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Campground Reviews
The good, the bad, and the ugly. Not all campgrounds are created equal. A great campground can really enhance your trip, or even be a destination in itself. A bad one might lead you to question if you even really like camping to begin with. As we travel, we review the campgrounds where we stay, so look below to find out which ones we think you shouldn’t miss, and which ones to avoid.
The problem is I didn’t. Remember the Alamo, that is. I remembered that we’re supposed to remember the Alamo, but I couldn’t remember why. As we crossed Texas, we spent a night at the San Antonio KOA and decided to spend part of the day checking out the Alamo before heading on to Houston. In between the time of our……
Texas is big. That may seem obvious, and we knew that but it wasn’t until we decided to cross it that we understood it from experience. To go from visiting our friends in El Paso to visiting our friends in Houston, given our self-imposed 4 hour per day driving limit, was going to take several days. So why did we……
I had never heard of White Sands National Monument before we started planning our trip through New Mexico. Maybe it’s because I’m from the East Coast and I had never heard anyone talking about going there, but this gem of a park was not on our radar until we started looking for a stop-over to break up the trip between……
Petrified Forest National Park was another of those stops that was never on our original itinerary. Our next planned stop was Albuquerque, but the drive there was longer than we wanted to do in a single day. As I sat in the little room at the Grand Canyon Community Library and searched the web for a good place to stop……
There are a number of campgrounds and RV parks along the road as you approach Grand Canyon National Park. I’m sure they all have their advantages, but we loved the idea of being able to just park the car for a few days and get around on foot and using the shuttle bus system. There are several campground options within……
Our next destination was the Grand Canyon. But the drive from Las Vegas to the Grand Canyon was a little longer than our typical day’s drive (Google maps predicted 4 hrs and 40 min). Adding in our stop at the Hoover Dam, we decided to stop for a night in between and chose the Blake Ranch RV Park in Kingman,……
A little known fact about Las Vegas: there is a campground on “the Strip”. There’s a wall around most of it for security and sound-dampening, so if you’re not looking for it, you probably wouldn’t see it. But nevertheless, there is a large parking lot behind Circus Circus, and it’s run by KOA. Really there’s very little about camping on……
(Fear not, loyal reader… after a brief hiatus when celebrating Christmas and the New Year with our families took priority over blogging, we’re back. We WILL continue sharing our trip and we’ll hopefully finish before memories start to fade. Thanks for sticking with us and for your patience!) Our last night spent in California was a stop at the KOA……
Welcome back! My apologies for the recent blogging hiatus. I realize it wasn’t clear whether the blog would continue to recount the rest of our adventures even after we have returned home. I will continue writing it for myself even if no one continues to read. But I hope you will, because there’s still about a third of our trip……
One more night on our way to Santa Barbara. We stayed at the Oceano Campground in Pismo Beach, which is a San Luis Obispo State Park. We weren’t far from Santa Barbara, but we were waiting for our friends to get home. We picked Oceano because it was easy walking distance to a beach, a duck pond and a large……
We worked our way slowly south through California for many reasons. The weather was amazing and there was so much to see and do. We also felt like California is so far away from where we usually are when we’re in the US that we’re unlikely to get back there again any time soon. And at this particular point in……
Our next stop in California was along the coast between Santa Cruz and Monterey, at the Santa Cruz/Monterey Bay KOA (creative name, I know). At over $50 per night (before our member discount) for the most basic campsite, this was by far the most expensive campground we’d stayed in yet. In fact, we chose to stay an extra night in……
We stayed in three different campgrounds as we made our way south through the northern California/Redwood area: Hiouchi RV Park, Sounds of the Sea, and Albion River Campground. Here are reviews of all three: Hiouchi RV Park Price: $31/night Location: Just outside the entrance to Jedediah Smith Redwood State Park, a 10 mile drive from Crescent City Site description: gravel……
Sparkling and radiant blue and surrounded by rugged cliffs, Crater Lake is instantly captivating and breathtakingly beautiful. We visited Crater Lake National Park on a sunny Saturday and spent the day exploring the park and once again marveling at God’s amazing handiwork. We drove the loop around the lake, which seems to be very popular with cyclists, and stopped at……
As we headed south from Seattle toward Portland, we realized that Mt. Rainier wasn’t far off of our route. Since we needed a stop somewhere to break up the drive anyway, we decided to make Mt. Rainier that stop. We found a campground online called Mineral Lake Resort, and from the website it looked like a great place. And that……
