Search the Community

Hello, new to all of this, just purchased a 40’ Entegra, we want to head West (from Atlanta, Ga) out to Grand Canyon, Bryce, Zion and maybe Yosemite parks. Can anyone suggest a trip planning service? We wanted to leave in a couple of week (mid-May) to avoid summer season and heat. Thank you in advance, safe travels to all!

Does FMCA offer trip planning similar to AAA?

Hello, Heading to Hyde Park, New York to tour FDRs home. The nearby campgrounds do not have very good reviews. Any recommendations or insight would be greatly appreciated. DC

We are experienced RVers in 38' Class A , but just downsized to a 24' Class C. We want to travel from Jacksonville to Maine (with no tow), mainly along the coast and time is not really an issue. We have 2 small dogs and my husband requires a scooter to get around. We want to travel the back roads and love history, museums, quaint towns, natural beauty. The high traffic, urban areas intimidate the heck out of us, although we do want to spend time visiting Washington DC and time in Boston. Forget NYC which we understand is not disability friendly, unless you know want to share the secret to camping and getting around. HELP

We are looking at spending the winter in California and wondering if anyone had recommendations or comments. Looking at Chulla Vista Resort in San Diego for January and then to Golden Village Palms Resort in Hemet, CA. for February. Then up to Santa Clarita area in March. Any help appreciated!!

We are heading toward the Grand Tetons without reservations at a campground. We're driving a 40 ft class A, towing a jeep. Any recommendations.

My wife and I just returned from Normandy Farms Camping Resort in Foxboro Massachusetts. It was our Granddaughters April Vacation Trip. Our first time there, we swam every day in their indoor pool and Jacuzzi and Sauna. If your in the area it is well worth the stop you can find the info online NormandyFarmscampground.com it is truly a Resort style Campground with plenty to do.

My wife and I are planning on going to Alberta during August, 2016. We've not found much success in locating a campground(s). The Provincial Park Service's website was awkward to use, and internet searches haven't produced results. So we are looking for your ideas. We have a 37' Class A and are towing a CR-V. Thanks for your thoughts. Steve Martin Memphis, TN

That is a place I have wanted to go. You have a 40' and I a 45', will there be a problem for me? On roads and campgrounds? Do you reserve ahead, before you go? Thanks Carl Carl asked a good question so I'm going to answer it with this post. I've seen a few 45's on the road here. We've been able to find places to stay without a problem though the number of places with full hookups is limited. The standard is 30 Amps with water and a dump station. There may or may not be wifi and signal strength when they have wifi varies considerably. In many cases, you have only one choice of where to stay but we've been able to stay where we wanted almost always. We've found parking spots in cities a few times, Wal-Mart two nights in Clarenville, Royal Canadian Legion two nights in Deer Lake. We've also stayed in roadside pull-outs, one paved, one dirt/gravel. Visitors centers are common stopping spots for the wifi and parking is generally good but not always. Some visitors centers will allow overnight parking but most simply don't have enough room for that. We have found RV parking spots that aren't large enough for our rig but usually there are few places used and we've been able to park across several spots or park along a curb. In a few cases we've called campgrounds a few days ahead and been able to get a space reserved. The one area where this didn't work was around Gros Morne in mid-August. It's a popular National Park. We got a place to stay right on Bonne Bay for the first few days of our visit right in the heart of the park. When we wanted to relocate on the north side of the park all the close parks were filled. We found a place with full hookups about 30 miles north of the park and made that work. As in the US, you will find the National Park Campgrounds unsuitable for large RV's. We tried in Terra Nova National Park and there were sites that would have worked but they were all occupied. We pulled into several sites but slides and trees were a problem so we gave that up. That park didn't have any close private parks to stay at so we ended up taking on short day hike and went on our way. You will likely find yourself staying with the campgrounds that are near the Trans Canada Highway as the smaller roads on the peninsulas are narrow, no shoulders and in places pretty rough. We tried a few of the peninsula roads with the motor home and managed OK but it takes a lot of patience. Those roads are better done with the toad. There are many beautiful harbors and interesting places to see on these peninsulas. If you don't travel them, you miss much of the beauty of Newfoundland. Now in Labrador we are in a park just north of the Strait of Belle Isle ferry landing in Blanc Sablon. The park was full Thursday night, last night only a couple of small vans. The space is small and we are parked into the regular roadway with just enough room for traffic to pass. It was the best space available at the time. Someone had the space on the end of the row which was on a curve and would have been no problems. This park is gravel, pick your own spot, first come, first served. The parks here are gravel or grass and you may find tree limbs and maneuvering a problem in some. Others are wide open and not a problem. We haven't found any campgrounds that would be classified as a resort type parks in the US. The ferries here are all capable of handling large vehicles. They have many trucks on each ferry run. We did make reservations for our ferry trips. For the ferry from Nova Scotia we made reservations months ahead. For the ferry from Newfoundland to Labrador we called a few days ahead and got a space without a problem. I would not hesitate to come again. You will find yourself in the company of many smaller campers in most cases but hey, you drive what you've got! Had to laugh on ferry to Blanc Sablon we were in line with a small van camper and I noticed the license plate was Switzerland. I struck up a conversation with the driver on the trip across the strait. He laughed saying, "Our campers are like our countries. US is big, Switzerland is small."

I am looking for some reviews of Sleepy Hollar Campground in Jasper, AL. I am planning of stopping there in early June. I am driving a 37' Class A with a toad. Any thoughts would be appreciated. thanks

We are planning a trip to Padre Island next year, does anyone have any recomendations for a nice campground? We are in a 40' Diesel with a Jeep in tow. I saw the KOA there has bad reviews for site size/space anyone stayed there or somewhere else with a recomendation? Thank you.

We left Yankton, South Dakota, on Saturday morning on our way to Denver, Colorado. We have made this trip in one day many times in the past. This trip would be different. It is Labor Day weekend and we don't have reservations in Denver until Labor Day itself. So we have all day Saturday and Sunday and part of Monday before we have a place to park in Denver. We drove west on South Dakota Hwy. 50 until we reached US Hwy 18. This is a new route for us. I had set the GPS for Wounded Knee. We have never visited the site of this famous massacre. Despite the fact that this is a holiday weekend with expectations for record numbers of motorists on the road, the highways we are traveling are almost empty. We drive for long distances without anyone passing us. We pulled off in a small town and had lunch parked behind a gas station. We're driving through towns with names like Gergory, Dallas, Winner, Okreek, Hidden Timber, White Horse, and Soldier Creek. The road is lined with fields of corn, sunflowers, soybeans and huge fields filled with giant rolls of hay. It has been a wet year in the prairie and the crops are abundant. We've seen quite a bit of rain during our stay in Yankton and the fields are wet so we don't see much action in the fields. Later this fall there will be a rush of harvesting once the fields dry out. We stopped at Winner, a small town with a hotel and RV park. The owners were quite welcoming but they had no pull through sites so we drove on. They suggested that we might find a place to stay in Martin. Arriving in Martin there were no signs for campgrounds so we stopped at a Dakota Mart Grocery and Dairy Queen. We figured we could ask someone and get information about a campground and also get some ice cream, sort of killing two birds... In the grocery store the clerk at the register told us that there was a city park that allowed overnight parking. Just go to the stop light and turn left and you will "run into the park." We grabbed some ice cream treats and went back to the motor home to check out the free wifi advertised at the Dairy Queen. It turned out to be too weak a signal at the motor home to be useful so we pulled out. We found the park just as described. After driving around the park once we circled back and parked in a spot on the swimming pool parking lot. There was a place with a sign for overnight parking. It would have worked for a small class C but there was no way I was pulling in there. There were ball fields nearby but no game was scheduled for Saturday night. Near the overnight parking lot a spirited volleyball game was underway with what looked like 20 or more participants. As the sun set, a storm rolled in. We started rocking and rolling as wind gusts of 30 to 40 miles per hour kicked up followed by a good heavy rain. Sunday morning came with a nice sunrise and clear skies. As we left Martin just past the grocery store and Dairy Queen was a nice RV park! Amazing the clerk in the grocery didn't even think of this when we inquired the day before. The really interesting thing was that no RV park was listed on RV Park Reviews. In fact, I just checked RV Park Reviews and the park we visited the day before in Winner was not listed either. In fact, RV Park Reviews shows no RV parks at all on US Hwy 18. I need to gather information on these places and get them on the list! I had also checked the Allstays App and found that they have the motel/campground in Winner and also showed a state park and Corps of Engineers campground where US 18 crosses the Missouri River. So this part of South Dakota seems to be off the map for many sources. Good Sam lists the two parks at Pickstown where US 18 crosses the Missouri River but neither of the other two we found. So it turns out we are traveling in a kind of camping and RV no-mans-land. There are resources here but they are not easily found.

One of the questions that came up was whether we had our motor home in Australia. This is something that one might consider for an extended trip but it isn’t really feasible. There are numerous problems, the first is that the campgrounds aren’t set-up for our motor homes. The power cords we use don’t fit anything here. Current is 220V but the plug is unlike anything we use in the US. They don’t have sewer connections similar to ours, they use one inch hoses for grey water and toilets are a special kind, a small canister which holds toilet wastes. The canister is removed from the vehicle and emptied into specific dump locations. Grey water drains into sumps in some campgrounds but it is quite common to drain grey water onto the ground near the rear of your campsite. Even in campgrounds where sumps are provided for grey water people will drain to the ground if their hose isn’t long enough to reach the sumps. Utilities are not located like our in the US where the electric, water and sewer are all in one place. One electrical post has four or more outlets and would be located on the common corner of four lots in most cases. The four lots being two facing one street and two facing another street. The lots vary in size but most are fairly small. Our 40 foot motor home would not fit on most of these lots. So there are many reasons why a US motor home would be a problem when traveling in Australia and I haven’t even addressed the possible problems with driving on the left side of the road with the driver’s seat on the left side of the vehicle. With a US built vehicle, the driver position when driving on the left side of the road would put the driver on the edge of the road, not in the center of the roadway. Passing vehicles are on the right side of the car which is the far side from the driver in US vehicles. Then there are the roads. The campervan we are driving feels like a very large vehicle on many of the narrow roads here. There are trucks and large busses which travel these roads but I would not feel comfortable driving anything larger than what we have now. Also, campgrounds trim their trees for campers like ours to drag their way through the low hanging limbs and large leaves. We have seen a few large motor homes. When we started our travels in New Zealand we stopped at a rest area. As we were standing there looking at the scenery a 1990 Safari pulled in. We took pictures and the owner came over to talk to us. We told him we were amazed at seeing a US motor home in New Zealand. He said he had purchased it in the US and shipped it to New Zealand. This particular chassis was easy to move the steering wheel to the right side of the vehicle. He had the electric cord modified and a few other changes made. We asked how he felt about driving on the roads and he said he didn't travel much. He has a few places he goes to and they have a special lot for him. The only other big rig we saw is in the picture with this posting. We saw it at Exmouth in Western Australia. It had two of the Australian 220V power cords which look like a normal extension cord. We didn't visit with the owner of this rig. The final nail in the coffin as far as I’m concerned is the price of fuel. We are getting around 15 miles per gallon (in US terms) with the campervan. Fuel prices in Australia have been about $1.55 to $2.45 per liter. So here is the conversion to US terms. It takes 3.785 liters to make one gallon. Multiplying the above dollar figures times 3.785 gives us $5.87 to $9.27 per gallon. These figures are in Australian Dollars which are worth about $0.92 US at today’s exchange rate. Multiplying 0.92 times these figures gives us $5.40 to $8.53 in US Dollars for a gallon of diesel. The prices are lowest in cities and highest when you get way out into the outback, especially on highways to nowhere, those roads that are one way in and one way out. For most of the outback, we’re paying between $1.80 and $2.10 for a liter of diesel. Unfortunately, there is a whole lot of outback in Australia. Needless to say I’ve left a few dollars at Shell, CalTex and BP stations around the country. There are a few other fuel companies but these are generally the least expensive. Frequently there is only one station, no choice at many of the roadhouses in the outback. If the tank is empty, you pay the price and say thank you! With two weeks to go, we have driven about 15,000 kilometers or 10,000 miles in Australia. Most people here camp in trailers pulled by an SUV or small truck. They frequently attach a tent or screened apparatus to the side of the trailer to give them plenty of protected outdoor area. Camping trailers are almost always pull-behind trailers. We’ve seen just a few fifth wheel trailers. It is not uncommon in the outback to see camping trailers which are built for high clearance being pulled behind a beefy four wheel drive SUV which is used for the many dirt and gravel roads which penetrate the outback. The roads we are traveling which are paved are often the only road in an area with all other roads being dirt or gravel. If you really want to get away from it all in Australia it is easy, most of Australia is away from it all but you need a four wheel drive to explore this area. The alternative for us is to take tours which will haul us into those areas for day trips.

Just took my 2008 H/R Ambassador to Lazy Days in Tucson for some maintenance and found out that KOA has purchased the Lazy Days campground in Tucson. They will honor any "free night" certificates until April 1st 2014. This could be extended but my advice is if you have them use them before April 1st.

We are planning on going to the FMCA Western Area Rally in Indio in January. Does anyone have any RV park recommendations in the Indio - Palm Desert area? Any favorite places to stay for 4 - 5 nights? I have been looking at Desert Shadows, Indian Waters & Indian Wells parks and each seems to be nice and conveniently located to the Indio fairgrounds. Thanks!

Hello! You know how it is... you plan trips and things happen and you have to cancel or change plans? Well, that has happened to us this year! Earlier in the year we planned on driving up to Maine, then a daughter was having a baby last month and requested our help in Colorado.... and guess what? A close family member got gravely ill and we had to cancel both trips. Hoping that she gets well enough for us to leave, we are now considering a short/closer one to OBX and Jamestown, VA. Anyway, I spent hours researching best routes for each trip and reading forum suggestions and decided I needed to keep track of all so as not to do the research all over. For now, I have copy/pasted and filed them under "My Documents/Travels/name of State/Route recommendations or campgrounds" . Any of you keep/save these in other ways? I also prepared a spreadsheet with mileage from point a to b, aprox. driving time, where to stay, if full hook-up or what...cost, etc. But I am not happy with my spreadsheet. I remember reading once in one of FMCA forums of someone having a similar spreadsheet... ??? We started motorhoming 8 yrs ago. When I retired last year, we took our first long (3 months) trip from Florida all the way up to Glacier Park, then South to NM and back, stopping anywhere and everywhere. It was an awesome trip! Our 28'Concord/Coachmen keeps "calling us: let's go, let's go... " and we are so looking forward to it! Jocelynn and Quico Power Gainesville, FL

We would like to visit the Outer Banks of North Carolina next August. Any suggestions on: -- best route from Florida (where to stop, what not to miss!) -- where to stay -- what to see We have a 28' motorhome and a tow car...no kids, no pets.... Thanks! Jocelynn and Quico Power Gainesville, FL