Campsite Sizes......What the Heck?

[ShinySideUp]

Another newbie question.......I grew up camping for my entire childhood, from local weekends to national trips every summer.
I camped for a few years (tent) with the practice spouse, until I had children. Flash forward a few decades .......and DH and I buy a TH 5er & truck with plans to travel this great country for a few years.

We have taken our first trip as a 3 day wknd.
A small citys' park with golf course and decent space between campsites.
We enjoyed ourselves and can see having a helluva good time for a few years.

Upon researching many different states and campground/RV resort websites, I am really taken aback by how many CG's have sites lined up like a PARKING LOT.
What the helm happened?? We have no intentions of staying at those type CG's. Except an overnight stop w/o unhooking TV.

Are certain types of CG, RV Resort, etc.... Better than others??
We get that public land dispersed is ideal space wise but won't want that all the time. Thank you for your time & consideration.

[Gizmosmom]

We enjoy National Forest, COE and State Park campgrounds. I do extensive searches before a trip to find these campgrounds.

We select those that offer water and electricity and have a dump station on site.

Occasionally we will came at a NFS site that has no hook-ups. I will try to find a campground that has a water spigot that we can use to fill our tanks. And a dump station nearby. This past summer we dumped our tanks for $5.00 at an RV Park after dry camping in a National Forest for 4 nights.

We will stay at a private campground as we are traveling if we cannot find a public campground that is easily accessed from our travel route.

It takes some research but it is possible. I use recreation.gov quite a bit.

Safe Travels!

[twogypsies]

During our 16 years of full-timing our first choice was always public lands exactly for that reason...lines of RVs to look at in RV parks.

You don't have to use dispersed lands to get a great atmosphere and big sites surrounded by real scenery. We used state parks, national parks, national forest campgrounds, COE, county and city parks. We also boondocked on BLM and forest service dispersed lands. A lot of the above public parks now have electric and some even full hookups but even if they don't, that's o.k. with us.

[OLYLEN]

Seems to me many of the 're s or t type parks are two fold, the short term, week's, and longer-term month's. The month spaces have grass and are larger and the shorter term are narrower and gravel.

LEN

[Nunyadamn]

I agree that some places are lined up tight. The way it was explained to me, over time more and more people have bought RV's while more and more campgrounds have been sold for whatever reason. So, more demand and less supply of campgrounds. Then, costs have gone up for maintenance and that makes it so the campground either have to increase the reservation cost or pack more people in, or usually both. Most of the time, I only see people shoved in next to each other when the location is really popular like at the beach or when there are no other campgrounds nearby. If your looking to be away from people, you will have to head to the mountains or deserts and possibly some lakes. Hard to find a place near a beach anymore.

[idnative1948]

We like FS camp grounds, but did stay at a couple of nice RV parks in Oregon during our trip we returned from last night. Boise, ID to Central OR, over to the Mackenzie River, down the coast to Gold Beach and on down to Crescent City CA, up to Crater Lake, OR. I do know that it is a nine hour seat time from the other side of Crater Lake OR, back to Boise ID pulling a TT. Just FYI.

[Hammer bird]

I've been camping for many years. I've been to parks (private) and beautiful public spaces. We usually try to see how many "permanent" sites are at a location. Some have strict covenants that the place looks great. Others have much lower standards and many units are falling into disrepair. Some campgrounds also seem to have a "party" atmosphere. I just can't get past the "pitch a tent, drink beer, blast radio" camping mentality. Lately we've used Google earth to check out what the campground layout really looks like!

[Superslif]

That is why we either scope out a new state park beforehand, or I'll do a Google View to see just how close sites are. Most state parks have good space between sites. But there are some where they are equally as close as some private parks.

Just got back from a Alaska trip where 60% of the private campgrounds are just parking lots. But all the state, BLM, forest service and provincial park campgrounds had nice spacing between sites.

When we were in Dawson City (Yukon) at a private campground the RV next door, his awning drained on top of my slide. The other side, my awning was 4" from their slide.

[Chance31ke]

Another option is checking sites you are interested in using:

campgroundreviews.com

It has helped me pre-check sites. So far, so good. They even have an app for your phone.

Good luck and happy travels

Chance