When you’re out “camping” in your RV, where do you stay most often? Is it in public campgrounds or more often at commercial RV parks? Maybe you stay at both equally, or maybe you don’t ever stay at either!
After you vote in the poll please leave a comment and tell us what kinds of RV parks and campgrounds you usually camp at. If you boondock most of the time, tell us about that too! Thanks!
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We prefer local county and state parks.
Public if at all possible, I have seen very few commercial campgrounds I would want to stay at unless they are Mom & Pop operations.
Been camping for decades now. Not full-timers, but take multiple three and four week trips each year. When we are going from point A to B, we usually look for an overnight Cracker Barrel and next morning breakfast. We book public almost exclusively. Just don’t care to be sandwiched in. Since we prefer beach vacations and these public campgrounds are in high demand, we book at the beginning of reservation windows, 6 or 12 months out. Have found that there is much more competition for sites even this far out. Not much spontaneity these days unless you want a site nobody else wants.
We rarely stay in a commercial Campground. We prefer smaller mom and pop sites. We also utilize a lot of city and county parks, and state and COE parks.
After 2.5 years of full-time, RV living, we prefer Boondockers Welcome, Harvest Host, city/county campgrounds, etc.
Now and then a nice state or federal CG is on our route. We actually prefer Corp of Engineer parks but we predominantly use commercial campgrounds.
We love our state parks. But occasionally when camping close to the cities, they are filled with those who don’t respect anyone or anything. In times such as this, it does pay to have a camera and have connections with law enforcement to have this type of people removed from the park.
In a previous life it was mainly state parks or city parks, in my present life my new wife likes the amenities that commercial parks offer.
In 5 years of RVing, I’ve never stayed in a commercial campground that I’d return to except as a last resort. Mostly because the sites are too close together. We only use them as one night stops while traveling and there’s no public sites within half an hour off-route.
Totally agree, Irv. We prefer COE, State, and City campgrounds in that order, although we have stayed at some incredible City campgrounds. We have a great one in our own community. I don’t like paying for amenities I will never use at commercial campgrounds.
When we look at commercial campgrounds, I always use google or bing maps to show the view of the campground. You can normally see the size of the spaces and the layout.
We are boondockers through and through. BUT, in this past year we’ve had to make four (count ’em, four) trips from Reno to Houston and back (2k each way) for medical reasons and we’ve had to stay in commercial parks. I didn’t pick any options in the poll.
over the last 35-years we’ve transitioned from “camping” to “travelng”. when we started out in our first MH it was very nearly always in a county, state or national park with no hookups or, occasionally, an electric hookup. these days we are virtually always in a commercial FHU park.
Our overall rig is 60 foot long. Have yet to find a state park that can take us w/o cutting the hauler loose.
We always search for BLM land before we resort to campgrounds.
Not sure what was meant about public campgrounds? State Parks, COE, City Parks?
About the same in each but mostly boondocking locally the past few years.
As we use the coach much more for traveling than camping, we pretty much only pay for “camping” at a rally. Most of the other overnight parking is at places that invite travelers to stay the night. These may be store lots, casinos or Boondockers Welcome hosts. There really are lots of places available if one is already very much self-contained and is not looking for services for a single night.
In years past when we had first a tent trailer and then a 26′ travel trailer, we camped exclusively in state/fed campgrounds. We then graduated to a 34′ motorhome (DP) and found camping sites were getting smaller :>), and found ourselves staying more in commercial rv parks. Then we decided that our camping/traveling days were behind us (age creep) and settled down to owning our own site at an Oregon coast resort. This, in turn, made us realize that our 34′ motorhome was shrinking the longer we stayed in it for a length of time…sooooo…. we now have a 44′ motorhome and spend 5 months of the year at our resort and traveling the same route to and from and staying at the exact same commercial rv parks along the way.
The US Army Corps of Engineers, Baby! Love ’em every chance we get.
Our preference is Army Corps of Engineers campgrounds. We do commercial campgrounds when we want full utilities. We do Cracker Barrels for one-night, just-passing-through stops.
We stay at WA State Parks almost 95% of the time when in state. When we hit the road, it’s almost always commercial or Military FamCamps at our destinations, but stay in rest areas or Walmart/Cabelas while in transit.
We prefer Boondockers Welcome and Harvest Host stays.
We stay on our own land or moochdock (and pay for our water and electricity). Overnights we do Walmart, Cracker Barrel, or truck stops.
We usually stay at commercial RV parks but when we can we stay at military famcamps / MWR camps.
I boondock mostly blm and national forest. State parks are a distant 3rd.
Mostly we do one night stays traveling from Seattle to South Lake Tahoe and back. In South Lake Tahoe, we stay at my Aunts’
Being retired military we try and stay at Military FamCamps. When none are available we use commercial RV Parks.
We try to stay in private if possible to support the local economy unless we can’t and there is nothing in the area. We do KOA mostly because I am familiar with them. Sometimes a private turns out better than a KOA any day.