RV Campsite costs and availability

[AlinCal]

Every year things cost more and more and get more and more crowded.
We live on the central coast of Ca and we're looking to do some camping in our local areas only to find everything booked solid, we even extended out to private RV parks only to find them booked solid even at $125 night for the Ocean Mesa facility next to El Capitan St beach. We live 10 min from Lake Cachuma and it books way in advance for non hook up sites and the RV full hookup are a little more forgiving with a week or two ahead getting you the leftover sites at $50 night for kind of run down sites.
Can't wait to get back to the Sierra Nevada next mo.

[Minno]

Yeah, our current beef is that in MN, state parks are now 100% reservable a year ahead. Terrible for people coming in from out of state traveling.(ie: tourism).
It was interesting being in the Bad Lands over July 4th and seeing the nat'l park campground full sign up every night with sites reserved but not filled. 100 degree weather might have had something to do with that!

Kay

[Protagonist]

A viable alternative to State Parks is Corps of Engineers Campgrounds. There are CoE campgrounds in 44 of the 50 US States. Every single one of them is located on the shore of a Corps lake project, or the banks of a Corps navigation project. Some have water-electric hookups, some have boondocking only, but the webpages have codes so you can tell which park has what. You can check the Corps Lakes Gateway to find Corps campgrounds in whichever state(s) you plan to visit.

https://corpslakes.erdc.dren.mil/visitors/visitors.cfm

Best of all, prices are reasonable and they accept the NPS Senior Pass and Access Pass for half-price camping, making them even more reasonable.

For example, in Minnesota, there are nine Corps lake projects that have campgrounds associated with them, and three river projects (each one a navigation pool on the Mississippi River between the navigation locks) that have campgrounds associated with them.

Continuing, let's pick a project at random, say Mississippi River Headwaters, Leech Lake. Selecting that one, we see that there is one campground managed by the Corps of Engineers, appropriately named Leech Lake Recreation Area. The campground has water, electric, and a dump station, a bathhouse, group shelters, hiking trails, a boat ramp, etc. And there is a link to the reservation page on Recreation.gov (CoE uses Recreation.gov rather than ReserveAmerica).

Also, if there is a non-CoE campground (State, County, or Commercial) on the shores of a CoE lake, the Corps Lakes Gateway lists them, too. But it doesn't provide reservation links for non-CoE campgrounds.

[LiLNomad]

I always have good luck getting into San Simeon. I prrfer the Washburn area up top. Always score a walk up site.
LilNomad

[AlinCal]

Thanks for the head up, we looked at that and reservable all booked and kinda too risky to count on walk up without local knowledge

[NWGetaways]

Personally I wish there were a lot more first come first serve sites. I've travelled a lot around the globe without reservations and the flexibility and spontaneity are a big part of the adventure.

Two of my favorite campgrounds here on the Olympic Peninsula - Dungeness and Salt Creek county parks - are half reservable and half first come first serve.

[MomcatA]

Being retired, we have the luxury of traveling year-round, but we often find ourselves on the road in "high season," too. Back when we had a 19' Flying Cloud, finding a first-come campsite was not so difficult- other than having to be up early to have a chance at a site. Now that we have a 25' there are fewer campsites available to us, so it is nice to be able to plan ahead and get a reserved spot, or if we are doing a family campout and want 2 or 3 sites together in a favorite campground, it's so nice to have reservations. The spontaneity that NWGetaways loves just causes stress for me when we are on the road in the summertime. And LiLNomad, I agree that Washburn is a fine dry camping spot.

[LBOskiBear]

It's pretty rough down here in Southern California where 18,000,000 locals are competing with tourists who visit the area.

Summer is really tough at the better state parks. However, I've been somewhat lucky by obsessively checking the booking sites and refreshing all day. A cancellation often pops up, freeing a spot for the weekend.

Other options are county parks, which aren't on reserveamerica.com. I think the out-of-towners don't generally know about these and I can usually find decent availability.

Thankfully, I hate the heat so tend to do more time in the AS outside of the summer months.

[VaTravelers]

I live in VA and have little experience with extended travel and the challenge of finding campsites. I will highly endorse ACoE facilities however. We have been to John Kerr Recreation area in VA twice and have had a great experience.

[Claudiaj]

Try joining some of the "critter" organizations such as Elks, Moose, or Eagles. Many offer camping with hookup as fund raising/donations. I've stayed in many Elks and Moose Lodges along the way. Many are in S. Cal. Enjoyed a 4 month stint in Alaska staying in mostly "critter lodges". My favorite is the Elks lodge in Monterey....can't beet $25 per night for E/W with sewer on the way out.

[AlinCal]

We decided to just camp in the backyard this weekend. We really just wanted a nearby spot to test run the trailer and make sure we had what we needed before our week long trip to Rock Creek in the eastern Sierra in a few weeks.
Once the summer peak is over we plan to do some of the local beaches with San Simeon near the top of the list.

[Piggy Bank]

Originally Posted by Minno

It was interesting being in the Bad Lands over July 4th and seeing the nat'l park campground full sign up every night with sites reserved but not filled. 100 degree weather might have had something to do with that!

Kay

We were in Yellowstone the week of the 4th, and kind of felt like the campground, though marked as FULL at the entrance, seemed to have a fair amount of empty sites.

It turned out that there were both a lot of late arrivals, getting to the CG after dinner time, and a lot of 1 day only campers, which we found strange.

Reservations fill up months ahead there. I guess some people like to "keep moving on" all the time.

Since there is no electric or water, I can understand why some people might stay away all day, eat out for meals, even shower and do laundry off site, and then just pull in to sleep for the night.

Seemed like a lot of work to me.

[Mollysdad]

Since I drove alone, I was really bad about pulling over, getting out the campground guide and calling ahead. That means I was arriving at 8pm a lot of times and paid the price of looking for a site after the office closed. Many campgrounds are not user friendly in the dark. But I just wanted to get from A to B as quickly as possible, then spend a month at B.

[Lily&Me]

Most of the time....

Now that I am doing all the driving...all the everything ... before I leave in the morning, I decide my route, identify where I want to stay that night, and if it is a campground of any kind I write the phone number down on a Post-it.

All of my campground information is electronic these days, which is so much easier than lugging books and leafing thru them.

First coffee/potty break or so, I call ahead to make sure there is a vacancy, check rates, leave my name or make a reservation if that is required.

If there is no vacancy, I take a few minutes to find something else.

Cold calls at campgrounds are not at all enjoyable, in my opinion...can leave you wandering around, looking for something, anything.


Maggie

[Protagonist]

When I was working for a living and my boss set my schedule, I never left on a trip without having the reservations in hand. I would drive all the way there the first day and all the way back the last day, so I had as much time at my destination as possible.

Now that I'm retired and set my own schedule I don't always make reservations for waypoint stops in transit, but I still always make them for destination stops. As bad as it is to drive a whole day and find you've got no place to stay, it's even worse to drive 2 or 3 days only to discover that you've got no place to stay!

[AlinCal]

The problem around here is those reservations need to be made mos. ahead in the middle of the night to have any chance.

[Protagonist]

Originally Posted by AlinCal

The problem around here is those reservations need to be made mos. ahead in the middle of the night to have any chance.

All the more reason to have them, in my opinion.

When I worked for a living, sometimes I would make the reservation first, then ask for time off, rather than trying to get a reservation for when I had time off scheduled. The boss was more understanding of, "But I already have reservations!" than the campground would be of, "But I couldn't get reservations."

[StreamingEagle]

This is my exact frustration!

One of the things that drew me to getting my trailer was the prospect of hitting the road at a moment's notice. After a season of camping now I have fully learned that camping is a WAY ahead of time planning game.

I like the idea of boondocking, but I don't always want to schlep my genset with me if I don't have to.

Is there any better way to find first-come first-serve locations?

[moosetags]

We still fly by the seat of our pants when is come to Airstreaming. We rarely make a campground reservation more than a couple of hours in advance. This morning , Lucy is camped in Glenrock, Wyoming, near Casper. We made the reservation here about three o'clock yesterday afternoon. We are currently on an extended trip (2 months) out west. We don't have any reservations anywhere. We rarely stay more than 2 or 3 nights at any one spot.

Brian

[TravlinMan]

In California I recommend Anza Borrego Desert, Death Valley NP, The Alabama Hills and the Sierra's south of Mammoth on 395. Plenty of boondocking to be had, no reservations needed. Go on a weekday if ya can but even weekends ain't bad. If ya can handle heat, go where it's hot there are less people. If not, go to the Sierra's but stay away from Mammoth Yosemite and Sequoia.

The forests are wide open around those parts too.

Happy campin.