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RV PARKS DIRECTORY


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In my experience no one directory website or search engine will list all the campgrounds or RV Parks. Depending on what you are looking for some will be more complete than others. I use the following websites to help find commercial campgrounds/RV Parks along our route:







For local, state and federal public campgrounds, I like:






For low cost or drycamping/boondocking, I use:









On Edit: The above are in no particular order or indication of preference or quality/completeness of information.

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Like trailertraveler, we no longer use printed directories. We use smartphone apps and websites to search for places to stay. The Day's End Directory is our most-used resource since we spend most of our time boondocking.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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In my experience no one directory website or search engine will list all the campgrounds or RV Parks. Depending on what you are looking for some will be more complete than others. I use the following websites to help find commercial campgrounds/RV Parks along our route:
For local, state and federal public campgrounds, I like:
For low cost or drycamping/boondocking, I use:

 

 

 

 

Now this is what Escapees is all about. What a nice post to help out those that need it. (And, I'll be the first to admit that I've added a few links to my arsenal:)!)

 

Best to all,

Smitty

Be safe, have fun,

Smitty

04 CC Allure "RooII" - Our "E" ride for life!

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If you want a paper directory probably the best one would be Woodalls which you can purchase online and it's also found in Camping World stores. Over the years it has become HUGE and many complain that's it's too big to handle. It does list the majority of RV parks but is kind of slim on public parks. It's best to go to a few other sources when looking for a park. The above links are all good ones, depending what kind of park you want.

Full-timed for 16 Years
Traveled 8 yr in a 2004 Newmar Dutch Star 40' Motorhome
and 8 yr in a 33' Travel Supreme 5th Wheel

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I'll add - www.campendium.com and asking google maps in the search box for campgrounds and rv parks near whatever city you want.

While I was aware of the ability to go to Google Maps and use "campgrounds near me" or near your destination, I had not used Campendium so just took a look. At first look, it seems to be to be the very best of the lot. I had one devil of a time locating an RV park in the area we want to stop in on our next leg of the trip to Escapade but using Campendium I find not only the park I finally located and booked us into, but several other parks which might well have been as good or better choices. While I have not used this one in the past, I will be doing so in the very near future.

 

Campground Reviews is good but it only has current reviews for more heavily used parks. They need to find some way to get more people to update their information as most of the parks that we have looked at on this trip east have had reviews, but all were two or more years old. And it gets to be a real pain to jump through all of the required hoops to contribute. If there were some easy way to just update information, I think that more people would take the time to do so.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

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If you want a paper directory probably the best one would be Woodalls which you can purchase online and it's also found in Camping World stores. Over the years it has become HUGE and many complain that's it's too big to handle.

 

After the consolidation of the Good Sam directory and the Woodalls directory, the book is now called "Good Sam RV Travel & Savings Guide."

 

Instead of carrying around a huge book, you can choose to use their website to look up information on RV parks and campgrounds at http://www.goodsamclub.com/travel/campgroundsandrvparks/Default.aspx or you can download their app for iPhones/iPads or Android phones/tablets, http://www.goodsamclub.com/article.aspx?articleid=3071899.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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I had not used Campendium so just took a look. At first look, it seems to be to be the very best of the lot.

 

I hadn't used it, either. So I looked up parks in Washington State...all of them are grouped more or less in the middle of the state. Not one RV park or campground in the western or eastern part of the state, although there are a plethora located in those areas!

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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... Campendium...At first look, it seems to be to be the very best of the lot...

I have not found a way to show all the types (city, state, federal) campgrounds/RV parks in the Campendium database on one map.

 

Looking through all the categories for a few states, I could not find any COE, TVA or BLM campgrounds or many of the County park campgrounds that I am aware of. The free campgrounds listing is very lacking in some states. For example, Campendium lists only three in the state of Kansas (two state fishing lakes and a city park). There is no mention of the State Wildlife Management Areas with free campgrounds or the many other small towns like Mead and several along US-36 that have free camping in their city parks.

 

Every website/directory has its strengths and weaknesses. What works great for one may not for someone else.

 

I hadn't used it, either. So I looked up parks in Washington State...all of them are grouped more or less in the middle of the state. Not one RV park or campground in the western or eastern part of the state, although there are a plethora located in those areas!

I think you will find that if you click on the map and move the curser, the cluster of listings will move and change. It seems to cluster listings in a radius around the location of the curser on the map.

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Most of those sites are also very much dependent upon the users to list the parks that they visit and to put in reviews of them. What I like about Campendium over RV-Park-Reviews is the way that they show the parks by location. Either one of them are only as good as those you support them so if we want them to be good, we should contribute to their success. As much as I see RV-Park-Reviews listed as the place that people on these forums check, I am appalled by how many of the parks show no reviews in the past 6 months to a year. It would appear that Campendium is a much newer site. When such a site is free, we all need to contibute if we want them to be a good service.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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The OP asked about directories. I posted links to a number of web based directories not thinking that it would be taken as a listing of preference or perceived quality. My mistake for not stating that they were in no particular order of preference.

 

In practice, I actually use very few of them routinely and none as my first source of campground location/information. My main go to is my computer based mapping program (which does not require an internet connection) into which over 75,000 campground locations have been imported in addition to the Woodall's Directory information embedded in the program. I've even added over 100 campgrounds that we have discovered that I could not find in any list. It also contains POIs for Walmart. Lowe's, Home Depot, Cracker Barrel, Flying J's, Casinos, highway rest stops and the general location of Day's End Listings. The POI downloads have been obtained from both free and pay sources.

 

This may all be wasted effort as the OP has not logged back in since posting.

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I think you will find that if you click on the map and move the curser, the cluster of listings will move and change. It seems to cluster listings in a radius around the location of the curser on the map.

 

That could be. I didn't spend any time exploring once I saw the grouping of parks.

LindaH
2014 Winnebago Aspect 27K
2011 Kia Soul

 

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...What I like about Campendium over RV-Park-Reviews is the way that they show the parks by location...

Not sure I understand this statement. Both websites show the listings as balloons on a map. Campendium requires you to move the curser to show a cluster of balloons. RV Park Reviews requires that you zoom in to see groups of more than one park in an area. Campendium requires that you switch maps to see commercial versus state versus National Park campgrounds. RV Park Reviews shows all types of listings on one map.

 

...Either one of them are only as good as those you support them so if we want them to be good, we should contribute to their success. ..

I know how to and have added unlisted campgrounds to RV Park Reviews. I did not see any way to add parks to Campendium? Not that I am about to take the time to add all the COE, BLM, City and County parks for them.

 

...As much as I see RV-Park-Reviews listed as the place that people on these forums check, I am appalled by how many of the parks show no reviews in the past 6 months to a year. It would appear that Campendium is a much newer site. When such a site is free, we all need to contibute if we want them to be a good service...

In previous discussions, some members of this forum have indicated that they post reviews. Others state that they do not like commercial campgrounds, mostly boondock and blacktop camp while on the road. Others volunteer at locations that do not have a campground open to the public. HDTers seem to prefer their own resource guide. I have been told a number of times on this forum, that most do not travel that much; so it would seem that the number of reviews that members of this forum might potentially post is not that large. From reading the RV Park Reviews posts, it seems that most of the posters are weekend/vacation RVers.

 

You might be interested to note that Shep's Canyon Campground does not appear to be listed in either source. Both list the Angostura Recreation Area. As far as I could see Campendium does not list the individual campgrounds. RV Park Review posters mention the Cascade, Horsehead, Hat Creek and Cheyenne campgrounds under the one listing. On the South Dakota State Park website, Shep's Canyon is listed as a separate Recreation Area so it's campground is not listed under the Angostura Recreation Area linked to by either Campendium or RV Park Reviews.

 

As I stated before, each of the many websites has its strengths and weakness. What works for one may not seem to be the best to another.

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As much as I see RV-Park-Reviews listed as the place that people on these forums check, I am appalled by how many of the parks show no reviews in the past 6 months to a year.

 

Kirk:

 

RVParkReviews currently has >15,000 parks in its database. During the peak camping season we typically receive a couple of hundred a day. Even if we received that many reviews uniformly over the ~100 day season and they were uniformly distributed over all the parks in the database we would barely have enough for one review for each park. (100 a day x 100 days = 10,000 reviews)

 

Since we all recognize that the reviews won't be spread uniformly across all parks it should be easy to understand that in the course of a summer any given park may not receive even a single review. It's not that the reviews in the database are "old" because RVParkReviews doesn't get new ones, but, rather, that there is a massive database so current reviews always appear to be limited in number compared to those already posted.

 

I have no idea what purpose you think it serves to suggest to folks that they should use Camdendium rather than RVPR. Yes, the reviews there are newer because the site is newer, but does it makes sense to use a site with far fewer reviews just to ensure that all of them are more recent? When you look at a specific park on RVParkReviews the reviews are displayed in reverse chronological order. If it bothers you to read older reviews, just stop reading.

 

Joel

Sandie & Joel

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You might be interested to note that Shep's Canyon Campground does not appear to be listed in either source. Both list the Angostura Recreation Area. As far as I could see Campendium does not list the individual campgrounds. RV Park Review posters mention the Cascade, Horsehead, Hat Creek and Cheyenne campgrounds under the one listing. On the South Dakota State Park website, Shep's Canyon is listed as a separate Recreation Area so it's campground is not listed under the Angostura Recreation Area linked to by either Campendium or RV Park Reviews.

 

 

 

For the most part, the park listings in RVPR were not established a priori before any reviews were submitted, rather they were developed, somewhat haphazardly, as reviews were submitted. Therefore, the sort of inconsistencies you noted are replete throughout the site. Several years ago a management decision was made to regroup all the campgrounds within the US natural parks so that, for example, the listing for Olympic NP should include all the CGs within that park. That undertaking was a massive effort.

 

The same reorganization has not yet been done for State parks, recreation areas, and other entities. Of course, there are many more of these than there are NP's and each one would have to be researched to ensure that the correct sub-listings were created for each CG within the park. Then existing reviews would have to be examined one at a time to try to determine which CG that review was relevant to. As we've already discovered through a few samples, sometimes reviews don't mention the CG and sometimes they mention multiple ones without indicating which one the reviewer stayed at. So this is would be a very labor intensive task.

 

In this particular case Shep's Canyon is not listed on RVPR because we don't have a review for it. If one were to be submitted it would seem as if the correct approach would be to be consistent with the SD parks website which lists it as a separate recreation area and not part of Angostura.

 

I hope this post helps you to understand that there's a lot of behind the scenes effort that goes into maintaining a database as complex as RVPR's. We welcome suggestions and we've made numerous helpful changes as a result of ideas sent to us by users.

 

Joel

Sandie & Joel

2000 40' Beaver Patriot Thunder Princeton--425 HP/1550 ft-lbs CAT C-12
2014 Honda CR-V AWD EX-L with ReadyBrute tow bar/brake system
WiFiRanger Ambassador
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Post #11 When such a site is free, we all need to contribute if we want them to be a good service.

My point was an effort to get people who use the site to contribute to it. :)

 

Those guys work very hard on that site and I know from a brief experience with them that they are also very dedicated. The same can be said for many other quality websites but as I said, the very least that we can do as users is to contribute information to them. It matters not whether we are talking of the sites reviewing campgrounds, or others like Gas Buddy, they all depend upon the users for their information. (Joel, does that help you to understand? :P )

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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Those guys work very hard on that site and I know from a brief experience with them that they are also very dedicated. The same can be said for many other quality websites but as I said, the very least that we can do as users is to contribute information to them.

 

Kirk:

 

You make it sounds as if these sites are altruistic ventures started by people who want to help RVers and other travelers. They may be that, but first and foremost they are businesses and the people who own them are seeking to profit from them. It is naive to think otherwise.

 

I will freely admit to being biased in favor of RVPR and I think its review database far exceeds in both quantity and quality any other online one for reviews of RV parks and campgrounds. But RVPR is a very small fish in the overall travel information pond when we are stacked up against TripAdvisor, the "Big Kahuna" of the online travel information business. We work very hard to stay ahead of TA in RV park reviews but that is quite a challenge when you're up against an entity that is a huge publicly traded company with enormous resources.

 

Therefore, I have to admit to not being all that charitably disposed towards another site that has, as its primary focus, reviews of RV parks and campgrounds. IMO if the key objective is to stay ahead of TripAdvisor, then splitting reviews between two competing websites will make it easier for TA to overtake both of us IMO.

 

I fully agree with your statement that people who use a site should contribute to it. If you enjoy reading the more than a quarter of a million posted reviews on RVPR then be sure to post your reviews there every time you stay at a park. As for other sites that would like to compete with RVPR and TA, I sure wouldn't try to prevent you from posting there but make sure you post on RVPR first.

 

Joel

Sandie & Joel

2000 40' Beaver Patriot Thunder Princeton--425 HP/1550 ft-lbs CAT C-12
2014 Honda CR-V AWD EX-L with ReadyBrute tow bar/brake system
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We've always used RV Parks Review and found it to be very helpful. We posted on it all the time.

 

Just for the heck of it, I just checked one of our favorite national forest campgrounds, Haviland Lake, and Campendium has only one review and that was from June 2013. RV Parks Review had nine, I believe, dating from June 2011 through May 2016.

Full-timed for 16 Years
Traveled 8 yr in a 2004 Newmar Dutch Star 40' Motorhome
and 8 yr in a 33' Travel Supreme 5th Wheel

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In my experience no one directory website or search engine will list all the campgrounds or RV Parks. Depending on what you are looking for some will be more complete than others. I use the following websites to help find commercial campgrounds/RV Parks along our route:
X2 in that order

Dennis & Nancy
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We've always used RV Parks Review and found it to be very helpful. We posted on it all the time.

 

Just for the heck of it, I just checked one of our favorite national forest campgrounds, Haviland Lake, and Campendium has only one review and that was from June 2013. RV Parks Review had nine, I believe, dating from June 2011 through May 2016.

We still use RV Park Reviews primarily because of their size, but have found Campendium to be worth checking and in fact superior in the areas that we are currently traveling through. Joel's loyalty to Reviews is great but you need to understand that his opinions come from one of the members of the moderation staff, so may be just a tiny bit prejudiced.I do appreciate his loyalty and commitment to his organization.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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Joel's loyalty to Reviews is great but you need to understand that his opinions come from one of the members of the moderation staff, so may be just a tiny bit prejudiced.I do appreciate his loyalty and commitment to his organization.

 

Kirk:

 

Had you read my post you would have noticed that I was very upfront with respect to my bias........"I will freely admit to being biased in favor of RVPR",,,,,,,and my relationship with RVPR is clearly stated in my signature, so you aren't publicizing something that I had kept hidden. You, also, ought to admit that you were once an admin of RVPR and, I believe, dropped out because you didn't have the time. I didn't recall that you left with any acrimony, but you appear to have a closer relationship with the people who run Campendium which is enough to have made you change your loyalty.

 

Joel

Sandie & Joel

2000 40' Beaver Patriot Thunder Princeton--425 HP/1550 ft-lbs CAT C-12
2014 Honda CR-V AWD EX-L with ReadyBrute tow bar/brake system
WiFiRanger Ambassador
Follow our adventures on Facebook at Weiss Travels

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Can I gently suggest taking this disagreement offline?

 

I think that the OP's question has been answered and this doesn't exactly put our best face forward to a relatively new member of our community. Most of us use all the resources suggested and have a personal preference for some over others. I dare say that the OP can figure out for themselves which works best for their needs.

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. You, also, ought to admit that you were once an admin of RVPR and, I believe, dropped out because you didn't have the time.

Admit? Not sure why I'd need to admit to it as that is partly why I comment about how hard you all work at this and strictly as volunteers. I feel no animosity toward you or any part of that website. I'm at a total loss as to what I may have said that offends you as that was never my intention and as I thought I was clear that I agree with you and most others that "Reviews" is the bet of them out there at this time. I do reserve the right to look other places as well. I'm sorry that you have taken offense and apologize for whatever offense I committed.

Good travelin !...............Kirk

Full-time 11+ years...... Now seasonal travelers.
Kirk & Pam's Great RV Adventure

            images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQqFswi_bvvojaMvanTWAI

 

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"Reviews" is the best of them out there at this time.

 

Thanks for the compliment. It wasn't clear from your initial post if that was the case. Sorry if I misinterpreted your intent.

Sandie & Joel

2000 40' Beaver Patriot Thunder Princeton--425 HP/1550 ft-lbs CAT C-12
2014 Honda CR-V AWD EX-L with ReadyBrute tow bar/brake system
WiFiRanger Ambassador
Follow our adventures on Facebook at Weiss Travels

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