I guess I'm just ranting

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Thanks for all the responses. There seems to be different strokes for different folks, as it should be. I'm finding my 40 footer is not welcome at some public parks in the west. I kinda knew that before we got into this RVing having hung around the forums for a year.

Last summer we stayed at state campgrounds in Michigan and NY. The parks for the most part were great, but I did reserve back in April. We would not have gotten into many of the parks had we not reserved. Michigan and NY have a short camping season so the parks fill up early. The BIG downside to reserving so far in advance is the loss of flexibility. We would have stayed longer in many of the parks if we had that flexibility.

Right now I'm waiting until 0001 hours on Feb 7 to reserve a site in Kodachrome Basin - 4 months in advance. We want to stay 5 days, I wonder if I'll have to book every morning for the 5 days.

Thanks for the responses about Yellowstone. We plan on staying outside the park, I think our 40 footer will not be welcome plus it's probably to late to book inside anyway.

For me personally I would not feel comfortable leaving a campground without a reservation the following evening. That's just me and maybe I'll get more comfortable if that happens, but trying to find a parking place for the evening for our 40 ft beast would be stressful for me. Plus staying in a nice campground even if it's in transit to another destination is very enjoyable after 6 hours of driving. That takes research and planning and I've been rewarded with some very nice state parks enroute to our destination. We haven't stayed at Walmarts, truck stops, or Cracker Barrel and I won't plan on that. As a last resort I would however consider them.

 
One thing I have found is there are always options. If the park you want is sold out ask what else is around. Some of them will even give you a list or use Google or any decent Map software

If you belong to MOOSE or ELK lodges many (not all) have RV facilities (Limited at least).

I stayed at 2 moose last summer.. Alas the 3rd one I usually stay at is moving so it's closed.
 
  I?m totally with you on not staying at Walmart?s or Crackerbarrels unless a just have to situation. Like you, the first year we started camping we would reserve places on the way to our destination. Once, we made great time or didn?t estimate right and we ended up getting there at 2:00 in the afternoon. I didn?t care. We stopped, it was relaxing and a great campground. I didn?t want to risk driving further and not having a spot to stay for the night. I?ve finally relaxed a little on not having to do that, but I?m betting the first time we cant find a campsite and I get aggravated I can see me backsliding to my previous self. ?
  We toyed with the idea of getting a new fiver this year. As you posted earlier, they are selling a blue million of them right now. All the stories of great deals I read about on here had little basis in reality. We made several different offers, and I mean like 10% less than they were asking and they let us walk away. These were new units at dealerships. I?m kinda glad we didn?t because the ones she was looking at were all triple axles in the 40-42 foot range. While they are super nice, they also eliminate a lot of campsites due to their size.
 
We rarely had any problem finding a site for our 40 footer, but we did tend to book ahead, either the night before or early on the travel day, whenever we knew about where we would be the next night.  Cell phones and mobile internet makes it pretty easy to avoid surprises and still keep your options open.  Only in high traffic (tourist) areas did we book well in advance.

If you are encountering site size problems, maybe you need to re-calibrate the sort of parks you are looking at. Perhaps that is something that comes with experience. Perusing a campground guide, printer or website, ought to give you a fair idea of the facilities available. Most campground operators are familiar with the larger size needs of modern RVs and advertise accordingly.
 
Ken Kuch and I have been discussing the issue of making reservations earlier today. While I always suggested traveling without them up until the past couple of years we are finding it is becoming difficult if not impossible to find open sites around popular destinations East or West. More and more State and National facilities are going to a reservation system and are often full for the summer by March.


Last summer coming down the East Coast we easily found sites Sunday through Thursday night but had to settle for 2nd tier campgrounds every weekend. Times are a changing.
 
The parks in Alberta have a neat trick; they charge $12.00 per reservation and allow only 3 days camping per reservation. In essence they have increased the daily camp fee by $4.00 without appearing to do so.

That's my rant  ::)
 
This is part of the reason I bought a sub 30 foot class A.  Last summer we took a month long trip from Louisiana to Yellowstone and watched the big solar eclipse from outside Douglas Wy.  We made reservations for most of the time in Wyoming in late January, managed to get 3 nights inside Yellowstone at 3 of the campgrounds (1 night each), 2 nights in Dubois WY at a private campground, as well as a night in Thermopolis and 3 nights at a remote site with electric hookup for the eclipse outside Douglas within a couple of hundred yards of the path of totality.  Along the drive there and back I did not make a single reservation, I stayed in a mix of commercial campgrounds, forest service and state parks, along with a couple of municipal campgrounds and even at the State Fairgrounds RV park in Kansas on a non-event weekend (125+ full hookup sites and only 5-6 occupied with mostly overnight guest).  On the entire month long trip I had at least electrical hookups all but 4 nights, 2 nights in Yellowstone, and 2 nights at a Forest Service campground in the Mountains outside Laramie WY.  Even with all that we passed campgrounds with empty sites even in the popular tourist areas.

Even in tourist areas there are options, I just checked and the place we stayed in Dubois WY (45 mile east of Grand Teton NP, mostly through a scenic National Forest) Longhorn RV ranch, on the banks of a scenic small river still has multiple RV sites available for the entire month of July.  We spent 2 nights there last summer and did a day trip to Grand Teton on the day in between.  Attached is a photo of our riverfront site there.
 
 

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We booked our NY State Park sites for 4th of July week and Labor Day week the moment the 11 month reservation windows opened. We were fortunate in both cases to get our preferred sites, since both parks were fully booked for RV sites within two minutes. One of them even fully booked all of the cabins and tent sites in that time frame. The Labor Day stay was particularly stressful because we wanted two very popular adjacent sites so our daughter could join us with her TT for part of the week. My wife was on one laptop logged into our daughter's account, while I was on my laptop in our account. Our keyboards took a beating, but we prevailed... ;) 
 
I no longer book my trip, only the destinations. I don't have a problem paying for a private park, in fact I almost prefer it while traveling. KOA & Good Sam offer a variety of Parks and is usually my first choice when traveling from home to the destination or destination to home.

 
Gary RV_Wizard said:
It's also easier to find sites if you stop earlier in the day. At 3-4 pm there are likely to be sites available, but by 6pm most have been taken.

This is true, you can sit out at most no-reservation campgrounds and watch the constant procession of RV's roll in looking for a space to stop after about 4 pm.
 
timjet said:
I may sound selfish but

I?m trying to make reservations for our 3 month summer trip. I want to visit the big 5 parks in Utah and Yellowstone with many points in between. I?m already too late making reservations in some of the public parks.

The RV industry just closed out another banner year for sales. In excess of half a million units sold. So where do you think all these folks want to use their new RV?s. Yup you guessed it, Utah and Yellowstone.

The stock market took a 600 pt dump earlier this week. Is it telling us something? Historically the market can be in the bull mode for about 7 years and then it contracts. We?re overdue. It?s coming. Some will try and time the market, the smart ones get out while the getin?s  good.

What?s the first thing folks dump when the economy contracts? Yup boats and RV?s. I?ve worked hard all my life. Withheld buying expensive toys till I got close to retirement. Now retired I want to enjoy this wonderful hobby, not compete with others.

The park service probably didn?t properly estimate the popularity of their holdings. With record number of baby boomers retiring daily and working folks with more leisure time it?s only inevitable that public parks are going to be stressed. Public money goes elsewhere.

So about that market contraction ?.. I guess I am selfish!

you have to plan better and well into the future.  I will plan 2019 trip in 3 months that have us going out west.  Also time of year is critical, early spring or late summer....avoid the 3 month june-july-august periods for the popular places out west
 
Hi Timejet,

With a lot of baby boomers retiring, I've always wondered if things might get crowded. Along with high demand of RV campgrounds I've figured that some increase in costs at these campgrounds will occur. This also might be incentive to build more campgrounds in places.

Because of this, I plan to reserve my spaces ahead of time. One can always cancel before it costs you. Figure on doing some bookdocking to lower the average cost of staying on the road, and make room for others.  ;D
 
camperAL said:
Hi Timejet,

With a lot of baby boomers retiring, I've always wondered if things might get crowded. Along with high demand of RV campgrounds I've figured that some increase in costs at these campgrounds will occur. This also might be incentive to build more campgrounds in places.

Because of this, I plan to reserve my spaces ahead of time. One can always cancel before it costs you. Figure on doing some bookdocking to lower the average cost of staying on the road, and make room for others.  ;D

A full refund is not always the case. Read the fine print before you reserve. Some state parks charge a cancellation fee. Some will charge a fee if you change the site. Not much but still aggravating. I would posit some private CG's do the same.
 
Oldgator73 said:
A full refund is not always the case. Read the fine print before you reserve. Some state parks charge a cancellation fee. Some will charge a fee if you change the site. Not much but still aggravating. I would posit some private CG's do the same.
:)) They also charge a fee for making the reservation. I think it's $5 per reservation, so you can add that to the cost of the site.
 
timjet said:
Right now I'm waiting until 0001 hours on Feb 7 to reserve a site in Kodachrome Basin - 4 months in advance. We want to stay 5 days, I wonder if I'll have to book every morning for the 5 days.

Tim-

Hope you are successful at Kodachrome.  When we visited Bryce, we stayed there.  It's a beautiful park, a bit of the drive off the beaten path.  When we stayed there, there were only four full hook up sites and the rest didn't even have electric.  However, I believe they have converted a number of the sites.  I was going to recommend Utah state parks, because the window is four months, not six like the national parks.  When we went to Arches, we stayed at Dead Horse Point (beautiful, but no water on site).
 
timjet said:
Right now I'm waiting until 0001 hours on Feb 7 to reserve a site in Kodachrome Basin - 4 months in advance. We want to stay 5 days, I wonder if I'll have to book every morning for the 5 days.
We reserved 3 nights in mid March at Kodachrome in mid January. It was a mid week reservation, Tuesday through Thursday nights. When we made our reservation (mid morning) there were four electric sites available. Two hours later when our friends went to reserve, there were only non-electric sites available. That will be fine since he can charge his CPAP at our place, but it gives you an idea of how things fill up. March and April are popular times at Kodachrome since it gets HOT there beginning in May. And you should be able to get your site by reserving on the first day the reservation window opens.
 
There is a trick at least in State parks here in Indiana.  You can reserve 6 months out, 14 days max stay.  It costs $10 to make any changes after you have reserved. 

Example: Say you want the special site at XYZ park on Sept 1,2,3,4.  back up to March 1, and reserve, right.  Try that and every time that special spot will be gone. 

Well, back up another week and reserve it on Feb 25th, and book it August 25 - Sept 4th.  You therefore get your sought after spot over the Labor Day Holiday.  Then about May 1, call and change your reservation to Sept 1,2,3,4.  They will charge you $10, and refund the difference. 

I was floored when I found out this is how others did it.

 
spencerpj said:
There is a trick at least in State parks here in Indiana.  You can reserve 6 months out, 14 days max stay.  It costs $10 to make any changes after you have reserved. 

Example: Say you want the special site at XYZ park on Sept 1,2,3,4.  back up to March 1, and reserve, right.  Try that and every time that special spot will be gone. 

Well, back up another week and reserve it on Feb 25th, and book it August 25 - Sept 4th.  You therefore get your sought after spot over the Labor Day Holiday.  Then about May 1, call and change your reservation to Sept 1,2,3,4.  They will charge you $10, and refund the difference. 

I was floored when I found out this is how others did it.
Thanks that is great intel!!!!!!!!
 
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