 Hey everyone, welcome to Road Gear Reviews. My name is Caitlyn from Morton's On The Move and today I'm taking a look at a handy travel resource that we use a lot. It's called the Next Exit. Stay tuned. The Next Exit is an interstate exit guide. It basically tells you what is at every single exit on every interstate in every state across the country. It includes handy things like food, gas, lodging, camping, even hospitals, vet clinics, etc. And one of the great things about this book is that it actually highlights in red what services are RV accessible. It also lists out all the rest stops and in which direction they are accessible by westbound or eastbound, northbound, southbound. Also at those rest stops it lists what services are available. So you're never pulling into a rest stop not knowing what's there. If there is a service that is off the highway aways it'll tell you how far away it is. And also if you get off on an exit it'll tell you if there is an easy return on ramp back onto the highway. Another great feature of this book is when you do find a service that you want you can easily tell it which side of the highway it's going to be on. So if you're heading southbound and the gas station is actually on the other side of the highway maybe you want to find something that's a little closer to you so that it's easier to turn off and then get back onto the highway. If we look inside the book you'll see that this very first page has a user guide that walks you through how to use the book. Every page has a state on it and all the interstates in that state are represented on a map in the upper right hand corner. To be even more helpful if you know about what city you're next to it has a city indicator strip on the left hand side of each column that will give you a general idea of what city you're next to. Most importantly it'll include the exit numbers and the mile markers. Most states list their exits by mile markers but some states don't in which case they list it in just consecutive numbers. So those states you'll have the mile marker next to the exit number so that you can figure out where you are on the highway. So how do you actually use this thing? Well let's think of a scenario and we'll walk through it together. Let's say we're in Indiana traveling west out of Indianapolis. So I'm going to find Indiana which is the states are all alphabetized in this book. So I'm going to go to Indiana and I'm going to find Interstate 70. So I just flipped open to Interstate 65. So I'm going to flip the page a couple of times to find Interstate 70. So I found it here and I've got this directional arrow that's saying up is east. So as we read down the page we know that these exits are actually in the westward direction. To expedite my process I'm going to say okay well I'm heading west out of Indianapolis so I'm going to find the Indianapolis area city indicator strip and know that since I'm going to be going west I'm going to probably be down the page from that area. So as I'm driving down the road I'm looking for those mile marker signs or maybe the last exit sign that we passed. So once you know that you can look up where you are and then you can see what is coming at the different exits coming ahead of you. Let's say we're somewhere in between exit 73 and 69. If I look down at exit 66 I see there are a lot of services there including a cracker barrel that is highlighted in red. So if you're looking for a place to overnight or you're looking for a place to stop and eat that you can get your RV into that is going to be a great indicator that you can get into that cracker barrel and there's probably going to be quite a few other services around that cracker barrel that you can access. Also you will notice that the next mile marker at mile marker 65 here we have a rest stop in both lanes that have full facilities info, vending, litter barrels, and a pet walk. Now of course you could look this up on your phone but say you don't have a good cell service or I always find it hard to find rest stops on my google maps or something like that. So this is going to tell you exactly what's there if you're going to be able to access it and how far ahead it is on the road. Let's go ahead and do another example. We were recently in Louisiana so I'm going to flip over to Louisiana and say we're going north from Lafayette to Shreveport. Now I don't know the name of that interstate off the top of my head so looking at this map in the upper right hand corner I can see that from Lafayette north is I-49. So we'll look up I-49 and say we've just passed the town of Apollosis and we're looking for a rest stop. So I'm going to find Apollosis on the city strip indicator and I am going to be looking up the page now because our indicator says up is north. So from Apollosis I'm just going to start looking up and I see really quickly because it is bold that the rest area is accessible from both lanes at mile marker 35. So now I'm going to watch for a mile marker and figure out where we are and then I can tell how many miles it is to that rest stop. It also says on here that this rest area has a RV dump that is very good information especially if you need to find a place to dump your tanks. So now that you understand how this book works I'm going to give you a little bit of our thoughts on it. So we've had this book for a while hence the 2014 model and this has had a lot of use. It's also got some water damage because I keep this in the pocket of my door on the passenger side and when it's raining outside it gets a little wet but that is so that it's easily accessible and usable all the time. As you're traveling around the country as you know you're not going to have great cell service everywhere and what we found is that this is a great offline resource to just be able to find the next stop, place that you can pull off, the next rest stop. We love being able to see what facilities are at each one and easily determine if we can access it from eastbound, westbound, northbound or southbound. We love being able to tell what side of the highway a service is on. It makes us be able to make quick decisions on which gas station to go to or which restaurant to go to to get a quick bike to eat before we get right back on the highway. Another big pro is that red text that tells you what services are RV accessible. I can't tell you how many times we've pulled into a gas station and gone oh my gosh we can't even fit under these awnings or I'm not going to fit in this parking lot. This takes the question out of that and really gives us peace of mind that when we're pulling into a gas station we're going to be able to turn around get out of there and not get stuck. You'll also notice if you look through this that there are tons of food options on here so when you're looking at an exit you can clearly see all the options that are coming up on the road so when you hit that breaking point and you just need something to eat you don't have to go searching on your phone it's all just listed out right here. So obviously a big con to this book is that it's big and it takes up space in your truck or your motor home so finding a place to put this where it's still going to be convenient and usable might be an issue for some but they do have an app. For $9.99 a year you can get the updated version of this on your mobile device however I'm not sure if that requires you to have a internet connection all the time which would kind of defeat the whole offline resource pro to having this book. Another thing that is a little tricky with this book is finding actual camping that's not something that's readily apparent when you open it up it's usually listed in the other services area after each exit information so that's my thoughts on the next exit it is a great travel resource and we use it quite a bit and for us the size isn't too inconvenient to keep it in our truck all the time. Overall we've loved having this resource it gives us a great peace of mind and has helped us find a lot of rest areas and restaurants things like that in our travels. You've been watching road gear reviews if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and think about hitting that subscribe button. We have new videos posted every Wednesday and please if you have some gear that you'd like us to review please leave that in the comments below and we will do our best to review it for you. Thanks so much for watching. Bye!