Aquatic recreation paradise. swimming, kayaking, snorkeling, scubaing. You can swim or snorkel in the mouth of the spring Checkout is 3 pm.
pleasant but too close to New York. Check in was confusing and a pain. You know you're too close to civilization when there are pizza delivery numbers at the campground office.
nice campsites, couldn't hike near the campground because it was turkey mating season. A herd (flock?) of wild turkeys came through in the morning, very cool!
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.
pretty but nondescript little spot in the interior of the state. Really nice fall colors when I was there, big yellow leaves covering everything!
Nice place. Expensive, but nice. Only about 4 miles from the sports bar where I spent the afternoon. Both Dakotas do this trick where the campsite is $22, but non-residents must also pay the $6 entrance fee. I don't like it. The Swimming Beach is really nice. A huge area to swim in, shallow to enough to stand up 50' out.
Fifth spring in a row! Also a fishery. This may be the fishiest yet! Quite large, there is a lodge with a nice restaurant up the hill. There is wifi strong enough I could use it from my van ... but it only worked for the last 6 hours of my two days there. There was live bluegrass music in the Lodge on Friday night!
deluxe state park. Almost close enough to walk to town, beach and tidepools and trees and grass, pretty much everything
Not real happy here. I am tired and there's no other good options around here, but this is a lot to pay for a place to park. Once I get past check-in, it turns out that the mosquitoes are almost too vicious to deal with. Despite the heat and humidity I live with all doors closed. On the other hand, it's nearly full moon, and along with mosquitoes they have fireflies! So I bundle up i my long pants and hoodie and go on a delightful moonlight walk around the gravel roads of the park. Staying in the open fields of course - the bugs are truly unbearable when you venture into the wooded areas.
12 miles south of US 2, the east-west highway I've been driving for five days. Totally worth the detour.
Beautiful location high on the bluffs above the mighty Mississippi. Nice set of trails with awesome vistas on the river bluffs
Bike one way to a lovely lagoon, walk the other way to to beach, nice sites high on the bluffs. A really nice campground.
Preposterously expensive for non-state resident visitors. Pit toilets, no showers, no services of any kind really, for $28. Flathead Lake is just a rumor, a faint glimmer between the trees. What is very real is the traffic noise, where US 93 loops around Loop A of the campground. The only other choice for 50 miles are upscale RV Parks and the Kalispell Walmart.
expensive, but quite nice really. great beach, little nature trail through the swamp, gazebo.
A big shadeless rectangle of land on the top of a bluff overlooking the Pacific. The southernmost of three campgrounds at Westport Union Landing State Beach.
Seven long winding uphill miles off busy Route 26. Nice when you get here though. A parking lot, bathrooms, and short walks to eleven spots with a picnic table, a fire ring (barred from use - fire danger) and a tent space. That's the whole thing. What people come here for is the 2 mile, 1,640' hike to the top of Saddle Mountain.
large, spacious, in the strategic near end of Cape Cod
The springs at Grover gurgle out of the hillside into a beautiful U-shaped alpine meadow. So it should be a groovy, enchanted place, but sadly it is managed by the State Parks system, who do their darnedest to make it prosaic and institutional. The pools are a couple of rectangular concrete tubs - a big one with lukewarm water, and a shallow (3 feet) one, maybe 40x20 which they keep at a pleasantly toasty 104°. You can look over the fence on the uphill side and see the water burble out of the ground and down a sluice to you. There are showers and cubbyholes to store your stuff. There is a campground, which I have never used since it's CA State Parks expensive and there is boondocking three miles down the road.
A remote, slightly shabby historical park with campground in the hills of Alabama. Nice folks running it. Along with the Ironworks, there's also an historical church and a baseball field.
A great little find on US 20 east of Craters of the Moon. Just a nice field with picnic tables and a a few trees on the edges. No services of any kind that I can see - "pack it in pack it out". They're just giving the fishermen a nice place to park their campers. Pretty sweet! Update! There IS a pit toilet, and there is a water spigot! But no place to dump trash, which is fine with me. And there is a donation box.