Campground Guides

Getting ready for my month-long vacation in July ;D, I would like to visit a national forest 8). However, on the Natl Forest Service webpage, they offer "A Guide To Your National Forests" for free. But, for the life of me, I can't find the place on the page to order the free guide >. So, as an alternative, I decided it was time for me to buy a good all purpose guide that I can carry around. What is best? I see a lot of people use Woodall's but does that include maps as well as everything else? What are a good list of guides that a TM camper should carry?

Getting guides by state and by service could become a real project. I tried to collect info from each state park system two years ago. What a fiasco. But that is another story.

[Carol]

AAA has smaller regional directories that are free as long as you are a member. They are compact and have most of the same listings as Trailer Life has without the bulk. They also list state park and national forest campgrounds, not just AAA campgrounds.

If you are interested in National Forest Campgrounds, there is a guide that some folks put together that is a little out-of-date as far as the open/close dates go (1st printing 2001, updated 2003) as they were for a particular season. However, they do provide detailed info re: the access and terrain and sites. See: http://gorp.away.com/dow/default

The info is all available online, but we bought a book for the Rocky Mountain Region to take with us. It helped us to find acceptable campgrounds in the area. However, you need to know the National Forest name first to find anything. We used the book to find a nice campground in the Big Horn Mountains with electric hookups and we found a campground near Laramie, WY for an overnight stay that was true to their description, right down to the bad road leading into that campground.

Here is the US Natl Forest website. http://www.fs.fed.us/ You can find what campgrounds are available in a particular area and there is a link for reservations if the campground does take reservations. From there, you can select on state or national forest for further info.

I never can believe the ratings in the large books, but they do help to find campgrounds in a particular area to further research. I ususally also go to microsoft's terraserver
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/
to check out the terrain. Granted the aerial photos are a bit fuzzy and out of date, but they give a good idea of whether the sites are close togehter, shaded, etc. They also have topo maps. You have to go to "Advanced Find" and then type in a place name (the closest city, state for example) and then select which map you want to see. From there you have to navigate by direction until you find your desired location. They have pretty good resolution for some urban areas, but we typically don't want to camp near any urban area.

We have printed out some of the maps for use on our trips, especially the topo maps.

[BobWilson]

Carol wrote:

" If you are interested in National Forest Campgrounds, there is a guide that some folks put together that is a little out-of-date as far as the open/close dates go (1st printing 2001, updated 2003) as they were for a particular season. However, they do provide detailed info re: the access and terrain and sites. See: http://gorp.away.com/dow/default "

What am I missing? I don't see any guides on this website. I see a registration form to Gorp. Do you have to join this first?

[Carol]

Hi!

I apologize for the bad info. This worked last year and apparently Gorp pulled the info. I didn't recheck it to see if it still worked. Shame on me! I even did their free sign up.

It seems to work intermittantly when clicking on the quick access at the top of the page. I also got access theough some of the photos. I don't know if this is a temporary glitch at Gorp or a permanent dropping of this info.

I'll keep looking to see if I can find a current link. I'm also emailing the authors to see if they have current links.

Carol

[rotor_wash]

Chris, Wildernet, http://www.wildernet.com/index.cfm, provides some good free info for a variety of activities. Just click on the state you want and use the drop down menu to select your activity (camping, hiking, fishing, etc.). There is usually too much information so you will have to use their filters to narrow your searches. You can select reservable campsites by National Forest by clicking on a map or select by menu if you know where you want to go. Each point of interest will have a place to read or post comments as well as information on surrounding related activities. It is a nice backup for the sparse information provided by ReserveAmerica, but just like RA, some information may be slightly out of date. Always call ahead to find out the latest details. A map program is also available.

Greg