To Make A Reservation Or Not To Make A Reservation??

[Just For Fun]

Originally Posted by Jocat54

We never knew from day to day where or how far we would go. We were on an adventure to see all the small sights we could, No interstates (well very few for short distances) This is the way to see the states and find a lot of unknown gems.

I could not have said it better.

[Genset]

My life is not structured in such a manner where I can guess correctly where I could or would want to spend the night, am more of a traveler than a vacationer so generally I stay at Cracker Barrel, truck stops, rest areas but every few days I do stop early at a KOA or what ever, dump tanks, fully charge batteries etc. Am only 72 and have a strong business that I need to escape every few weeks for a few weeks, like I am sneaking into retirement slowly. Sometimes I sense the employees do better when I am gone. Life is a circus.
Dave M

[twogypsies]

I guess we're not as particular as some. We just go with the flow. We've full-timed for 16 years and traveled constantly. We've stayed in the major national parks...all without reservations and perhaps a handful of WalMart-type stays of our choosing, not because we couldn't find a spot.

We have found that campgrounds do not reserve every single spot. Plus, there are campgrounds in national parks that don't even take reservations such as is in Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Those are the kind of places we enjoy.

We are self-contained and have solar so we don't need any hookups. In fact, the most scenic places don't have hookups. We also avoid interstates. We have found some wonderful city and county parks in small towns. Public parks are always our first choices - national parks, national forests, state parks, etc. We also love boondocking on public lands.

I can see if you have 1-2 weeks of vacation time you'd want to make reservations although we didn't when we were younger. If your time is not structured, traveling without reservations is very easy to do.

We travel early in the week and find our spots by Thursday. Sunday or Monday we'll take off again.

For the major summer holidays, we never stay where there is any kind of water around - lakes, rivers. We find a nice quiet campground and let the weekend warriors have their fun. We go to their places after the holidays.

There have been many times where we've taken off in the morning with only a directional plan but no destination. It's a very relaxing way to travel - for us anyway.

[SomeDay]

Only make reservations if there's somewhere specific to be on certain dates ie; when doing NYC couple of years ago we booked a week and half beforehand for 3 nights but made sure we were there before school was out also. Most places we go we never reserve as we might find a gem we want to spend a bit longer at or we might find somewhere we want outta there!

Usually find most areas we are heading to can easily find something close by and then if a specific campground we really really want to be in for proximity to something will book when closer to arriving.

We book well in advance if there is a major event going on in the area we want to attend or have to be there during that time frame (usually avoid at all costs as we hate crowds). Calgary Stampede campgrounds and hotels hike exponentially and like gold dust to find during the 10 days of. Hershey Big RV Show - Rally's and other main attractions/events.

Rarely ever have we booked a campground in over 15 years camping except as mentioned.