camp ground guides

Windbreaker. I completely agree with you on the mom & pop type campgrounds.

During our vacation, thanks to Woodall's, we stayed mostly in this kind of RV campground, and it was great and affordable.

Plus you get to meet some neat people that way too.

When we're travelling a lot like we did on our Arizona trip, we found it really helpful to have the Woodall's guide along.

Gregg

[quote author=efelker link=board=16;threadid=1162;start=0#msg8055 date=1060711617]
I'm from the PA Dutch area. When you'd ask an old farmer for directions they'd usually say, "Oh, it's don the rood a piece." Translation: Drive down this road about 40 miles further.
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I'm from the same area. When we moved here from L.A., it took a while to get used to the country roads. Directions would often be "...make a left at the cows by the white fence..." sort of thing. Also, many roads here are marked by little green signs that are either (a) obscured, (b) turned 90 degrees by some joker, or (c) you have some nut job right on your tail and by the time you can read the fine print, it's too late!! Don't get me wrong - it's a great area - signage and road conditions are just my pet peeves... ;D

Steveerino:

Any of those old farmers help you back the TM into your driveway by giving you directions? I'm sure they'd say, "Come ahead back."

[mjlaupp]

Directions would often be "...make a left at the cows by the white fence..." sort of thing.

Don't knock it. At the time of day you asked for directions, the farmer knows the cows will be by the white fence. If you asked for the same directions at some other time of day, then you would be pointed to another landmark.

MJL

[B_and_D]

I also vote for the Foghorn campground guides. Have the one from CA (on our third now, 760 + pages) and also the Pacific NW edition. They show SO many campgrounds, and give you a pretty good idea of what they are like, not only from amenities standpoint, but from the aspect of what would appeal to your sense of what makes a great place to camp. To the credit of the Foghorn series, at least in Northern Ca, we seldom find a campground not listed in the book.

My dream job...traveling from campground to campground, writing the whole trip off, including a Sec. 179 rapid writeoff on the TM, to write and publish a camping guide. Sigh...but it would be really hard to compete with those Foghorn books. IRS would probably say it was a hobby loss. >

Another guide we've used is the "Recreation Lakes of California". One summer we did a "Lake Trip" and visited a lot of the lakes in this guide. It describes the fishing and boating aspects of each lake.

steverino wrote:
by the time you can read the fine print, it's too late!! Don't get me wrong - it's a great area - signage and road conditions are just my pet peeves

steverino - i just read a good hint for driving on highways and trying to determine when you should get into the turnoff lane to exit - the passenger uses a pair of binoculars to see the signs way before you approach it, so that there is enough time to get over.

Or you could do as we do. Consider each wrong turn an adventure, we see our best stuff on wrong turns. Remember the road not taken this trip must be taken next trip.

Windbreaker. I like that. During our recent 2 week trip to Arizona and California, we purposely took the backroads from our home in Portland, Oregon.

It's the road less travelled, you know? Man did we see some pretty country too!

ALL - What is FOG HORNS travel guide anyway? Not familiar with that one...

Gregg

[B_and_D]

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/AS...535492-5896936

Amazon.com's list of the Foghorn/other camping guides

The Foghorn guides we have are by Tom Stienstra. The reviews call them the "campers bible" and I have to agree (I think that's what they meant, spelled it "bilble&quot.

here is Tom's site (new from the last time I did a search)
http://www.tomstienstra.com/

We are lost without this guide, at least in CA.

We have been using the following guides:

Passport America -- if you are a member of Passport America, you can get 50% off on the parks in their guide.

Woodall -- we use this to confirm the quality of site we are getting in the Passport Americ guide, since they have more detail than the PA guide - plus if there isn't a PA site where we want to go, we go to a Woodall site.

Finally, we go to the KOA guide -- we use KOA if there isn't another site in the area we want to go. So far our experience has been that they are more expensive than other parks -- however, the are clean and safe.