[NOTE: While we are traveling through Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee, we thought we'd provide an "interlude" blog post about campgrounds.]
One of the inevitabilities of traveling the country in an RV is that we have to put it somewhere each night. Although it is possible to camp out for free on "public land" (of which there is a lot in the western US) or in a Walmart or Cracker Barrel parking lot, those spots do not come with electricity, water, or a place to dump our sewage periodically. Thus, most times we opt for staying in a formal campground.
There is tremendous variation in the quality and ambience of campgrounds. We are using the Ciaowagen primarily as a portable "extended-stay suite" allowing us to move around to different places we want to explore, as opposed to viewing campgrounds as vacation destinations in themselves. Thus, luxury, spaciousness, and amenities (e.g., swimming pool, playground, shuffleboard courts) are secondary to us - although having a laundry room is periodically essential.
National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, and state campgrounds usually offer the most campsite space and are the most convenient to what we want to see. However, they often come with fewer or no services (like electricity or water). They are also the most popular and hardest to reserve, especially during the high travel months. Costs range between $15 and $30 per night (we get the senior discount when we can).
We end up spending the majority of our time in private campgrounds. We do try to check them out ahead of time, and like to stay in the ones with the best reviews as long as they are affordable. There are a couple of sites we typically use for research: AllStays and Campground Reviews. Nightly costs in private campgrounds range from $30 (for a small, independent operation) to over $100 (for a place like Fort Wilderness at Disney World). Our cost has averaged about $42 per night over the last six months. Not bad compared to staying in hotels and motels, plus we save money because we cook 90% or more of our meals in the RV rather than having to order out.
One specific challenge we sometimes have is finding a campsite that is level. We need that so that our RV refrigerator works correctly. We have auto-levelers for the RV that help adjust things, but sometimes we have to supplement with blocks of wood or other creative solutions.
Below is a picture journey illustrating the variety of our campground accommodations over a three month period. Some were spacious. Other times, we were lined up with other RVs like sardines. Sometimes there were trees. Others were just concrete or gravel parking lots.
Fortunately, we were able to get a good night's sleep in them all.
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