Where to Camp
Campground listings tell you how many sites there are. Six photos, a paragraph about amenities, and no way to tell whether the bathroom is a two-minute walk or a ten-minute negotiation with a four-year-old at 6am. They don’t tell you which ones you’d actually want.
That’s what these are for. I’ve slept at every campground on this list, with a kid, and written down the things I wanted to know before I booked. What the sites actually look like. Whether there’s water. How far the walk to the shore really is. Whether we’d go back.
Some of them I’d recommend without hesitation. Some of them I would hesitate to return to, and I say so. A campground being wrong for us doesn’t make it wrong for you, so I try to tell you enough about why that you can decide for yourself.
Before You Book Anything…
The free family camping packing list is the one I actually use, printed and clipped to a clipboard while I load the car. It covers shelter, layers, first aid, kid gear, and the kitchen stuff that’s easiest to forget.
No strings, just adventure.
What You’ll Find Here
- An At A Glance block up top with elevation, cost, season, and how reservations actually work, so you can rule a place in or out without reading the whole thing.
- Whether you can get there, and in what. Road conditions, vehicle accessibility, and maximum vehicle length, which matters a lot more than you’d think if you’re towing anything.
- Water access, restroom type, campfire rules, and what to know about the wildlife before you leave food out on the picnic table.
- Cell service, because sometimes you need it and sometimes the lack of it is the whole point.
- The vibe of the place. Whether sites are stacked on top of each other or tucked into the trees, how loud it gets, and who tends to be camping there.
- Our recap of the trip itself: what we did, what we cooked, where we went while we were in the area, and the parts that didn’t go to plan.
- Whether we’d go back, with the reason attached.
