RV Resorts and Campgrounds

We’ve done over 36,000 miles of RVing, and this is a list of the places we’ve stayed, our thoughts on each one, and key places we visited / things we did while at each one.

Enjoy!

Alabama

Sugar Sands RV Resort (Gulf Shores): very clean (looks new), very quiet, just a few miles from the beach, palm trees around the RV sites, wide sites, playground. Be sure to go on a Cetacean Dolphin Cruise – so awesome and very cheap. Do the nature cruise / dolphin cruise combo. So so so neat!

Scenic Drive RV Park (Anniston): Good for an overnight stop. We came in at night time and everything was really wet and shiny, and hard to make out the sites, but the campground hostess guided us in with no issues. Very friendly people.

Arkansas

Beaver Lake Hide A Way (Rogers): older place, grass sites, old playground but our kids loved it…was the first place we took our travel trailer and realized we loved RVing!
Blowing Springs (Bella Vista): nice location near beautiful trails, basically a parking lot with hookups, $5 to dump tanks
Creeks Golf Course and RV Resort (Cave Prings): paved roads and concrete sites, lots of pull thru and back in sites, level sites, good wifi, very clean, very friendly staff, catch and release pond, sits on a golf course, $600/mo

Lake Fort Smith State Park (Mountainburg): beautiful state park, good kayaking, lots of privacy between sites, no Verizon signal but did get ATT, lots of trees between sites

Overland RV Park (Van Buren): right off the freeway, gravel driveway and gravel / grass / dirt pull thru and back-in sites (tall grass and weeds, not well kept), convenient to food, retail, and gas stations, $35/night (high for what you get). Good for a couple of nights if you need a break from driving. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jOZHcYVXAU

Petit Jean State Park (Morrilton): beautiful park with lots of Pine trees, great kayaking, some sites right on the lake, site 21 has sewer problems, lots of awesome trails to hike, neat restaurant with view of the valley

Withrow Springs State Park (Huntsville): hard to believe this is a state park. More like a campground with a rural highway running through the middle. Quiet, though, some sites have lots of room between them, trails to hike, no cellular at camp area, no wifi

Arizona

Canyon Motel and RV Park (Williams): pretty campground -lots of evergreens, train cars you can stay in overnight, 3 minutes from the neat downtown Williams – very touristy. 50-60 min from Grand Canyon. Great place to stay!

California

Flying Flags RV Resort (Buellton): nice place! Eat at Pea Soup Andersons, nice lounge area outside with fireplace, nice playground, quiet town…nice break from busy LA area.

Olive Avenue RV Resort (Vista): good location near tons of typical suburbia retailers and restaurants, 10-15 min from the beach in Carlsbad, 15 min to Legoland, pool, sites not level but they provide you with pre-made blocks. Concrete pads, clean place but adjacent to questionable trailer park. We saw nothing too concerning. The overall location is good. 45 min to San Diego

Redding RV Park (Redding): on a steep hill (no riding bikes!), really odd / awkward laundry facility. We left early. We did go to the Redding skatepark for the kids. Shasta Lake is 15 min away.

Riviera RV Park (Blythe): 112 degrees in July, lots of boats trailers parked there for river access. Good for overnight stay at best. The town of Blythe is like a ghost town.
Santa Cruz Ranch RV Resort (Santa Cruz): Encore “resort”, old, lumpy roads, tight sites, tight entrance to the park, but great location! Visit the pier down on the ocean waterfront, visit “the boardroom” for skateboard stuff…huge!
Santee Lakes (San Diego): nice place with multiple lakes and nice walking path, paddle boats, nice privacy between some sights, but very dusty sand you park on. Feet will be dirty! Ants can be a problem if you have a trash can outside for very long. Close to San Diego attractions.
Yanks’s RV Resort (Greenfield): super clean, nice, new resort. Awesome pool, workout room, laundry, store, etc. in the middle of nowhere, but 59 miles to Monterey and Big Sur, good place to take a break from being busy. VERY windy after 2pm…watch your awnings! The heat is not bad with the wind factor. Good spacing between concrete, landscaped sites.

Colorado

Tiger Run RV Resort (Breckenridge): One of the very nicest RV resorts we’ve ever stayed at. We were in site 360, which backs up to the Blue River.Extremely large sites, fully landscaped with evergreens, and enough room to park three vehicles if you needed to. This is about as nice as it gets.
KOA (Strasburg): OK for an overnight stop if you really need a place to stay, but not in the greatest part of town and the sites are pretty tight. Really loud train passed by around 10 PM. They were a couple of permanent campers there that were not well-kept, and we were next to one of them with loud barking dogs early in the morning. Next time we travel to the Rocky Mountains, I would stay somewhere else or push on through to the destination.

Florida

Camp Gulf (Destin): you can park right on the beach, but very tight space if anyone next to you. Other sites are decent looking. Best sand in the country! Hookups are at the front of your RV for beach front sites, so bring water hose extensions, power cord extensions, long coax cable. For far right site on the beach can have foot traffic since it is next to a beach access path. Far left site is short and only for trailers. We were in the middle and got lucky with no neighbors during the week.

Compass RV Park (St. Augustine): this is a great park! Very very friendly staff who come to your window when you check in so you don’t have to go into the office. They give you a key card to access the secured gate entrance. They then escort you to your site and help you with parking. The roads are plenty wide and the sites are spacious. There are nice walking trails in the woods surrounding the park. The Wi-Fi was decent, and you can pay about $3 per day for a higher speed for streaming media. This park is exactly 6 miles from the beach and is only a few minutes from retail and restaurants.

Fort Wilderness (Disney World in Orlando): This is often referred to as the gold standard for RV Parks. Prices start around $100 per night. The premium sites have decent foliage between the sites for added privacy. Internet speeds are good (5-7Mbps), I recommend staying near the marina end of the resort (will take you to Magic Kingdom) and just driving your car to every park except Magic Kingdom (it’s faster than waiting on multiple buses, but if you don’t have a season pass then parking at each park will cost you $20 per day). If you’ve stayed at Disney World hotels before, prepare to be a little less excited when staying at Fort Wilderness. You definitely miss out on a lot of the magic and liveliness of the Disney hotels. Fort Wilderness is more like a state park, but with more privacy between each site. You can read more details of our opinion on this park if you read the blog post from our one year journey where we first go to Disney World. If possible, avoid sites 705 and 725 if you are driving a long Class A RV.

KOA (Southwest Orlando/Davenport): The staff were Nice and a clean parts, but it ends there. Wi-Fi would not work, we got stuck in some deep ruts and found out we were the second ones to get stuck (and instead of fixing the problem they simply push the sand/dirt back into the ruts for the next person), Power breaker kept tripping which meant we couldn’t leave our RV unattended for fear the refrigerator would heat up, people (Who live there I’m guessing) kept cutting through our site, farther than we wanted to be from Disney and you have to get on I-4, which is a mess most of the time. I would only stay here if it was the last option in the Orlando area. We ended up moving to the Kissimmee KOA two days later.
KOA (Kissimmee): VERY clean park, nicely landscaped, very close to Orlando attractions, decent spacing between sites. We were in pull thru site 104, which has lots of room on patio side. Wifi is marginal at best. ATT service is weak. Pedal carts the kids can rent, trash pickup at your site. BE SURE TO ENTER PARK FROM CECILE RD, and NOT Seven Dwarfs Lane as their website and GPS say to do, or you will be coming into the park backwards.
KOA (Starke): definitely not a destination city, but it was within 40 minutes of where we need it to register our vehicles when we established Florida as our domicile. Site 73 is the best pull through with lots of shade and space. The park is clean and well-maintained. Nice pool. Good spacing between the sites. Wifi is just ok, ATT service is very weak but usable.
KOA (Cape Canaveral Area in Mims): Nice proximity to Cape Canaveral, but the park has extremely tight roads that make maneuvering a big rig very difficult. In fact, in order to get out of the spot we are in, they are going to have to clear another site next to us so we can make the turn. Check out Seasons in the Sun resort just down the road (very clean and spacious) if you don’t mind being near ponds with alligators in them. That said, the actual site we were in was nice! Well landscaped large, level concrete pad. We won’t be back, though, due to the tight roads that are barely bigger than a golf cart path. We ended up leaving early and headed north to Compass RV Park in Saint Augustine, which is so so so much better!

Georgia

Albany RV Resort (Albany): Nicest RV park in the Albany area. Gravel roads in the park, concrete pads on long pull thru sites, LOTS of pretty trees.

Idaho

Blue Anchor RV Park: nice little park, clean quiet, 15 min from Montana border. Great overnight spot.

Indiana

Elkhart Campground (Elkhart). Basic campground with gravel sites. It’s the only choice in town really.
Indianapolis KOA (Greenfield). Super friendly staff, very clean park with brand new hookups at our site, new concrete patio and fire pit. They even make pizza here and deliver it to your RV. Also, they have an off leash dog park so we requested a site right next to that, which is nice. The road coming into the park was a little awkward and tight, but didn’t have to unhook. You just have to really plan your turns. I would not want to arrive here at nighttime, though. We stayed in site D48.

Kansas

Air Capital RV Park (Wichita): clean, all concrete, wifi, friendly staff, $48

KOA (WaKeeney): Clean, all gravel, good AT&T cell service, good place for an overnight stop going to or from Denver. $42

Maine

Narrows Too (Trenton / Bar Harbor): Nice quiet park right on the bay. Slow Internet speeds, but consistent. All sites are gravel and the ones on the bay have a great view. 317 is one of the best on the front row. We were in site 506, which is one row back from the front row. If you stay in this site, it will be much easier to back into it if you are coming from the road that goes down the middle of the park instead of the road that goes around the righthand side of the park. Friendly staff and the prices were reasonable.

Massachusetts

Mississippi

Ameristar RV Park (Vicksburg): Quiet park with concrete pads ( very narrow, so you will probably drive on the grass a bit when pulling into your spot). Would stay here again if passing through this area.
Campground at Barnes Crossing (Tupelo): Very clean, huge trees, really cozy park with enough room between sites, friendly staff. Roadways are paved (and hilly, but don’t worry!), sites are nice gravel with picnic tables and ample room. $39/night. Definitely would stay here again. Be sure to swing wide when pulling into the park from the main road. There is a huge ditch that you don’t want to mess around with! We stayed here a second time and found that the best spot is parallel to the road, just past the office on the right side.

Missouri

370 Lakeside RV Park (St. Peters): New RV park with nice concrete pads and good spacing. 35 minutes from downtown St. Louis. Slow Internet, 2 bars of AT&T LTE. We were in site 115, which was on the end of a row and impossible to pull into (due to the tight turn) without unhooking and jockeying the RV a bit. No big deal.
Glen Oaks RV Park (Waynesville): clean park, new and friendly owners, good for an overnight stay if traveling along I-44.
Table Rock State Park: nice new sites, concrete, level, close to Branson, good hiking trails that start right at the campground.
Wilderness Campground (Branson): clean campground very close to Silver Dollar City. How are 36 foot motorhome barely fit. Our new 43′ rig will definitely not fit very well.

Montana

Yellowstone’s Edge RV Park (Livingston): very clean, well kept RV park. About 45 minutes from the Yellowstone entrance. Great place to stay if you are going to stay outside of Yellowstone. Propane onsite.

New Jersey

Philadelphia South / Clarksboro KOA (Clarksboro): Nice little campground with an off leash dog park. Very friendly staff. Be sure to eat at Charlie Brown’s! Also take time to drive through downtown PhBBCr iladelphia after you unhook.

New Mexico

Enchanted Trails Campground (Albuquerque): Route 66 themed park with neat vintage campers to rent out, pool, onsite DirecTV service shop and propane, be sure to drive 15 min to the Sandia Peak Sky Tram (unreal!)

Route 66 RV Resort (Albuquerque): not to be confused with the Route 66 RV PARK on the other side of the city. Really nice, newer place with massive sites! Part of a casino. Definitely where we will stay again. Reminds us of Yank’s in CA.

Ohio

Grand River Valley KOA (Thompson): This is a great campground A few minutes off I-90. You do have to drive a short distance (less than a mile) on a gravel road to get to it, but the park has some really nice, level pull-thru sites with new pavilions that have glider rockers and barbecue grills. These sites have a nice view of a pond.. Three bars of AT&T LTE service. We were in sight S2

Oregon

Cannon Beach RV Resort (Cannon Beach): Nice place! Lots of trees and decent space between sites. Just a couple of minutes from the beach. About one hour from Vancouver, WA. The downtown part of Cannon Beach is awesome! We much preferred the north end of the strip. Don’t be fooled when you think the south part of the town is the only place for shopping and restaurants. Carla loved the coffee and ice cream shop. Really good stuff! Be sure to go to the far north end of the strip and watch the sunset from the Overlook. There is a sculpture of a dolphin or sea lion right there, and a path to walk down to the beach. Lots of people having campfires on the beach in the evening.

Hee Hee Illahee (Salem): very nice place! Nice pool and playground. Very clean grounds. Would definitely stay here again.
Pacific Shores Motorcoach Resort (Newport): upscale, top-of-the-line RV resort for a class a and class C motorhome is at least 25 feet long. Beautiful park with a nice path down to the beach. Friendly staff, Wi-Fi was very weak so we just used Verizon which had excellent signal strength (ATT was very weak). Only a couple of minutes from pretty much every kind of store you might need and close to Depoe Bay where you can watch for whales. Some of the sites look over the ocean, but are very expensive. Sites range from $45-$125 per night.
Seven Feathers RV Resort (Canyonville): immaculate grounds with lots of lush landscaping. Decent room between the sites. Top-notch place! A shuttle comes through every few minutes to take people to the casino, which I believe is owned by the same people who own the resort. Beautiful scenery all around the Canyonville area. Lots of mountains and tall evergreens.

South Jetty RV Resort and Campground (Florence): Thousand trails campground, although we almost turned away when we got there, this turned out to be one of our favorite places ever. It’s best to leave someone with the RV and disconnect your tow car to go scope out an RV site. It’s first come first serve, and not all sites are big enough. I believe we stayed in site number 18, which backed up to an awesome forest of huge evergreens. It didn’t have full hook ups at that particular site, but there is a dump service available. Satellite wouldn’t work due to the trees, and cell service was very spotty. No Wi-Fi available at that site. It sounds like a terrible site, but the scenery and privacy between sites was hard to match anywhere else. The kids absolutely loved playing in the woods right behind the RV. There are some neat paths that cut through the woods three different parts of the park also. It got down into the 40s in late July! You can hear ATVs buzzing around the sand dunes, which are just a short drive down the road. I highly recommend taking a tour of the sand dunes via one of the local companies that do that. Be sure to go to the old town part of Florence, which has lots of neat shops and restaurants right on the water. We were able to see a sea lion chasing his lunch around in the water where the boardwalk is. Such a neat thing to see. We love this town! I hate that our new, longer RV will probably not fit into the sites at this campground.

Woahink RV Park (Florence): very nice little park! Nice privacy between sites, very friendly staff, a short walkway up to the sand dunes that are visible from your RV. The downsides are that cellular signal for both AT&T and Verizon are almost nonexistent and the Wi-Fi is marginal, along with the fact that on a windy day, sand from the dunes will blow into your RV if your windows are left open. We had to relocate to Newport due to the bad cell signal strength.

South Carolina

Camp Lake Jasper (Hardeeville): very clean, friendly staff, sharp new looking buildings, gravel sites and some not totally level but not too bad. Site 23 has a huge area of grass on the patio side (we chose this site).

South Dakota

Cabela’s (Rapid City)
Tower Campground (Sioux Falls): it’s deceiving how this park does not look big until you drive back in a little ways. Very large, clean and great Wi-Fi. Very clean laundry facility also. Will definitely stay here again if passing through this area.

Texas

Amarillo Ranch RV Park: Gravel, level sites, playground, clean place. They have a free limo service that takes you to a steakhouse down the road. Great place to stay overnight if passing through TX on I-40.

Cabela’s (Allen): Great part of town and the RV parking section is off to the side and out-of-the-way of normal parking lot traffic.

Flat Creek Farm RV Park (Waco): Basic campground out in the middle of a field. Concrete roads with gravel sites. Well kept. My only complaint was that the dropbox for your payment is located at the back of the property and is not lit at night. Kind of a creepy place to walk to if you are dropping off your payment at night. Wait until the daytime and you can also then see the neat antique cars they have in the garage by the office. About 15 minutes from the Magnolia Market. We would stay there again.
Greenlake RV Resort (San Antonio): very clean RV park, with wide concrete roads, level concrete pull thru pads, nice pool, and palm trees.
Gulf Waters RV Resort (Port Aransas): One of our all-time favorite places to stay. Luxury RV owner sites (owners rent them out when they’re not present) with lush landscaping, palm trees, paver patios, nice views of the pond, patio furniture, and a boardwalk that takes you right to the beach. You can rent a beach buggy from “Port A Beach Buggies” (they deliver them and pick them up from the RV resort) and drive up the beach to the town of Port Aransas, where it is legal to drive the beach buggies around town. Lots of shops and restaurants. I highly recommend eating at Avery’s kitchen for breakfast. Also, visit Robert’s Point Park and watch dolphins in the channel when ships go through (Watch the waves at the front of the boat). Also, take the jetty boat/wharf cat (cheap $) over to the private San Jose Island and collect seashells. Take some time to also visit the Marine Science Institute (free, has a gift shop) in Port Aransas, where you can check out the visitors area. Really cool marine life skeletons, fish tanks, educational area, etc.

Jellystone Rustic Creek Campground (Alvarado): we visited in the winter time and the park was probably at its worst. They tried to cram too many things to do and to one park, so everything seems a little underwhelming and not well thought out. I noticed muddy and flooded areas in front of the cabins, lots of maintenance junk lying around the park, a depressing cafeteria, lots of small tree limbs and debris on the roadways, lots of potholes etc. Maybe it was a neat place back in the day. We only stayed there because it was close to MHSRV and we were looking at new motorhomes. Will not go back.

Lazy L RV Park (Sherman): clean little RV park. Quiet, nice spacing between the pull through sites. Good place to stay if you are passing through Sherman, TX.

NASA RV Park (Houston): It’s close to the Johnson space Center, but that is the only thing it has going for it. Very tight sites, and we scratched our last RV due to untrimmed trees located on the insides of the corners of the roadway at the back of the park and vehicles parked on the road due to inadequate space in the sites. I notified the lady at the desk, and she wanted me to tell her exactly which tree it was (ummm, go take a walk and maintain your campground yourself!). Not very friendly at all. Will not be staying there again.

Overnite RV Park (Amarillo): small clean park. If you stay here in a big rig, get one of the long pull thru sites at the back. Normally we would stay at Amarillo Ranch, but it was booked.

Utah

Golden Spike RV Park (Brigham, north part of Salt Lake City): Nice town with great views of the mountains. Clean and quiet park, friendly staff, fairly tight roads in the park, only about 1 mile off the freeway.
KOA Cedar City: Decent RV Park in a small town. Pretty view of mountains, $32/night, decent WiFi, nice staff, easy to maneuver through park.

Spanish Trail RV Park (Moab): Excellent RV Park with a stunning view! All gravel, but clean, awesome WiFi, wide roads, 10 min from Arches National Park. Eat at the Moab Grill and get the Reuben.

Washington

Issaquah Village RV Park (Issaquah): small park with tight spacing, but very friendly staff, great Wi-Fi, and very clean. Lots of beautiful flowers planted all over the park. Extremely close to I 90 traffic, which is easily heard within your motorhome. Probably the loudest highway traffic I’ve ever heard at an RV park in 22k mikes of RVing, but it didn’t really bother us. When your AC units are going, it pretty much drowns out the highway noise. Would probably be annoying after several days. Good alternative if Lake Pleasant is booked, though.
KOA Mt. St. Helens (Longview): clean park, located on a terraced hillside, paved roads and gravel sites, we got our 43 foot motorhome backed into a spot, but it was really too short. We were barely able to keep our car off the street. I would say 40′ is the realistic maximum length RV.
Lake Pleasant RV Resort (Bothell): very well landscaped and clean resort. Nice pond. Good spacing between the sites. Nice laundry facility. Close proximity to the Seattle area attractions (it’s one of the only places to stay and probably your best option). One of the older guys at the front office was not very nice, but everyone else seemed nice. Would definitely go back, and just count on using cellular for Internet service. Internet service you pay for is marginal. Good AT&T service, Verizon is sketchy.
Raymond RV (Raymond): My uncle and aunt own this place. Great spot to stay with an awesome view of the Willipa river! This is the mouth of the river as it connects to the Pacific ocean, so you get to see the tide go in and out each day. We kayaked part of it. There is a great place to put in downtown at a boat dock, with an actual kayak launch! Take the time to drive to Long Beach also. There is a really good bakery on the main strip (an incredible selection of donuts and pastries), and lots of beautiful scenery between Raymond and Long Beach.

Leavenworth RV Park (Leavenworth): Thousand Trails campground. Really pretty scenery getting there, but very dusty/dirty when you are there. It’s about 20 minutes or so from Leavenworth. The drive to Leavenworth is gorgeous, with giant mountains coming down to a white water river where you can see trout swimming while driving down the road. While in Leavenworth, be sure to eat at the Bavarian restaurant that is underground (stairs going down from the sidewalk). I can’t remember the name right now. Really really really good food!

Wyoming

KOA (Rawlins): very clean park, not far from the freeway, nice views of the hills around, our site was not level so I had to use leveling blocks, would definitely stay here again.

Habs on the Road

Here we go!