National forest campgrounds across America are some of our most beautiful places to camp. Don’t you agree? Most often the sites are spacious and quiet, and they’re usually guaranteed to be in beautiful locations—campsites under the trees, near rivers, etc.
One of our best-selling Amazon products last month was this National Forest Camping Directory, which tells us you may be considering some national forest camping this year.
So, tell us. How much of your camping, overall, is in national forest campgrounds? Most of it? Some of it? Hardly any of it? After you vote, please feel free to leave a comment. Thank you!
National parks are great, but most are not designed to handle todays larger campers. Don’t stay because we don’t fit!
That’s why I am under 30′.
When we were young, the National and State Forest campgrounds were our first choice. As we aged and now both require CPap machines, we need electric hookups. Over night camping are no longer our mode of camping unless we have to get someplace. Our preferred travel/camping mode is to set up for two weeks and then move on. This requires a way to keep the batteries charged and with a propane generator it opens up other problems I don’t care to deal with such as refilling the propane tank on the road. I normally fill the propane tank at home from my 500 gallon PIG [tank] and normally in the fall when we put the coach away for the winter. Now our preferences are State Parks and National Parks.
Nicolet National forest for my wife and I. Close enough for us to drive back and forth to work as we’re not retired yet.
Wow, I haven’t seen that name in decades! I used to drive up there from Chicago for three-day weekends. That was back in the early 70s. I loved it. Back then I could drive the forest dirt roads with my CJ5. I guess that’s all changed now huh.
We go to boulder lake. There are forestry roads that you can still drive on. Have to be careful with some ruts and rocks.
National Forests are nice places to camp at, but unfortunately not very close to us, and at our age, we’re no longer interested in traveling very long distances to get to them. Our Class A is now mainly used for the wife and I (and our two Labs) to travel to and from our southern NJ home to our FL home a few times a year.
Being that Hoosier National Forest is 40 minutes from my house and friends are camp hosts we go there about 90% of the time. quiet, quaint , 3 lakes , hiking trails and 15 to 20 minutes from several really good mom and pop restaurants.
We’re in rural NM, and NF campgrounds are by far our favorite places! Sadly, some of our favorites have been closed from fire damage (Three Rivers 2021, EV Long 2022), but we still enjoy others. We only stay short-term and don’t need hookups, but they’re perfect for us: cool in the pines when much of the surrounding region is sweltering, reasonably priced, usually not crowded, and so naturally beautiful!
We use our Interagency (America the Beautiful) Access Pass quite frequently to economically camp and/or boondock in our National forests. Forest Service roads can often lead to peaceful and solitary locations for dry camping while more developed locations can offer full hook-ups. We default to NFS, NPS and BLM over RV Parks to optimize the view out our door.
Nothing showing up to vote.
Sorry, Bob. It looks OK to me, and there have been more than 500 votes on it already this morning. Sometimes it just takes awhile for it to load, or the page may just need to be refreshed (I had to do that yesterday because the circle was going around and around🤔). If you still don’t get it, you may have it blocked somehow on your device? Here’s what Jess said awhile ago about our Polls: “Sometimes script blockers and ad blockers interfere with our polls since they are from a 3rd party site. If you have one of these try and turn it off and see if that fixes the issue.” Good luck. Have a great day! 😀 –Diane
Same here on first load. Happens sometimes. I just reload the page and it comes right up.
We spent 3 or 4 nights in a campground in Cherokee National Forest in 2017, but that’s it. Now that our RV is 7 feet shorter perhaps we’ll more easily fit into the campsites in national forests.
I think you “missed your mark” on this Readers Poll question. By asking if you stay in National Forest you are eliminating National Parks like Death Valley, South Dakota Badlands and all the other Federal National Parks that don’t have a Forest. There are many states (or parts) that don’t have Forests.
National Forest and National Park is two separate entities. National Forests are under the USDA where National Parks is Department of the Interior. We have state parks and state forests as well and they’re not the same entity.
These days we’re not traveling long distances very much. But, we have a nice, not crowded, USFS campground just 20 miles from the house. We usually start & end our travel season there. During the shoulder season the rate drops from $16 to $8/night, and we use our ‘geezer pass’ to cut that in half. Doesn’t get much better. In between, it’s mostly dry camping at arenas while we participate in dog sporting events (Agility & Rally).
When we can find one that we can easily get our 36′ DP into it is a joy. Unfortunately if we have not been before, we need to disconnect the tow’d and explore before bringing the coach in. As we have advanced in age that scenario is much less likely to happen.
Unfortunately I don’t live near any, otherwise I would really enjoy that.
Our go to website in searching for campsites is recreation.gov. As such, we often camp in USFS campgrounds, as well as those of the other government entities on that site. We also take advantage of the 14 day stay limit, and, being seniors, enjoy the 50% discount. (We travel full-time in our 19′ Airstream trailer.)