How to Find RV Campsites, 2021 Edition!

hey guys we are shawn and christy this is long long honeymoon and in this video we're going to talk about where to camp in the year of our lord 2021 we're talking about how we find campsites yes so this video will be great for those of you who are relatively new to rv camping and also all of you old timers out there who want to stay abreast can i say a breast on youtube i think so of the latest changes and developments in the industry first of all let's think about where you can actually rv camp where can you park your rv the different types of campgrounds that exist for rv camping so for simplicity i've kind of divided it up into publicly owned land and privately owned land we'll start out with privately owned land and i'm thinking of for example rv parks are typically privately owned parks and we're talking about places like good sam club affiliated parks and koas rv resorts yeah and just those little mom and pop campgrounds that you find here and there a lot of those just may be individually owned pieces of land people have carved them up into campsites they put out 30 amp and 50 amp connections hopefully you know maybe there's hookups and sewer lines and good stuff like that and there are a lot of really nice ones around the country yes absolutely another option is privately owned land that you can overnight park on harvest host that's a membership club and these types of places are really unique because they're usually not a campground at all it's just a business of some sort that has a large parking lot that you can park in overnight so a lot of times it's a winery or a brewery or a museum of some sort or a farm those types of places so again privately owned land that you can spend the night on in your rv yeah and harvest host is a club that you join and i'll just point out we are harvest host affiliates if you're interested in learning more about harvest hosts we've done videos about it and we will have a link in the description of this video if you want to check it out and possibly sign up and join yes and i believe their rates are going up soon so if you want to join this year join now and get the lower price so that's privately owned land and private rv parks then there are the public rv parks i'm thinking of national parks state parks city parks sometimes cities may have land set aside for rv campers that's not even necessarily a park it's also places like corps of engineer campgrounds that sort of thing and finally bureau of land management land and this is where you might boondock and those can be some of the best most beautiful campsites price doesn't always guarantee you a great beautiful campsite no some of the best camping we've ever done has been quote unquote free in boondocking land with no hookups and some of the least scenic camping we've done has been some of the most expensive because if you're in a part of the country an urban environment you might be paying a lot of money for campsites just to have hookups and it may not be scenic at all so that's something to think about when you're booking your site and some of the resources that we're going to give you to find sites also offer reviews where other campers have written a review of their stay and those can be really valuable resources because the people that are staying there are usually going to tell you their best experiences and their absolute worst experiences so you're going to get sort of the gamut when it comes to the reviews and you can really weed through those and see if this is a park that's really worth staying at or if it's someplace that you need to keep on driving to me i really trust those reviews because it's people's personal experiences and you're not getting the the fancy glossed over photos from the campground website you know because you can make anything look good with the right camera angle and the right lighting take my face for example but it's those pictures that people post that they've taken themselves to their own site that will show you you know oh those sights are so tight or you really don't have a view of the water you've got a view of you know swamp or something instead of the scenic water view that they show in the one picture on their website so some resources that we use when we're trying to find campsites typically these days are apps and or websites most of these are available on a website as well if you don't want to use an app but some of them are app only the thing i like about a lot of the apps if you're using it while you're on the road it will find where you are currently if you're looking for a campsite in the area that you're already in so that's for people like us that don't plan in advance and we just want to find something close to where we are at the moment that's very helpful if you're a planner an advanced kind of person then that feature won't really matter to you let's sort of go through the the apps and websites that we currently use and we'll tell you what kind of campgrounds are good for for finding and if the app is better or if the website is better or it doesn't really matter so first up on this list is there is a new national park app that you can download this is very new i think they just released it maybe a month ago previously certain national parks had their own app that you could download like grand teton national park had one yellowstone had one but there are a lot of smaller national parks that didn't have an app so now every park or monument that's in the national park system is included in this app so it's really really nice but this is an app only feature as far as everything being combined into one spot but through that app you can see all the campgrounds in each national park and what their you know specifications are it'll tell you how long the campsite length limit is you know as far as how long your rv can be for each campground it'll tell you what kind of hookups they have it'll tell you if they have restrooms it'll tell you what the price is all those details and then there will be a link that you can click to make your reservation from the app so it's kind of an all-in-one location to find those campgrounds or rv camping options within the national parks and we will point out one huge change this year there are some campgrounds in the national parks that are going to reserve only status we're thinking for example of grovant campground and grand teton national park which was the largest campground national park system for many many years you could pull up there at any time and pretty much be guaranteed of getting a campsite because it was so large so they never really needed to have reservations this year they're making the change where you have to have a reservation in advance to get a site there so that's going to be frankly a problem for us i don't know if we're going to get in this year or not right now they're opening the campground registrar or reservation system um six months in advance of whenever you want to camp there so we usually stay there in mid to late september so we wouldn't be able to make our reservation for that time frame until i believe april look at the calendar see when you think you might be wanting to stay there and then count back six months and that is your window of time to book your site yeah i'm really disappointed that they've gone to reservations but last year they were so overwhelmed with campers so many people showing up i think because of covid you know that had never camped before and they're just arriving in droves and they were just super overwhelmed so i understand thank you christy that's right hello loyal blog watchers and readers we are here in grand teton national park we found a great campsite yeah you know we have been doing the long long honeymoon channel for almost 15 years now i mean the channel was created in 2006 so we've seen many changes happen over the years and we've never seen a busier year than this most recent year so the rv industry has never been more popular than it is right now rv sales have been booming but not only that you've got a lot of people that i think we're just sort of once or twice maybe three times a year going to like a local campground that all of a sudden we're hitching up and heading out on these two and three month trips and so it really just overwhelmed a lot of the the really popular national park areas and you've also got people working remotely more than ever now and kids doing school remotely so it's just opened up a lot of opportunities for travel for people that previously didn't have it all right one other resource that you need to know about is recreation.gov the website yeah they also have an app that you can use too what can you find at recreation.gov you can find like national forest campgrounds some of the national park campgrounds are there as well any sort of like kind of off the beaten path little campground that only has 10 sites or something that's part of us forest or what have you also a lot of the corps of engineer campgrounds are listed on there so it's just sort of a hodgepodge of government-owned campgrounds i am looking at a campsite for this evening at a corps of engineer park this is on recreation.gov and this is a picture of the campsite that we are thinking of booking so this is a water and electric hookup site and it's 22. plus tax and it's on that lake so you can actually find the campgrounds and you can book reservations at recreation.gov and that's becoming more important these days since the pandemic because of social distancing it's kind of a socially distanced way to check in to the campsite like a lot of times in some of these corps of engineers parks for example we noticed you could pull up and basically produce the proof on your phone that you had booked a reservation and you didn't have to like go into a building and sign any paperwork or anything like that it was all done online yeah and one thing actually that we noticed this past year due to covid that we actually liked was previously a lot of core engineer parks or parks that used recreation.gov for their reservations used to be you had to make the reservation at least a day in advance you could not make same-day reservations well now because of covid and they don't want people coming in you can actually make same-day reservations at a lot of locations through recreation.gov so that is super helpful for somebody like us that you know we want to roll up to a corps of engineer park same day and already have a spot then recreation.gov is the way to do it now what about state and city parks state and city parks i tend to find more through an app called rv parkey rv parkey has national parks on there they have the privately owned campgrounds but they do have the city and state parks as well they also have the core of engineer parks and i really like their app because it's really easy to use as far as finding campgrounds within a certain area you can have it where it will find where you are currently located and search within an area you know radius from where you are but you can also sort of navigate around on the map to different areas like say if we wanted to go to savannah georgia you can just scroll over on the map to the savannah georgia area and zoom in and then it's going to show you all of your camping options in that area so it's going to show you state parks city parks privately owned campgrounds core of engineer and it will show you sometimes like overnight parking options like walmart or cracker barrel those sorts of places and i will point out we carry a garmin rv navigator gps and one of the best aspects of having that rv gps are there are a lot of rv camping destinations built into it for example if we're looking for an army corps of engineers park they will be highlighted on the map of our rv gps so that's something to consider if you're taking a long rv trip you may want to invest in an rv gps system and i will say about the rv parky app to me it's one of the easiest ways to find walmart overnight parking because they specifically highlight walmart with the little walmart logo they also show cabela's and cracker barrel so it's just an easy way to find them and it will tell you specifically if that walmart allows overnight parking or not so you can sort of save your time with locations that they know for sure don't allow overnight parking the other thing about it that i like is it shows the core of engineer parks very easily you can find the core of engineer parks on other websites but man it is really clunky and so to me rv parky is the the easiest way to find corps of engineer campgrounds so what about boondocking sites like bureau of land management land and i'm thinking for example last year we had a wonderful experience in the alabama hills area in california there are a lot of different places that you can look to find great boondocking sites we like to start with campendium which is both an app and a website now weren't they developing the app for android yes there is an app that is dedicated for you apple users out there so if you have an iphone or an ipad you can easily download the app for campendium if you're an android user like us we have samsung phones so we can't use that app so i just have a shortcut button on my screen of my phone that takes me to the campendium website it works just fine using it from my phone there's no problems it specifically is more you type in a location where you want to go so you need to know a city name or a national park name or a zip code that you're wanting to visit in order to find the camping around that area it's not just a map where you can scroll in and find places you can do that once you find a location and move the map around from there but the starting point you have to type in a location once you type in a location area that you're wanting to camp in there will be a map that pops up and then you can scroll around on the map from there but it's not just a map to begin with so that to me makes it a little clunkier than i would like for it to be i'd rather just be a map that i can zoom in on from from first entering it but once you do put in a destination you can scroll around on the map and that i find to be more helpful than just typing in a destination and the reviews in campendium are really helpful too and for example people will even point out how strong the cellular coverage was in a certain area yeah and they'll usually post pictures of their campsite they'll tell you how level the sites were all the little details that you kind of need to know most people will leave in their reviews on campaign dm so it's very helpful moving on we'll talk about a couple of clubs for example good sam club and passport america first of all good sam club i believe the membership costs around 25 bucks ish it changes a little bit from year to year what do you get for that money well you get a discount at camping world stores which i think is 10 or something like that and you also get a discount at these different good sam parks and so good sam is kind of like an affiliate network type of thing like in other words they're all networked together there's not some central good sam organization that is runs campers that runs campgrounds yeah right it's not like koa good sam club campgrounds are usually those mom-and-pop campgrounds that are individually owned that have just joined as a good sam affiliate and they will give you that discount when you show your good sam card so i mean you might ask is it worth it to join i guess it depends on how much camping you plan on doing at good sam club parks we tend to do enough i think usually if you're staying seven nights within a calendar year at a good sam park it pays for your membership bundle that with the discount that you get at camping world and it makes it work yeah and a lot of times we found the good sam affiliated parks are pretty friendly family-owned places and they typically have full hookups yeah they're usually pretty clean and good sam does have reviews as well on campgrounds so you can go in and read people's reviews i don't think it allows you to post photos of your site so you won't get that aspect but you'll definitely get details from people where they say hey this campground was kind of sketchy or this one was really nice but i don't think good sam has an app it's pretty much website based i will point out that a lot of these campgrounds we've noticed that have a good sam discount will also maybe give you a discount if you're a triple-a member yeah so if you have triple-a roadside assistance or a aaa member then you may be able to get the same discount without joining goodsam club now passport america is pretty interesting because passport america is a club you join that offers i believe a 50 percent discount and we should be affiliates for passport america i'm not sure that we are right now but we should be now and there are certain parts of the country at certain times of year where this can be a great club to join yes if you're traveling during peak season then it won't be worth it because most of the campgrounds affiliated with passport america don't offer the discounts during the high season if you're traveling during the shoulder season then it's great we did it two years ago when we went to the florida keys in april may and we stayed at numerous full hookup campgrounds for half price so we were paying less than 20 a night in many cases to stay at full hookup campgrounds places in the state of florida because we were traveling during off-peak season now several of these campgrounds you'll get to and it will be campgrounds where most of the people live there full-time like retire retirement people that are there year-round or they're there for the winter what have you so it's not going to be like a typical rv resort type situation it's more of a full hookup clean place to park overnight so i wouldn't go there expecting to spend my whole vacation there usually but a lot of them are great for stopovers when you want full hookups you need to empty your tanks you want to take a long hot shower it's a good option yeah that's an interesting observation just about rv parks in general there's absolutely no consistency from one to the next i mean you can view that as as a positive or negative however you want to look at it like some are lush rv resorts and others you're just parking in a field you know with nothing like no trees it's just bearing no vegetation yeah you know we've seen the gamut you don't really know unless you do a little bit of homework beforehand because i could imagine if you're new to rv travel you might show up at one of these places where you're just parking in a muddy field and think what the heck is this what did i sign up for there are other places that could be like trailer parks you know i mean like the traditional trailer park where maybe 90 of the park are full-time like residents and the trailers haven't moved in 30 years now that's a an exception to the rule but the point being you may show up expecting a campground and it's really more of a trailer park if you know what i mean there's a difference and a lot of these campground review sites or apps where people can leave reviews will give you that information they'll say 80 percent of the people here are here full time but they can also say you know it's very well kept it looks like a resort i wouldn't be concerned and then there will be other locations where they're like wow i felt like i needed a police escort to get out of there you know like and skip this place so that's where it's really helpful to look at reviews when you're considering those individually owned campgrounds to be fair we stayed in some really nice quote-unquote trailer parks that were maybe mostly full-time and i'm thinking like hollywood rv park yeah there are a lot of people who are living there full-time and it is a it's just a really great place great neighborhood feel to it very well run with really fantastic neighbors who you really want to meet and hang out with and talk to and get to know yeah so you know you just have to do some homework to find out what to expect so i'm going to talk a little bit more about harvest host the harvest hosts is a club that you join you pay a flat fee and then when you show up to the harvest host location you don't pay any fee to the location now the location is typically a place of business could be a winery it could be a brewery it could be a museum it could be a farm and typically there will be some kind of shop or store or some form of business at the location and you're kind of expected to give something back in terms of patronizing that store you know it's a rough job you might have to go in and buy a bottle or two of wine at a winery or drink some beer but i'm willing to make those kind of sacrifices for this harvest toast experiences overall we've had very good experiences with harvest hosts so far and the feedback we've gotten from most of our viewers has echoed that most people have had really good experiences yeah i would say if you're in extreme temperature environments like if you're in the south in the middle of summer then the harvest source might not be so attractive because a lot of them you're not going to have any kind of electrical connection or hookup and some of them don't want you running a generator overnight so it might be just a little bit warm yeah you know but that's something that usually you can find in the notes if you use the harvest host app which is really easy to use it's again a map that you can kind of zoom in on an area it'll show you the options near you or in any part of the country you can you know scroll around on the map but once you click a location there'll be some details about what the the area is like like how many rv spots they have what's the max length of rv that they can park because some of them do limit like they can only have a 25 foot you know space so we wouldn't fit there because when we're hitched to our trailer we're 45 feet long you know so things like that that you can look up in the app that's very helpful it'll have how you contact them to set up your your stay how much notice they want some places want seven days notice and then most of them want same day or 24 hours what have you so you'll find all that information in the app you can also find it on the website too but if you're driving down the road you probably don't have your laptop open to look at those sort of things so it's super easy to access on your phone the other thing that you'll see on the app are the reviews so you'll see other people that have stayed there they'll sort of give you details about this was a great stop or the people weren't very friendly i would skip this one you know you'll get some some insight as to what to expect before you get there i'll talk briefly about koas because koa i believe has a membership as well does it not that you can join koas are the campgrounds that are sort of bright yellow and everybody wearing a yellow shirt you know the thing about a koa okay for those of you who are seeking pristine wilderness and raw boondocking off-roading experiences are probably not going to want to stop at a koa but those of you who maybe have kids and want to find a swimming pool and a playground and a playground or a dog room for your dog pancake breakfast that's right you know you can find that sort of experience at a koa right so like if you're a family traveling in an rv koa could be a great stop yes koas are always going to have full hook up options available they will have some sites that will be water and electric only but you definitely will have the option for a full hookup they do have an app as well that you can use again it's just sort of a variation of their website where you can go and find the koa closest to you or the closest to the destination you're looking to find and you'll find all the details as far as what kind of electrical hookups they have if they've got 30 amp or 50 amp or you know do they have a swimming pool do they have a dog run all those sorts of things will be listed so you can sort of find the exact kind of site that you're looking for you don't have to be a member of koa to use their app if you're somebody that doesn't want to join the koa discount club you can still find them on their website or the app without being a member you know there's some other campgrounds out there that i'd like to mention just because they're very interesting to me and that's like the yogi bear themed campgrounds there are a few of them and they're sort of like family oriented resorts i would say they're sort of disney inspired because like yogi shows up in the morning yeah you can go away yogi up in his little you know cave but some of these have really elaborate water parks on the property and i think it's kind of brilliant for families with young kids you know as far as just having a destination i mean the kid is going to think like they're at disney world or some fun place like that you know lots of activities at a lot of those yogi bear parks so if you have young kids and you want something to occupy their time those are good options for sure and lastly reserve america is probably the the last app that i sometimes use it's probably my my least favorite of the ones i've talked about today but it is another option that you can use sometimes you actually will end up using reserve america whether you want to or not because when you find a campground like a lot of corps of engineer parks or some state parks will actually use reserve america for the payment process and for the reservation process so you might find like for instance greyton beach state park in florida you might find that through another resource and then when it's time to actually book your site and pay it will take you to reserveamerica.com to actually make that reservation and payment so there you have it guys at least 5 000 different techniques that we use it's really kind of tough because when you think about it with rv travel there is an incredible number of different ways that you can camp different places you can overnight park you know everything from boondocking in the wild to stopping at a walmart parking lot and everything in between and we haven't even mentioned one of our favorite camping destinations our friends driveways right you know unfortunately we we can't share with you how to find it we don't have an app for that but they're just a lot of different places you can camp and it's a little bit disjointed so what we found works over the years is to have our go-to resources and we will often maybe check more than one yes so we invite you to share with us your favorite resources i'm sure there are a number of apps that we have not mentioned here right but hopefully you'll tell us about those in the comments we'll check them out maybe we'll do future videos about those resources yeah it can actually be kind of overwhelming the number of places that you have to go look or that you can go look to find a campsite so again just sort of cross reference between a couple of different ones to make sure you're not missing a good site and more than likely you'll find what you're looking for believe it or not we have embarked on multi-month journeys late at night before we've left before at 9 00 pm and in years past we haven't been big planners and we've been able to do that knowing we could stop at a rest area or walmart parking lot or places like that but with more and more people hitting the road and with things changing i think planning in advance is becoming more important unfortunately makes sense to have a lot of these resources at the ready and to do some homework before you go someplace yeah and actually i think us having a harvest host membership this last year came in really handy because we sort of knew in the back of our minds if we get to a general area and we're having trouble finding a campground for the night that there's sort of a harvest house back up in a lot of places now you're not going to have that everywhere nationwide but you do sort of you know have a good number in certain parts of the country that you can go to even harvest hosts these days you know a lot of these host locations will only have a handful of sites available on the property and as more and more people get out there and rv travel they're going to get snatched up faster that's right so just something we're all going to have to deal with yeah it's k it's taking some of the spontaneity away which makes me sad but you know maybe in another year so we won't have this problem once the world reopens and i do think there are more resources opening up and we'll talk about those in the future where you can camp on people's private land you know because people are are kind of doing the airbnb thing with their land and allowing people to rv camp on the land which would be kind of it's kind of like a version of harvest hosts but for private land which i think could be really interesting yeah you know i would love to see that catch on so hopefully the industry will grow and we'll have more places to camp moving forward you know i'd like to see more campgrounds in national parks and some of these different areas because we've talked about you know like yellowstone for example there's a lot of land and there are places they could expand that would not negatively impact the environment that would provide just more and better camping opportunities sorry guys as always thanks for tuning in we hope you found this video helpful this has been yet another episode of long long honeymoon the long longest running rv channel on the interwebs that's right and if you haven't joined harvard's host and you're interested click the link below this video that is our affiliate link so we do earn a little commission with that if you join that way we would appreciate it otherwise you can shop our amazon store to support this channel at amazon.com long long honeymoon that link is also in the description bar below most importantly if you're looking for a hutzler 571 banana slicer yeah we'll have those featured prominently in our amazon store that's right you don't want to miss out on that because we are bananas about rv camping all right guys if you enjoyed this video please give it a thumbs up share it with your friends and family again leave a comment down below about your favorite way to find a campsite and until next time what do we say thanks guys see you next time

Channel: Long Long Honeymoon

Views: 139,101

Rating: 4.970892 out of 5

Keywords: airstream, rv, camping, travel, loloho

Id: AdA8G-PGIrY

Length: 31min 16sec (1876 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021