Wow.. so I've just completed a little more than a week's work making reservations for my first trip of this year. And let me tell you, the rumors about the difficulty in finding available campsites at nice places is REAL.
This is going to be a long post, with hopefully some helpful info mixed in for our newer RV'ers... so if you don't have a few minutes, feel free to skip to the next thread.
A little background...
Some of you may remember that after nearly 7 years of full-timing touring in my RV... this year, instead of heading south to Arizona for the winter, I rented a house up here in Wyoming. A few factors came into play for this: Many of the amenities at my usual Arizona RV resorts were still closed due to COVID concerns... my RV needed to go into the shop for some much needed repairs & general maintenance... plus, I've been thinking of settling here eventually, and wanted to experience a "Wyoming winter". So it seemed like the 'perfect storm' of circumstances to just stay up here and see what it was like... but NOT in the RV.
Fast forward to now, and my youngest son... the nerd & brains of the family... is getting his PhD in Economics from MSU at the end of this semester (early May). We've known this for awhile... but with the COVID situation, no one was quite sure if they were going to have ceremonies there in East Lansing or not. We had alternate plans to celebrate someplace else if not... but then, 2 weeks ago, they announced that it was a "go". Since his longtime girlfriend is also getting her PhD in another discipline, and wanted to march with her class... they both decided to go ahead & participate in the ceremonies. So, my planning for a trip to Michigan moved into high gear.
Ok, so that's the "why", and the motivation for the trip. And while I could simply drive or fly out there, and do the hotel thing... well, I'm not exactly keen on that. The whole reason I got the RV was so I could have my own stuff, and sleep in my own bed when traveling.
While it's obvious that May, and even June isn't ideal for a trip along the northern border of the US... I figure I'm not traveling all that way without doing some touring on the way back west. I wish I could go across the border & up into Canada... but, well, we all know the border is closed to tourists for now, and I respect their decision.
Now one would figure that making reservations for dates so early in the season wouldn't be all that difficult to do... but, oh how wrong I was. Those who live up there probably already know many of these factors, but I wasn't quite expecting it.
First obstacle was that many of these places aren't even open right now (that I can understand), and will only be opening on May 1st... with many opening later in the month. As such, my outbound trip had to go south of the Great Lakes... and since I absolutely HATE traveling thru the Chicago area, I took it even a bit further south than necessary.
These outbound reservations weren't too difficult to make... once I found places that were going to be open during my travel dates, that is. I admit that I was surprised how many were still going to be closed in late April. And even in the ones that were going to be open, there were only a few sites left at a couple of places I got into. That was my first clue the rumors were true.
I'll drive straight through, and make the 2,000 mile journey in about 4 days, and then stay in the area for about a week or so, as many of my other relatives are coming north too... so we'll have time to catch up & visit. Then after the rituals are complete, I'll head up toward Mackinac Island for a few days with just my son & his lady.
After that, I'm on my own for the trip back... so I began making a tentative route for places I thought looked interesting, and other places I wanted to revisit further south. Other than a short military deployment to Wisconsin in the mid-80s, I've never been to the upper Midwest before... so I wanted to revisit that area to see a former squadron mate who lives in the area now, and to explore a bit of Minnesota, North Dakota, etc. But, again, it's gonna be mid-May & early June... not exactly the warmest time of the year to visit. So where to go, and what to do?
Thankfully most the campgrounds & RV parks (what few of them there are) are open by then, so I began using the handy-dandy reservations tools that I usually use for recommendations & reviews:
- Google Maps
- KOA
- Good Sam
- Allstays RV app
Here's where I should probably mention that... I'm definitely what some would call an "upscale" RVer. I like my amenities, I like my conveniences, and I don't wanna stay in a dump. If the place is located right beside a main highway, or near an industrial area... then it probably isn't for me, unless nothing else is available.
Then we add the fact that my long-bed dually truck is 22' long, my RV is 36' long... AND it's a toy hauler that needs room for the ramp to open... well, I don't wanna deal with a back-in space that requires me to unload the motorcycle BEFORE i can maneuver into my spot. So it's always pull-thru sites for me only, unless absolutely necessary to back it in.
Oh, and I haven't even mentioned that... with my DirecTV satellite dish on the roof, I want a site that's free of obstructions of the southern sky if I'm going to be there longer than a day or 2.
Did I say I like my conveniences? So yeah... I'm kinda picky when I make reservations.
As for those tools i mentioned... Good Sam is ok, but to be honest, their rating system just isn't all that great because they lump all types of campers into their 3 categories. What a tent camper may find great about a place isn't necessarily something that makes it great for a large RV traveler, and vice-versa. But, they show all of the available campgrounds & RV parks in the area on their map.
The ALLSTAYS app for your mobile device does the same, and is IMO an excellent tool to use, especially when you want to research smaller & privately owned campgrounds. The reviews are listed by date, so you know who recent they are... and you can usually see what type of camper reviewed the place (tent, TT, or 5th wheel)... so you can then make an somewhat-informed Yes/No decision at to whether you want to give it further consideration.
Google Maps is a great tool to use after that, so you can actually get a bird's-eye view of the location, AND it's surroundings before you make that reservation. Just toggle from default Map view to Satellite view, and it's all right there for you to see. You can see the area it's in... how long & wide the sites are, if the sites are shaded or not, etc.
Finally, as for KOA's... well some people hate em, some people love em. I myself kinda like em... well, some of them, that is. They've done a pretty good job over the last few years of getting their parks to meet a certain standard... and 3 years ago, they began their "tier system" of park ratings: Journey, Holiday, and Resort.
The Journey rating is for places that are.. as suggested... good for a 1 or 2 night-stop while on a journey someplace, but not necessarily where you want to spend a lot of time without a reason. Usually located very near main roads, they're not the prettiest places, but give you what you need. The Resort-tier locations usually have a good amount of family amenities for the kids... and the Holiday-tier places are where you'd usually have no problem enjoying a week or 2. Of course, they are priced accordingly.
The nicest thing about the KOAs to me though is the convenience!! Not only can you reserve a site online for as many nights as you want with only a single night's deposit, but in many of the places you can pick your own site for an extra fee. It's quick, it's easy, you don't have to talk to anybody... you can see they types of sites available, select it, and BOOM... it's done. Plus, their cancellation policy is pretty simple: 24 hours notice, and you're good to go (unless it's a holiday or special event date, which usually require a day or 2 earlier notice).
And that cancellation policy really comes into play this year... I'll discuss that more later.
Ok, enough about that. Now to my planning for the return trip.
First off... fair notice: If you haven't already made reservations for any of the popular destinations, you're probably going to be out of luck. That's doubly true around the holidays. My nearly 5,000 mile trip's going to begin in mid-to-late April, and continue thru at least mid-July... encompassing both Memorial Day, and the July 4th weekends.
Needless to say, I wasn't able to secure a site at my preferred destinations for those weekends. Nor for my secondary choices... nor third... or 4th, 5th, or 6th. Finally, I secured the last site left at a place for Memorial Day weekend, and the 2nd-to last site available at the place I found for July 4th weekend... and it's a back-in site.
As for the remainder of the trip, I had pretty decent luck for my late-May / early June dates... but really struggled to find sites after June 10th or so. As such, my route is nowhere near what I had intended it to be.
A few places I wanted to stay:
- The Black Hills - Mt Rushmore area... I got 3 nights, but wanted a week-to-10 days. Barely worth the hassle of unloading & loading the motorcycle. No chance for anything longer, unless I wanted the additional hassle of moving from park-to-park every couple of days.
- Rocky Mountain Nat'l Park area... nothing except single night sites here & there. Kinda like having to settle for a single-seat ticket at a good concert... forget getting 2 seats together.
- Colorado Springs... pretty much the same thing
- Moab... forget it. Couldn't find a site anywhere in June or early July.
- Vernal, UT (near Dinosaur Nat'l Park)... I got the last suitable site there for a week during possible a 3-week window.
- Glacier Nat'l Park... again, forget it. Searched no less than 8 different campgrounds, and nothing available all summer.
The reasons are simple. There are now more people RVing than ever before, and they've been couped up in their homes for the past year. They don't trust airplanes & hotels yet, and they see an RV as their own self-contained cocoon.
This has caused a huge surge in demand that most campgrounds began seeing at the end of last summer. Many campgrounds & RV parks have stopped offering long-term rates altogether. This directly affected me as I've been staying at the same place here in Cody for the past 4 summers. The manager told me at the end of last summer that the corporation that owns the park would not be offering that option this year, so I've been prepared for it. Doing the math, they figure they lost nearly $10,000/month in potential revenue for the long-term sites they rented to me & the other long-term neighbors last summer, and hope to gain it this year. I can't blame them... it's a business decision, and they're in business to make money.
Another thing to mention is.. even when/if you find a site, be sure and ask up front what their cancellation policy is this year. Many of the privately-owned facilities I called or checked online for required either 50% deposit or 100% upfront when making the reservation... and the cancellation requirements were strict. 7 days notice for many of them... and even then a forfeiture of the deposit, or only a small percentage of it returned to you. This is a major reason I opted not to reserve at a couple of places that had available sites.
So all I'm saying is... if you haven't already, make your reservations when you can. Remember, I only write about dates in May, June, and the first couple of weeks into July. I can’t imagine it gets any better with late July thru Labor Day... possibly worse. Maybe if you've got a small rig, and can fit almost anywhere, it won't be as big of an issue. But if you've got a larger rig, and/or really have your sights set on a certain place on certain dates... the days of just riding around and finding a site when you get tired of driving are over.
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