Any Smoke-free (campfires Banned) Parks?

So, it's been years since you posted this, have you been successful in finding SMOKE free campsites? I'm thinking about starting a national wide campaign. I mean you can't SMOKE anywhere but at campsites and the wood is often so toxic. L
My lungs CANNOT tolerate smoke and so I have to work really hard in order to find A safe place.

 

I like your idea a lot and I write reviews for this website and would be happy to notate the status of fire versus no fires. Are any of the admins listening to this thread? Could you add some fields to the list?

BTW, I just joined The Escapees and am writing an article on the subject and they are interested in publishing it. I am going to try and write others and submit them all over the place.

Thanks,
Denise

 

Would you also differentiate between those parks that don't allow on site fires, but have one or more community fire pits for guest gatherings? Your mention of the Escapees brought that to mind (and welcome aboard! Hugs!) since that's the way the club owned Sumter Oaks park near Bushnell, FL does it. I'm not sure if any of the other club owned parks do though, but I have seen it in some private parks as well. State and national parks parks with campgrounds nearly all allow on site fires of some sort of course, either in a pit, a fireplace, or a raised BBQ style cooking stand, as well as many having group "fire circles". I'm not sure how the different types of allowed fires could be accounted for, or would any kind of allowed fire warrant the same notation?

 

Thanks for the Welcome!! happy to be exploring the private campgrounds. May have more luck there since many people actually live there. It's not going to be easy but I know someone will be able to figure out a simple way to designate this...Its as Important to me as it would to know if there were disabled facilities available, right?

 

Yes, I agree. The programmers can design a SQL statement that would allow us to search on any label. Lovely! It's not going to be easy but I know someone will be able to figure out a simple way to designate this...Its as Important to me as it would to know if there were disabled facilities available, right?

 

I agree it would useful information to those that want it, I'm just not sure how to define the parameters. Are campgrounds that allow any sort of fire included? Or just those that allow on site fires? Admittedly it's not a health issue for us, although we don't want to be "smoked out" of course. Since we heavily favor state and federal campgrounds, it's not a selection criteria we would be likely to use though. We're on the road year round, and off hand I can't recall the last time I even smelled a campfire, much less was annoyed by one, although we've certainly been in many parks that allow them.

 

There are two basic problems with increasing the number of pieces of information about a park that are collected and indexed. First of all, I can tell you from experience that the majority of reviewers won't bother to input the information unless you make it mandatory and I doubt anyone is advocating that for something like "campfires banned?" We have enough trouble with people accurately providing the few pieces of information we currently collect. If you wanted the majority of the database of >15k parks and CG's to include this information you would need a massive data entry effort.

Second, a real concern is accurate inputting of information. One of the reasons we're happy to give control of a park's amenity profile to parks owners is that we continually had reviewers changing the information in the database, often substituting incorrect information for correct material. You might not imagine it, but people do things like mark a CG as having 30A only because they stayed in a 30A site and didn't care about whether or not there was 50A available. Similarly, the reader who marks a park as not having full hookups with sewer because they only rented one with water and electric. The more information you ask for the greater are your chances of receiving erroneous data.

 

We would find the information useful as it seems we are "smoked out" for at least one evening on every outing this season. Being downwind of someone burning wet, rotten, scrounged wood - or even worse, campsite garbage - results in us closing up the camper and staying inside or leaving for a long period of time.
I would be fine with responsible burning of dry seasoned wood and then restricting it to no later than 11:00 pm. It would be nice to have the option to pay for a smoke- free or wood campfire area

 

Absolutely spot on. I'll add one more variable. What about a park that only offers a group campfire, or offers a couple of areas for guests to gather and have a fire away from the sites? Is that a park with or without campfires? Years ago, we did have campfire rings. Probably 1/3 of the time we did not allow their use due to either high winds or burn bans in the area. Would we have been considered a campfire or a non-campfire park?
Fact is there are hundreds of potential criteria that people may use to choose a park. Many of those amenities are nebulous at best. The forum's favorite whipping boy, WIFI, is one. Does a park have WIFI if it constantly buffers your streaming of Game of Thrones? Another is "pet friendly". Is a park that has no off leash play area, has a breed or size restriction and requires your pet to always be leashed "pet friendly"? You just cannot expect to accurately portray all potential amenities and weed out all concerns in a snapshot thumbnail of a park's amenities.

 

This thread is really interesting to read - clearly folks each have unique use scenarios for outdoor fires. Out here in the west many parks have seasonal bans do to dry conditions. The logistics of noting this in a parks amenities list and keeping it updated are challenging...

 

It may be frustrating, but unless your firewood has been properly heat treated, seasoning alone does not destroy the beetle larvae. Nor is the restriction restricted to the east coast. The emerald ash borer infestations for instance, reache as far west as Colorado. Whether it's the Asian longhorned beetle, emerald ash borer, or hemlock woolly adelgid, it's a major problem that's destroyed, and continues to destroy, millions of trees. It's hard to say how much the firewood movement restrictions are helping, but it's a sure thing they aren't hurting the problem.

 

If it's locally sourced wood, it doesn't need to be heat treated. Only wood from outside the area requires it. If the bugs are already in the area, heat treating local firewood won't have much effect on them. The idea is to try and help keep them out of unaffected areas by only allowing certified heat treated wood from outside.

 

Sorry folks but I couldn't resist entering this thread to let you all know what we do when we encounter a bothersome campfire or fire ring, etc. I have a neighbor up the road who has a permit to grow "MW" (that would be medicinal weed) due to his rheumatoid arthritis. I always take along a small plastic baggie of it with me and keep it in the crisper in the fridge so it's disguised as "salad fixin's".... If we have a fire nearby that is sending smoke in our direction I simply take a small amount, put it in my pocket, wait till nobody is around or paying attention, and as I walk by that fire pit/ring I quickly sprinkle the contents of the plastic baggie into the fire. Within a few minutes that fire will usually get put out or someone from the office will come down responding to the complaints about the smell wafting thru the park, etc. Works like a charm, we just sit back and pop open another jug and keep sippin'.....

BankShot.................(aka Terry)

 

Yeah Mike, I have been known to hide in the bushes and wait for opportune moments to dump my magic dust in a smokey fire...............

By seasoned I assume you mean "smellin' real good" so that after a few whiffs of the smoke nobody is going to care much about turning anyone in much less having the fire put out.........

Breathe deep and enjoy, Terry...................(aka BankShot)