Trip Planning

April 25, 2021 by Julie Chickery Leave a Comment

Finding the Best Campsite in the Campground

It’s camping season and you’re ready to hit the road! Now you have two challenges: finding the best campground and then finding the best campsite in the campground. In this article I’ll share tips on how to do that, basic terminology for new RV campers, and tools that you can use to make the process easier.

Campsite Terms Explained

Step one is locating the best campground for you and your camping preferences. If you haven’t done that yet, read my 3 simple steps for finding the best campground. Once you’ve done that, take a look at the available sites. Here are some common terms you might see and considerations of each:

Back-in Campsite – This means that you will have to back your camper or RV into the site. If you have a towable RV, like a fifth wheel, travel trailer, or pop up camper, you’re going to want to ensure there is enough maneuvering room in front of the site to make adjustments as you back in. We have a fifth wheel and really prefer it when back-in sites are at an angle rather than a 90 degree turn. If you have a motorhome and are towing a car, you’ll need to disconnect the towed car to back in. Regardless of your RV type, you’ll also need to ensure there is adequate room for the car as well. If it isn’t long enough for your tow/towed vehicle, you’ll want to see if there is available overflow parking. To me, the best back-in campsites, have a designated parking area adjacent to your site.

A photo of the Chickery's Arctic Fox 5th wheel with the awning out. It sits in a campsite with a paved patio and bistro-style table and chairs. The bright blue sky above has just a few wispy clouds.

Pull-thru Campsite – These sites are nice because you just pull right into the site. Again, you’ll want to make sure it is long enough for your tow or towed vehicle. It’s also important to try to determine how they are placed in the campground. While it may seem that a pull-thru campsite is the easier to park in, there are some that are more U shaped and can be tricky for a long fifth wheel or travel trailer.

Buddy Site – This refers to two adjacent campsites with alternating orientation allowing you and your “buddy” to have a shared space in between. Your front doors face each other instead of your front door facing their sewer connection. This allows friends to have a larger place to hang out when camping together.

Full Hookups – This refers to a campsite that has water, power, and sewer right at your site. One thing you’ll want to check here is the type of power. Most full hookup sites have 50amp and 30amp power, but not all. That is why it is always good to check. Having an adapter for your RV power cord will also allow you to use the available power connection.

Partial Hookups – This refers to a campsite without full hookups. Sewer is usually not included at these sites, but most will have at least 30amp power and water. However, we have stayed in electric only sites, so be sure to read the description. One consideration if you stay in a partial hookup site is if the campground has a dump station and how long you’ll be staying. We can go 10 days without having to dump, so if our stay is shorter than that we don’t mind partial hookups. If we’re staying longer, then we’ll use our portable RV waste tank and drive it up to the dump station. Some RVers like to use the bath house instead of their RV shower when staying in a partial hookup site.

Other Campsite Considerations

The next thing to consider when selecting a campsite is where it is located within the campground.

Bath House – There are two sides to this coin. The bath house typically gets a lot of use, so if you are not going to use it, you may want to choose a site away from it. On the other hand, if you are going to be using the bath house, you might want to choose a site near it. Choose based on your needs and preferences, but make sure you are making a mindful decision.

Playground / Pool – Other areas that are busy at the campground and may have a little more noise are the campground’s playground and pool. Again, it will depend on you. If you are bringing along children, you might want to be closer to them. If you’re not going to be using them at all, you may want to avoid this area.

Dog Park – This will obviously depend on whether you have a dog or not. Also, if you like your dog being off leash with others. I do know people whose dogs don’t play well with others, so they choose to stay away from sites closest to the dog park.

Traffic – Consider the flow of traffic around the campsite. We like to pick quieter sites near the back of the campground for normal trips, but pull-thru sites up front for overnight stops. If you have children that are going to be riding bikes, a site near registration that gets a ton of traffic, may not be the best option.

Views – Many campsites, especially those around the exterior boundaries of the campground, have fabulous views. There are some that back right up to scenic lakes and beaches. Others with unimpeded mountain views perfect for those fabulous sunsets. Meanwhile, the central campsites may only have a partial view over the RV parked in front of you.

Lost Dutchman State Park was a fabulous location to both stay and play within the park itself as well as serving as a base of operations for our exploration around the Apache Trail and within Phoenix itself.

Locating Your Ideal Campsite

Now that you know exactly what criteria makes an ideal campsite for you, how do you find it? We use a variety of tools including:

Campground Map – The first place I look is the campground map. This will often show me things like the location of the bath house and playgrounds, as well as the orientation of the sites themselves. However, you can’t stop there. Because many of these maps are not really drawn to scale it is hard to tell how wide the roads are, how much maneuvering room you have to back in if needed, or what the view may look like.

Campground Reviews – I love the website campgroundreviews.com and Campendium. I find the users of both sites to be very helpful. They share all kinds of tips like “this area of the campground is in full sun” or “these sites have plenty of trees for privacy, but can be tight for backing in.” YouTube can also be pretty handy for this. In fact, we also have a Campground Review Playlist on our YouTube channel. Here’s an example of what our reviews are like.

Google Earth – I also like to take a peek on Google Earth, but if there are a lot of trees, you may not see anything.

Campground Views – Campground Views is a website that provides 360 degree video views of all the different campsites in a campground. They have some free videos on YouTube that you can view, but they are working to to have 400 campgrounds (starting with state and national parks) in their online program by early summer 2021. You can already see the first version by clicking here.

Sharing is Caring! Feel free to share this article on social media or save the image below to Pinterest.

Learn all you need to know to pick the best campsite in the campground. We'll share tips and tricks for making sure you have the best views and access to all the campground has to offer for your next RV vacation.

April 24, 2021 by Julie Chickery Leave a Comment

Making Your Next Trip Awesome, Even On A Budget

Going on a trip is always going to be a fun adventure. And you don’t have to spend a lot of money because the most important things are the people that you are with, the beautiful places you get to visit, and the memories you make. That means that even if you are on a budget, there are ways that you can make your next trip awesome and in this article, we’re going to be looking at how you can do this.

Learn all the tips and tricks for saving on your next vacation.

Plan In Advance

The first thing that we are going to suggest is that you plan your trip in advance. You can find some pretty sweet deals on campgrounds, hotels, or flights if you check early enough. This will help you avoid spending too much money on getting to your destination, which will leave you with more money to play with throughout the duration of your trip.

Planning ahead will also help you find the best deals on amazing opportunities. We all know that experiences at your destination are important, so we recommend that you plan out some things that you would like to do while you are there. For example, during a stay in Tampa, Florida you might want to visit the Raymond James Stadium to watch the Tampa Bay Buccaneers or attend a concert. You could also enjoy a day at one of the Tampa Bay area’s beautiful beaches or head to Disney World! Take your time in advance to look at all the things that your chosen destination has to offer and then prioritize which ones will mean the most to you.

Allocating Your Spending Money

We know you’ll likely have a budget for spending money when you were going through your holiday finances, but even more important is dividing among the days that you are at a specific destination. Other than anything that you have already booked and paid for in advance, you’ll need money for things like food, drinks, experiences and souvenirs. You don’t want to spend a ridiculous amount on the first day, only to have nothing left for the last three days of the trip. This means you’ll need to spend a little time creating a vacation budget, and allocating funds by categories. If you end up having money left from one category, you can either save it for the next trip or splurge on something extra. This approach will ensure that you don’t run out of money or end up with a huge credit card bill.

Find Fantastic Deals Online

When you’re creating that travel budget, you can find fantastic deals online that will help you save some money on the trip. Our favorite site to find deals for activities and tours is Groupon. Another way to find deals online is to see if the place you want to go has a website or Facebook page where they may post deals. If you are a member of KOA Rewards program, they have a discount section in their app for your destination. You can also just Google the word “Discounts” and the city you’ll be visiting.

We hope that you have found this article helpful, and now see some of the things that you can do to make your next trip awesome, even if you are on a budget. Be sure to check out our other tips for saving money on RV travel. There are so many incredible things that you can do without having to spend a small fortune. All you have to do is take time to look around and find them. We wish you the best of luck planning your next trip, and hope that you have a fantastic time!

May 15, 2017 by Julie 5 Comments

3 Simple Steps to Find the Best RV Campgrounds

Over the years, we’ve stayed in our fair share of RV parks and campgrounds. We’ve found some fantastic places, a few mediocre ones, and everything in between. With each stay, we learned something new, and created this simple 3 step process to find the best RV campgrounds.

Step 1: Define Your Needs

Before even beginning your search to find the best RV campgrounds, its important to define your needs. Consider the size of your RV and any tow vehicle. Do you want full, partial or no hookups (water, sewer, electric)? Are there any particular amenities you want? Here’s our list:

Size. This was trickier when we had a 44 ½ foot long fifth wheel with slides on both sides, pulled by a dually pick up truck. We’d often book what some campgrounds call “premium” sites, so that we weren’t too boxed in. It is definitely easier now that we have a 29 ½ foot long fifth wheel with slides on one side. However, we still like to find sites where there is plenty of room for our truck. We also prefer campgrounds with plenty of room between sites so we’re not awning to awning or sitting on top of someone’s sewer when we’re at the campground.
Hook ups. We like our creature comforts, so we prefer full hookups (water, power, and sewer). We have a residential refrigerator and two air conditioners, so our RV is wired for 50 amp power. However, we can easily use 30 amp power with our adapter. We’ve also selected an RV with rather large holding tanks so that we can stay at partial hookup campsites without sewer if needed.
Extras. Wi-Fi, Cable, Laundry. We have a Wi-Fi hotspot and satellite dish, so we don’t need free Wi-Fi or cable, but they are nice as they save us the time of setting up our external stuff. We have a washer/dryer hookup in our RV, but have chosen to use it for storage, so we like staying at places that have a laundromat.
Length of Stay. Many commercial RV resorts and campgrounds offer discounts for weekly and monthly stays, and we like to take advantage of these whenever possible. These can be significant. For example, we booked a one-month stay this winter in South Florida. The daily rate is $49, but the monthly rate was $746, which comes out to $25 per night, saving 50%. If we’re only staying for a night or two, we’ll try to use our Passport America membership. It costs $44 a year, but with a 50% discount on a single 2-night stay in a place like Florida pays for itself with one stay.

Step 2: Conduct an Initial Search

When you are trip planning, you can use a free program or a premium (paid one). I’ll share both options below.

A free search tool to find the best RV campgrounds is Campendium. You can use it both from their website or app. Watch the video below to see how I use it.

My favorite tool that I started using this year is RV Trip Wizard. Watch the video below to see how I use it for trip planning starting at the 9-minute mark. Or you can watch the entire video to see what else is included with it.

RV Trip Wizard part of the RV Life family of products, so if you purchase it, you get everything for the price of one. It is more than just a trip planning tool. It also includes an RV GPS app that you can use on your phone or tablet. Sean also likes the Maintain My RV program that comes with it as well. So for $49/year it actually saves us from paying for a bunch of other programs. They have a free 7-day trial you can sign up for. Just click here and select Start Your Free 7 Day Trial Now.

Some things we consider for a stay:

We’re usually planning to visit a general area and will first conduct a search on Campendium to see the RV parks in the general vicinity of our destination. We usually like to find spots outside of the city proper.
We look at the size of the available spaces, as well as the size of the park from Google Maps. When reading reviews, we will usually nix a place if folks are complaining about tight interior roads.
RV parks can offer a wide range of amenities such as swimming pools, fitness rooms, hiking trails, restaurants, activities for children/adults, and many more. These aren’t as important to us, but they can be the tie breaker.
Once we’ve narrowed down some top choices, we move on to reading reviews.

Step 3: Read Reviews

Before booking a stay I always read the reviews on Trip Advisor and RV Park and Campground Reviews. You can read them for free, but if you have the paid RV Life / RV Trip Wizard package, you’ll get additional details on the reviews. When reading reviews I consider the following:

One thing we really like about these particular review sites is that you can see visitors’ photos, not just the park’s official advertising pictures. Obviously a park will want to show the best photos they have. They may even be from when it first opened 20 years ago! We’d rather see a candid photo of folks enjoying the pool, than a glossy ad photo of it.
Over time we have learned that some folks just like to complain. In addition, when you’re smoking mad about something, you want to log on to the internet and share it with the world. Therefore, we take emotionally charged reviews with a grain of salt. You can usually tell when reading the review if a person was mad at the time.
Reading Between the Lines. While there are those who only review when mad, there are also folks who are reluctant to criticize. With that in mind, sometimes you have to read between the lines. If reviews are terse and simply say, “The park was as described,” chances are it wasn’t that great.
Number of reviews. We try to balance this by looking at as many reviews as possible. If something is coming up repeatedly, good or bad, it’s more likely to be true.
We tend to put more weight behind a reviewer who has written reviews of more than one park. Unfortunately, some business owners will have friends and family write positive reviews for them. By reading reviews from folks who have posted on several places across a greater geographic distance, you have a better chance of finding an impartial review from someone with experience to compare it to. This is another reason we enjoy reading blogs.

Create Your Own Checklist

I hope this article helped you with strategies to find the best RV campgrounds. Everyone has different expectations for their perfect RV Park, so your checklist may look quite a bit different from ours. The important thing is that you have one so you know how to evaluate one from another. The more you use the RV Park sites, the more you’ll learn about how to pick the right one for you. You may not always find one that meets all your criteria, but if you determine your priorities in advance, you’re more likely to enjoy the stay.

Be sure to sign up for my FREE RV Camping Guide. It has over 30 pages of tips and 4 printable worksheets to help you plan your RV travels whether you are a full-time time traveler or weekend warrior.

Ultimate RV camping guide filled with tips for planning your next trip.

If you want a more deluxe version, click here to see the planner my friends at Streets Wander created to keep track of my reservations, must-see sights, and much more!

Save this image to Pinterest for future reference.