Next summer we will be visiting the USA. We live in the Netherlands and will be renting a class C-motorhome. We will visit Washington DC en New York City first and then hit the road! In five weeks we will make a tour from New York City to Las Vegas. You can find our plan on Our travelblog 2006 (in Dutch). Our travelagency says there is no need to make any reservations on RV-parks or campgrounds, but we think in july and august it can get pretty busy. We would glad to get some advice from experienced RV-ers. Do you think we should get reservations? Thanks, Monique
Monique - while it is true that in July and August, RV parks will be fuller than probably at other times, I think you would still be able to find a place to stay without a reservation. Normally what we do, when traveling without reservations, is consult a directory, call them when we are close to being ready to stop for the night and see if they have any openings. We have never been able to not find a place to stay - if that were the case, we would stop in a WalMart parking lot for the night. We like to travel without reservations because then we don't have any restrictions on when we stop.
You will probably be okay without reservations Sunday through Thursday nights. But I would strongly suggest you make reservations ahead of time for Friday and Saturday nights. Many parks fill up only on weekends.
You will probably need reservations for the major national parks such as Yellowstone or Grand Canyon. Otherwise reservations during the week should not be required as long as you are stopping before 6 PM. As someone noted, you can often camp in the Wal-Marts, Flying J stations or other spots at no cost if you are just looking for a place to stop overnight. Our national forest parks can be very nice places to camp as well. Since I don't understand Dutch, I can't read your trip schedule. If you are going from NY to Las Vegas, I would advise you to rent the camper one-way if possible because gas will probably cost you about 30 cents per mile in a Class C. It is probably 2500 miles just to return to New York from Las Vegas. If you have a schedule in English, I may be able to offer comments since I have traveled to all 50 states over time.
We usually reserve our sites ahead of time partly to ensure the type of site we want is available at a campground we want to stay in as well as to avoid the frustration of not being able to book into a campground we have travelled hours to get to and have to start the search all over again. Usually when we travel we have numerous places we plan to see so we are fairly scheduled. The major drawback to making reservations is losing your deposit if you decide not to stay, or don't arrive as scheduled - you will want to find out what their policy is, also, some have a minimum number of nights you have to book if you reserve. We reserved at 6 campgrounds this summer and in all cases were happy with the campground, had a site we liked and had no problems at check-in (NOTE: All but 5 of these campgrounds I booked based on reviews from this website!!!!!). Just an FYI - we did the Washington DC and New York City trip this year - you will really enjoy it - plan on spending several days in both cities!
