State & National Parks

[mobilcastle]

What length 5th wheel do you feel fits well in most parks?

[Kirk W]

Are you asking what the longest RV length is that can get into all national park campgrounds then I would say that to be safe you need to stay under about 25' but if you mean the vast majority that length would go up to more on the order of 35'. There are campgrounds in some of the national parks that longer units can not negotiate the roads into them but those are the more out of the way campgrounds. We saw one campground in Olympic NP that has a sign at the road up to it that states no vehicles over 25' in length and when we were up there we saw two pick-up campers, one very small travel trailer and a bunch of tents. Having driven up in an SUV, I would not have wanted to take any sort of trailer into it. But those are the exception and your main campgrounds will almost always accommodate an RV of 35' and there will usually be some sites that can serve longer. The larger sites as often the first ones filled so if in a larger RV you may need to arrive early.

 

We lived in a 36' RV while fulltime and never had any serious problems getting into public park campgrounds, although there were times that it tested our driving skills to get the RV into the spot selected due to narrow roads and short turns in the campgrounds. There have been only rare occasions that we were not able to find any sites with enough length to fit into.

[2gypsies]

90% of our campsites are in public parks (national, state, forest service, COE, county and city) with our 40' motorhome. You do have to do some research but we've never had problems if we wanted to go to a particular area. I will say that we're mainly in the west but have done the southeast, also. Many places have been updated to accommodate longer RVs, particularly the forest service campgrounds. Some are now paved and have hookups.

 

Good luck!

[mobilcastle]

I want to thank you for your answers. We have just started fulltiming about 6 months ago. Our travels over the last few years have been mostly in the northeast and southeast. Our 5th wheel is 38 foot and to get it into some state parks backed in has been a challenge at times especially if their are a lot of trees. I have no experience traveling in the west so I am glad to hear our unit should fit in many places. If I buy another one in the future I think it will be smaller. Safe travels to all.

Steve

[Al F]

As others have said, it is challenging sometimes to maneuver into a campsites in National Forests & Parks, as well as state parks and BLM lands, but we feel it is well worth the effort. We really dislike being in an RV park where your view is the other RV's around you.

 

We research the campgrounds using Google Earth (or Google Maps/Satellite view) and whatever reviews we can find. If we have a question about if we can fit, we drove our toad or tow vehicle into the campground before taking the RV in.

 

An excellent source of info for National Forest CG's is: ForestCamping.com The owners of the website have visited and reviewed every National Forest CG in the country, including Alaska. They list what size the parking pads are and how easy or hard it is for large vehicles to access the campgrounds.

[spindrift]

 

Al Florida, on 05 Dec 2014 - 2:55 PM, said:

An excellent source of info for National Forest CG's is:  ForestCamping.com  The owners of the website have visited and reviewed every National Forest CG in the country, including Alaska.  They list what size the parking pads are and how easy or hard it is for large vehicles to access the campgrounds. 

Thee absolute, BEST reviews of our National Forest CGs.

[Just Don]

COE are pretty good there lots are really big. Also get the senior pass half price $10-13 a night..

State parks in Texas has been the hardest for us in our 38.

But we've always gotten in to them.