Anyone that has had an RV for any amount of time, has been there. Make your plans, do your research, find a decent looking RV park, then you get there and it’s a dud! Why is it so hard to find perfect campsites?
Not only do you hate the place, but you also want to leave before you park the RV, it’s so bad! I can’t PROMISE these steps will work EVERY time, but I can promise that they’ll help you more often than not.
FIND PERFECT CAMPSITES!
To find the perfect campsites here’s the info you need to know:
- Who
- What
- Why
- Where
- When
- How long
- Put it all together!
WHO ARE YOU GOING WITH?
Since we are weekend warriors, we almost always camp with friends. You need to know who all will be there and what everyone likes to do. Are you going with:
- Your spouse for a romantic weekend?
- A group of girlfriends for a girl’s weekend out?
- Guys to go deer hunting?
- Friends that love to drink & karaoke?
- Friends that love to stay at the park and watch football outdoors?
- Friends that like to check out the local scene?
So WHO you go with helps determine WHERE you’ll go.
WHAT’S YOUR BUDGET?
How much can you spend? If the budget doesn’t matter, your good to go. Pick whichever campground suites you and go (as long as you’ve read reviews!).
For the rest of us, however, there are tricks we can use to get the most bang for our buck.
Search the area where you’re going. Once you know which RV parks are nearby, see if any are Corp of Engineer parks. COE parks are usually bare-bones parks and SUPER inexpensive but are often REALLY nicely kept.
State parks are usually pretty cost effective and clean as well, but often a little bit more expensive than COEs. State parks are our #1 trick to find perfect campsites.
If there are no COEs or state parks, start looking for private parks. KOAs are usually more expensive but have more amenities. It’s a fair trade-off since they tend to be a little more uptight about their parks, the parks are consistently nicer!
FREE OR CHEAP OPTIONS
“Ok, Beck, but I’m talking like I have NO MONEY to camp with.” Alright…I feel ya! I’m smellin’ what you’re steppin’ in!
You’re gonna have to roll up your sleeves and learn to boondock. Boondocking is where you will camp with no hookups at all, with few exceptions. Load up your freshwater tanks, make sure you have propane for your stove and gas for your generator (unless it uses propane).
If you can’t really afford campgrounds, check out boondockerswelcome.com. Basically, you pay one fee annually and you have access to people offering their own property as an overnight campsite for free. For the price of one or two nights at a campground, you can stay at random places all year long!
If even this is too expensive for you, I get it! Let’s see what other options you can use.
If you’re out west, you can check out https://www.blm.gov/. BLM lands (Dept. of Interior Bureau of Land Management) are public lands and offer free camping. I see a LOT of full-timers talking about camping on BLM lands.
Another option is to see if anyone you know has some property somewhere where you can park for a weekend. We’ve done this almost everytime we return from the gulf as we stop in to say hi to old friends in Louisiana. Ask your Facebook friends if they have any land where you might be able to camp.
Last, but not least is to crash someone in the family’s property!
My cousin has hosted us for long weekends in Nashville twice since we’ve had our camper. LOTS OF FUN!!!
WHY ARE YOU GOING?
If you want to find perfect campsites, you need to know why you’re going.
We often plan our trips around what we want to do. Some of the things we chose to do this past year were:
- Go to concerts – Our Maumelle Park trip
- Small town festivals – Mountain View, AR
- A trip to the beach – Gulf Shores, AL
- Treasure hunting in the heartland – Our Montana/South Dakota trip
- Visiting civil war or historic sites – Biloxi, MS
- Dig for Diamonds – Crater of Diamonds State Park
- Weekend at a lake – Lake Hamilton, AR
- Take in nature (including hiking trails and enjoying waterfalls) – Petit Jean State Park, AR
- Experience something new (did this more than once)
- Crash family reunions
You get the point. Sometimes the event dictates the location and when we will go. Which brings me to…
WHEN CAN YOU GO?
I’m sure this is true of where you live, but activities in Arkansas are VERY MUCH dictated by the weather. Winter is rainy and cold, spring CAN be pretty and it CAN be pretty violent weather-wise, summer is INCREDIBLY HOT, and fall is PERFECT!
Winter months are great for longer trips south…or it’s a great time for winterizing and maintenance! Spring is a GREAT time for outdoor activities like hiking and biking, digging for diamonds, and hammocking. Summer months are great for concerts, swimming, canoeing, or kayaking activities, and fall is another great time for hiking and biking, enjoying festivals & fairs, exploring the local scene.
I always forget about scheduling because we are self-employed…but you do need to factor in when you can get off work.
Knowing YOUR schedule is key in knowing WHEN to find perfect campsites.
HOW LONG WILL YOU BE GONE?
Since we take a lot of long weekends, but not many long trips, this dictates how far we can go. We certainly don’t want to do an 8-hour drive for a long weekend trip, that’s 2 days of driving to stay for what amounts to a day and a half of relaxing.
I’ve heard of a 2-2-2- rule, but I would probably only apply it for a two-week or longer trip.
Drive no more than 2 hours at a time.
Stay at least 2 night at every location to sample the local life (full-time RVer or vacationers.
Drive no more than 200 miles in a day (again, full-time RVer or vacationers).
I like the IDEA of the 2-2-2 rule, but it just doesn’t pan out for weekend warriors. I still think it’s important to get out and stretch frequently, though. We don’t like to drive much more than 5 or so hours a day either and almost ALWAYS stop several times during that drive. It keeps us from getting too tired when we reach our destination.
WHERE DO YOU WANT TO GO?
I LOVE going to a small town in Arkansas called Mountain View. We know this trip is happening at least once per year, every year. So, we check out the calendar of events in Mountain View before we plan our visit there (usually through a Google search). They have a spring and fall festival, so those are normally the weekends we like to go. This is how our destination determines our activities.
I also like to go to the Buffalo River here in Arkansas. If I chose this location, I know that I’ll want to go on a float trip, so this is my activity. Then I just have to choose my put-in location for the float to find perfect campsites.
Another time, one set of friends was going to be in Florida and wanted us to join them. We decided to go to one of our usual stops in Gulf Shores, Alabama because we love this town.
We knew where to go in all these instances, so then we just had to figure out the rest!
PUT IT ALL TOGETHER!
GREAT! Now you know the WHO, WHAT, WHY, WHEN, & WHERE…it’s time to find perfect campsites for your trip.
Google search your location for RV parks to see what’s available in that area. Chose two or three parks to call based on these results.
Often, central Arkansas RV parks fill up quickly, so we either have to plan way far ahead, or be flexible with when we stay at any given place.
READ REVIEWS
I CANNOT STRESS THIS ENOUGH!!! The best way to find perfect campsites is to take all of the possibilities you find and sift through the comments and reviews.
If someone gripes about something stupid, you can probably ignore it, but if you see the same complaint surfacing, again and again, this is a great indication to avoid that park.
Look at the pictures. Read the Google reviews. Look on Trip Advisor. They often have reviews and pictures of RV parks.
Ask around. Do you know anyone who has ever visited this RV park? What did they think?
SOCIAL MEDIA
I’m a part of several Facebook groups for RVers. This is an INCREDIBLE resource ESPECIALLY if you aren’t familiar with the area! If you have a Facebook account, just type in the search bar “RV groups.” You will find PLENTY! The larger the group, the more advice you’ll find.
Check out YouTube and see if anyone has posted reviews of your target RV campgrounds. The results might surprise you. More and more RVers are posting reviews of campgrounds they’ve visited.
BOOK IT!
Last, but not least, just pull the trigger. If you get a bad one (which we did this year…twice), suck it up, buttercup! It happens…but it happens far less than finding a little nugget! Chalk up the bad ones to experience and do a little more research next time.
One thing I would recommend is to use an RV planner like the one I did a review post for last week. If you camp more than one or two times per year, it’ll help you keep your notes in one place.
It’ll also help you remember where the good parks are, as well as the bad ones!
Is there anything on this list I missed? What are your secret tips for finding perfect campsites?
Great info! Thanks for sharing. You might also look at RVParkReviews.com It is my go-to source for great reviews of campgrounds.
That’s a GREAT tip!!! Thanks! I will surely check it out and hope my readers do, too!