[DutchmenSport]

Welcome to the forums and congrats on getting your Montana. Sounds like you are preparing for full timing in all the right ways. You are using your new camper some and flushing out all the bugs and making changes to customize the camper to fit your specific style of camping. That really takes some time to figure out and it's always easiest to do it before hitting the road full time. You are planning and doing it well. Good job and good decisions!

About GPS? The number one advantage to using a GPS specific for RVers is to prevent traveling down roads with bridges that have low clearance or to eliminate some roads which really might be impassable with a big rig.

For what it's worth, in 37 years of camping and RVing with my wife, we have come across a low clearance bridge only 2 times. (well, 3. But that bridge is one in a town we go through on our way to one of our favorite campgrounds closer to home). The first time we were within 5 miles of the campground and saw a sign as soon as we turned off the main road with a bridge clearance 1 mile ahead. It really caught my attention as I could not remember how tall we actually were. I pulled over right there in the middle of the road and stopped. (it was a back country road). I pulled out my trailer information and yes, I was too tall. I backed up about 100 feet where I could pull into a church parking lot and got turned around. Then had to figure out how to drive a different route to got the entrance of the campground.

The next time was a few years later when we got kind of mixed up in a town somewhere. We were headed down a road that had a low train trusal, well marked clearance. But, fortunately, a cross road right there, which we turned on and had no problem. (we were still mixed up though).

We have a TomTom which works well, but it is not specific for truckers or RV's. It works well most of the time. But it is stupid. It will often take off the main highway and down some residential streets because that actual distance is shorter than the main road, but time wise may be 5 times longer navigating around turns and such. It works absolutely priceless when we are within 10 miles of our destination and off the main roads.

We also follow up with our cell phones mapping as a secondary check when we get within about 10 miles of our destination.

Before traveling, on any day, I also check Google Maps and Bing Maps and an actual paper Atlas map and I always write down on paper the road we plan to travel. Because, as good as the GPS stuff is, they all do seem to want to take us off main roads, through those secondary housing additions in order to shave miles off and then dump back onto the same main road again. At that point, because I know where the main road intersections are, I have learned to completely avoid the GPS navigation and rely on my own notes. So I have learned.

Do you need a specific GPS for RV's? No. What you have will work perfectly fine. You just need to be keenly aware of posted road signs, bridge clearances and have your route mapped out ahead of time. In other words, you really need to plan your route for the day, with or without GPS. You'll do just fine. Because .... when pulling a monster trailer behind you, it's NOT so easy to get turned around sometimes!