think we all need more of this kind of information coming through quite often I know I do as some people who had the old version haven’t sat with the update and can get lost.
Thanks for this. I’ve been using Wiki Camps for a couple of years now and think this iusis a great explanation.
Hello, thank you this is really useful. Can I ask how you remove a place once you have added it to your trip?
You guys need to be paid for your tutorial by Wiki, it’s an absolute easy read. Thank you for sharing
Thank you for your comment Michelle. So glad it has helped and was easy to understand.
Hello..I am looking at how to change what rd I use…wikicamps has me going via a highway where as I wish to go another way..how do I change this.
Hi Ronnie, if it takes me on a road I don’t want to travel on i will select rest stop or points of interest on the road i want. This also let’s me know where to stop and have a look around 🙂.
I hope this helps
Sally
Many thanks, it affirmed my knowledge and gave me more skills. The issue for me is how to create a historical map which shows all the travels I have done. Can I link my historical trips together into one map? Or should I use some of the other apps? I would prefer using one throughout instead of jumping between them.
Hi Pieter,
The only way I can think of joining them is to actually only have one trip and continue to add to it. I am having a look to see if there is another way so will let you know if I find anything.
Sally
Hi there,
I started a trip plan but we have now decided to do the first part but then go a different way. Is there a way I can copy a trip as I want to use the unwanted information for a second trip?
Hi Julie,
My apologies on taking a few days to respond to your question.
I do not know of a way to copy the trip. All you can do that I am aware of is remove the places you had planned to stop and start a new trip completely. I often change our direction or places so will delete the old for the new.
Sally
I put it in another site. There answer was to make it public and then copy the link back into your trip planner. Then you can d rename and delet what you don’t want.
Thank you for letting me know! it is always good to find out new ways to do things. 🙂
Hi,
When I add to my trip planner it always puts a straight line on the map even though I selected follow roads. I’ve also downloaded the offline maps but it’s not made a difference. What am I missing? Thanks!