real nice find! Crab Orchard is a pretty big place, with four campgrounds. The other campgrounds have full hookups for the big boys and cost more. But E Loop is the oldest and has become the bastard stepchild in the corner. Electric only inside the loop, no hookups outside. Its bathroom is kinda gross, but hey, $5 for overnight and a shower ain't bad.
Expensive for the non-resident, but a nice campground in a spectacular location, on the Chesapeake Bay just a few miles north of where it meets the Atlantic. There is a cool little boardwalk access to the beach, where you can walk along the beach to the boat ramp/picnic area/fishing pier a little south. Really fun place.
Down Horsfall Road off of 101 are OHV camps and trails, equestrian camps and trails, day use areas, and general use camps and trails. Wild Mare Camp - set up for camping with horses - was empty and very, very nice, but the mosquitoes were just brutal, so I moved to the OHV camping at the coast, where the breeze keeps the little buggers moving. Very pleasant here. Just a parking lot with large camping-only RV sized slots on three sides and parking for the beach on the side next to the ocean. I've stayed here three times now, and there's always a few OHV folks. Their pleasantness or rudeness and the amount of general hubbub varies greatly. The general rules is that the warmer and nicer it is, the more constant and unending and annoying will be the sound of unmuffled small engines.
Driven past many times, finally stopping! Good news: It's in a lush, peaceful crevice in the mountains along a little burbling stream which opens onto a driftwood-strewn beach 1/2 mile away. Bad news: US 101, also runs through the same narrow crevice so you rarely hear the burbling stream. You hear semis rocketing past 40 yards away all night. In the summer, you can camp in the Lower Loop, 600 yds from the beach. In the winter you have to walk (or bike!) an extra mile from the Upper Loop.
expensive, but quite nice really. great beach, little nature trail through the swamp, gazebo.
I came here 15 years ago with abalone-diving City friends. I'm not even sure that's a thing any more. Anyway, the campground is still here and it's still awesome. They have spots available when no one else does, and it's the simplest check-in ever: Pay them ($5 off for cash!), they give you a receipt for your windshield and tell you to park at any picnic table/fire ring that's not occupied. The rest of the world seems to get more complicated and bureaucratic, but this is the easiest damn check-in I've ever experienced. Checkout 2pm. Ocean Cove Bar and Grille is a sweaty uphill 3/4 mile walk away. Basic bar food, but great view of the ocean and campground.
in town, next to the harbor, but kind of isolated because the little river separates it from the day use area. Small, not very private sites, but right next to the beach
On lovely Williard Bay, the northeastern, freshwater(!) arm of the Great Salt Lake.
For me, this functions as a high end Tillicum overflow lot. Tillicum was full at 2:30 on a Tuesday, so for a $9 upgrade I get showers and that state park experience. Site 13 is at a busy corner. The trash and recycling are 30' away. It's nicely shielded, but still... My overall experience here was great!
Bike one way to a lovely lagoon, walk the other way to to beach, nice sites high on the bluffs. A really nice campground.
On the east side of the lake, making for spectacular sunsets over the water every night. Very quiet and beautiful and delightful. The big north-south highway and train tracks are pretty close and carry big noisy trucks and trains respectively.
A really interesting place. The entrance and Visitors Center are five miles off the highway, then it's another five miles to the payoff, the lighthouse and actual Gulf of Mexico. The Visitors Center looks quite deluxe, but both times I have been hurrying to make sunset at the beach, and both times I forgot to return in the morning.
13 miles up the Chetco River from Brookings, then 1/2 miles straight down a steep bluff to the long, wide stony gravel bed which is Miller Bar. The Chetco in front of my site is about 10 inches deep at it's deepest, but about 40' wide. The rocks are covered in bright green algae, but it's not too cold so I had a pleasant horizontal soak. Just drive along the gravel, park wherever you want, and you're home free,
Twelve miles north of the town of Green River, on the Green River. A nice swimming beach, boat ramp, dramatic formations of the Book Cliffs in all directions.
Very cool state park a little south of Fort Bragg. There's a waterfall two miles up the canyon, something called Devils Punchbowl on the rocky shore, and lots of other hikes in between.
Looked good on the internet, and probably is good if you're a fisherman with a boat and a huge-ass RV as big as a mobile home.
Epically deluxe RV park: pool, hot tubs, beach, playgrounds. In the middle of San Diego, two miles from Pacific Beach ocean beach, four miles from Balboa Park.
odd check in: 1. pick a site, 2. drive 2 miles to the office, 3. drive back. Very nice campground and park, though.
Always totally full and very crowded, but not tonight! It's another little cove, the outlet of the Little River. State Beach on the west side of the road, campground and parking for the trails on the east side. Up the canyon is the Fern Canyon Trail, a lovely hike with a lot of dramatic fallen redwoods and tall pines. The canyon is very steep and the soil is slippery so at some point they just have to fall. The beach is rocky, but it's a cool anyway. A self contained vehicle like mine can pay the $45/43 fee and park in the beach parking lot
About 25 miles off the road to anywhere, but pretty cool once you're here. I'm here on a cold day in October and it's almost deserted. Bear Lake is beautiful