Before you head out for the first time onto national park roads, such as the Kolob Terrace Road in Zion National Park, with an RV, do a little research/Kurt Repanshek.
When planning a national park camping trip, many RVing newbies are surprised to learn that a stay in these public campgrounds is quite different from the usual RV park experience. From 1950s-era campgrounds with short parking aprons that are unsuitable for modern RVs, to strict generator use hours, the learning curve can be steep for inexperienced RVers. If you're a new RV traveler and considering a national park campground visit, here are five simple ways to have a great RV camping experience.
1. Research Your Route to the Park
Many national park campgrounds like Cedar Breaks National Monument in Utah are located in stunning, scenic locations reached only via steep, winding roads. To prepare for any unusual driving conditions like steep grades or gravel roads, check the 'Things to Know Before You Come' section of the park's website before you head out. Another tool that will help safely guide you to parks located in mountainous regions is the Mountain Directory Travel Guide, which provides the locations and descriptions of more than 700 mountain passes and steep grades in the United States. Finally, consider purchasing a GPS for RVs like the Magellan Road Mate RV, which allows you to navigate your route based on your vehicle's profile and driving preferences including avoiding unpaved roads, no U-turns and more.
2. Know the Size of Your RV
Once you're in the park it's not unusual to suddenly find yourself attempting to back into a parking space that's too short or narrow for your rig. To avoid this stressful scenario, know the exact height and length of your RV: take a bumper-to-bumper measurement (including any towed vehicles and utility trailers) of the length and height (remember to include air conditioning units and other rooftop objects like vents), then factor in the width (including all slide-outs).
Know the size of your rig before you go under a bridge, such as the Rockefeller Bridge at Acadia National Park, or into a tunnel/Rene Agredano
3. Understand Campground Accommodations and Limitations
Many of our national park campgrounds were designed around beautiful, natural scenic features like rocks, trees and canyons. As a result, access can sometimes be impeded and force you to find other camping arrangements. Learn all you can about a national park campground's facilities by visiting the park's website and reviewing campground information in the 'Plan Your Visit' section. For parks with reservable campsites, the reservation agency Recreation.gov, shares many campsite details like parking space sizes and whether or not hookups are available. Next, consider the experiences of other RVers by joining RV discussion forums and posting questions in places like Escapees.com's 'Travel' topic. Finally, for the most accurate campground information including seasonal conditions, call the park headquarters.
4. Get Ready to Boondock
National park campgrounds enhance the park experience by allowing campers to become immersed in natural surroundings ' which means you won't often find common RV park features like full-hookups. As a result, you'll need to get acquainted with 'RV boondocking,' which means to camp off-grid. First, understand how your RV works when it isn't connected to utilities by knowing how much power your appliances consume, Then, know how many days you can camp without emptying your waste holding tanks. Once you're in your site, practice extreme water conservation and propane use; remember, the less you have to stand in line at the dump station or rely on your generator for power, the more time you have to enjoy your vacation.
5. Don't Rely on Generator Power
Many first-time RVers find it easy to rely on gas-guzzling generators for doing everything from powering a microwave to watching television, but just because you can doesn't mean it's a good idea. Oftentimes national park campgrounds allow generator use, but only during certain hours and rarely past sunset. In addition, your solar-powered campground neighbors and tenters don't appreciate the ongoing drone of a generator or its exhaust, so be a Good Sam and limit generator use to only the most essential uses, like recharging RV batteries at the end of the day.
For many campers, traveling with the comforts of home can be a great way to experience the great outdoors, but when you're new to RVing there's a lot to learn along the way. To make the most of your road trips, understand your RV inside and out, talk to other more experienced RVers and remember that getting closer to nature means unplugging and slowing down enough to see the many reasons why our parks exist in the first place.
Rene Agredano is a full-time RVer who lives and works from America's most scenic spots. Since 2007, she's been roaming America's backroads with her husband and three-legged dog, while chronicling their adventures at LiveWorkDream.com.
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Here’s the definitive guide to National Park System campgrounds where RVers can park their rigs.
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Comments
A fine article, but I think there's a very important point that wasn't mentioned.
New RV drivers or those come from flat country (no matter what kind of vehicle they drive) need to know that they MUST use lower gears when descending steep grades. I can't begin to count the number of times I've been behind an RV or vehicle towing a trailer when the smell of smoking brakes has been overwhelming. When brakes heat up, they often lose their ability to do their job. The results can be catastrophic.
A runaway rig will provide a very memorable vacation story -- if you live to tell about it.
It seems that the rental RV folks do a good job of teaching people how to bring the machine back in one piece and it's rare to smell one of them. But RV dealers? Apparently not so much. Trailer pullers may be even less likely to understand the need for low gears on downgrades.
In any case, it can be a matter of life or death.
I have been the driver of a truck towing a trailer and losing my brakes going downhill. The back way going down from Sequoia. I have done this drive several times with no problem, but was behind a compact car whose driver had apparently never seen a curvy road or gone downhill before. They would not pull over - although there were plenty of good sized spaces they could have done so in. I had to grab the first larger pullout I could find - head for it, low gear and all brakes on. God was definitely looking out for us that day. Managed to get a Fordf-250 Supercab and 21 foot prowler trailer (when they were really heavy - lol) stopped. A desperate search for items to chock the wheels with turned up yielded a whole lotta nothing. I think perhaps this had happened before as this road is nothing but rocky crags and cliffs. The trailer brakes areprobably what kept the whole shebang from going into oblivion. A passing motorist agreed to call a wrecker for us in Three Rivers. The wrecker came and took the truck down first since the trailer brakes were still holding and gave us a few chock blocks too. We stayed with the trailer until they came back with a 3/4 ton truck with a BUMPER HITCH. Our daughter and youngest son rode in front with the driver in seatbelts. My husband, oldest son and I rode in the bed of the truck (filthy - all kinds of hazards) and they took us to the Holiday Inn in Visalia. We were a rag tag bunch but very grateful to be alive. Spent 3 days at Holiday Inn (they were wonderful) and got home in time to save our cat who got sick while staying with my mother.
te
We went a little nutzo as the kids grew up and bought a 31 foot 10 sleeper Jayco. Had it for 11 years and enjoyed it, but at age 59 and holding desperately - at leas
thank you!!!!!!!!!!
THANK YOU!!!
Also, don't keep your foot constantly on the brake pedal. That's a really good way to quickly heat up your brakes to the point they will not work!
And this point cannot be overemphasized - please practice simple driving? Turn radius, the difference between turning right vs left, braking distances at different speeds, mirror placement.
All that simple stuff and more is so important. All you legally need is a driver's license to be legal; to be safe you need to practice and get competent.
Larger trailers and 5th wheels cannot get into the Redwoods campgrounds. The trees are too close together to navigate. We learned the hard way.
I learned the hard way in a New Mexico campground :(
We could never find a spot in Olympic NP for a 29 ft 5th wheel. Many cases the tree limbs are too low and turns in campgrounds impossible. The worst was that sites that could be usable had concrete curb blocks halfway downdownload the length of the sites making them too small for our not very large 5th.
How large is too large? We travel with a 35 ft fiver.
Ekim, I can't be certain but in the majority of national park campgrounds, a 35' RV would be pushing the limits in most campgrounds. It's best to check the park's individual websites to be certain. Usually the information provided regarding size limitations is pretty accurate.
How wide was your trailer? Length?
what is the maximum length?
We are renting a large CruiseAmerica camper that accommodates 7. Do we need to get a car, also, to see the UT national parks adequately?
I would suggest you consider renting a car for a few days. Park the RV and then explore. That will save you the extra driving if you took a second car with you. We were okay in Zion, because we stayed in an RV park and use the park shuttle system to get to and around Zion. Arches would have been better explored in a car. Also between Zion and Bryce there is a VERY tight tunnel.
Don't worry about tunnels there huge tour buses go through we were just there no problem we had 40ft RV
Yes, if you want to truly experience the parks. It's also much easier than unhooking your camper every time you want to do or see something. It's well worth the money!
Yes. Once you set camp you won't want to mo e your camper, also some sights don't have parking for large vehicles.
At Zion you need to take a shuttle to get to all of the scenic points and there is ample parking for rvs get early to avoid waiting in line for the shuttle
if you are renting one of those stinky RVs, dont worry about anything else.... enjoy the bedbugs...
Another thing you might want to check into is age restrictions on the RV.
Bonnie, I'm pretty sure that public parks, at least those in the NPS, don't impose age restritions. I've never run into any.
I haven't seen the RV age restriction in Natl Parks, but have seen it in some campgrounds that are park adjacent.
In regards to the Magellan GPS, the only thing we DID like about it was that you could enter the exact measurements of your RV, we had just bought it before our last trip and we returned it as soon as we got home! It would tell us to turn the opposite direction that we knew we needed to go. And we located a place we needed to go back to the next day and marked the coordinates while we were there, then the next day it couldn't direct us to the site we marked. We wouldn't recommend this to anyone!
Thanks for this info. Do you have one now that you *could* recommend?
I personally don't but maybe someone else can recommend a unit.
Hi everyone
As you all have experience with travelling by RV, I have a very important question. In June my son (18y) and I will make a road trip from San Francisco over LV to Denver to visit the National Parks. We booked a small RV (22ft) to make this trip as we wanted to be free and stay as long in the parks as we want to. We wouldn't like to be stuck to a fix schedule by booking everything in advance.
Now: people tell me that not booking in advance is not done in June. So my question is: does anyone has experience with this and how about the first come, first served camp grounds?
Another big question is: people advice me to rent a car and cancel the RV! Would be cheaper, more flexible in the parks, ... .
Can anyone give advice on this very importand choice to make?
Thank you so much! Jeanique
Hi Jeanique,
Once school lets out, it is a lilttle hard to get into the most popular national parks without a reservation. If you want to wing it and try for a first-come-first-served campsite, it's best to time your national park visits for about a 10 am arrival. Most checkouts are by noon, so if there's a line to score a campsite, you'll get a head start. If you're traveling early in June you have a pretty good chance of getting into the parks on your route. Have a backup plan for camping elsewhere, just in case.
Another tip is to visit lesser known national parks and monuments. They're just as gorgeous and offer fewer crowds.
As for traveling by car versus RV. I'm going to bet that the people who gave you that advice have never enjoyed the lovely pace of a long RV road trip. There's a lot to be said for having your own pillows, bedding and kitchen with you at all times. And with a RV that size, it's usuallly no different than trying to get a campsite when you have a car. If your RV was larger, in the 30' range, that would be different and yes, it would be very difficult that time of year. In addition, they could be wrong about the price comparison. I took a cross-country trip by car two years ago and the entire cost was literally only a few dollars less than towing my 27' fifth wheel and staying in campgrounds. And it wasn't nearly as much fun, especially because I had to eat road food. Yuk.
But otherwise, if the spirit of RV travel is calling you, listen to your heart and do it. I think you'll both have a blast.
Your link for the Mountain Directory Travel Guide brings up a book site but no results for that book. Try this instead.
http://www.mountaindirectory.com
We consider the job of being the Navigator to be almost as important as driver. We have learned that the Navigator is a second set of eyes that can alert us of things the driver might miss. Like someone in front of you suddenly braking hard just when the driver us checking his mirror to change lanes or spot the nut job coming up behind you that is cutting in and out of lanes. Then after a hard day of navigating they help you get thru those cramped national parks.
Have been to some of these as a kid with the parents, we used a pop up camper and it was great, if in a no tent area, due to wild animals(mainly bears) there was usually another campground not to far away that was usable by pop up and tent campers. Left camper all set up at campground and explored the parks by car and on foot. Nothing like the chilly rainy night in a pop up camper and wake up to a crisp cold sunrise and see fresh snow on the mountain peaks. Even in summer.
I can't emphasize enough going to a high school or shopping mall parking lot and setting up your own cone course. Be realistic about road dimensions, turns, and not only drive it, but get out an watch your partner drive it. If you set it up honestly [cones, milk crates, etc], and you find yourself hitting the cones or knocking over whatever you use to mark your course, then you WILL hit trees, other motorists, traffic signs, boulders, and whatever you find in the real world.
A few years ago, up in Alaska, I trained to drive an old schoolbus this method. I was going to be hauling tourists and didn't want to damage precious cargo. The practice was both tough, and essential, despite the fact that, at the time, I had been driving for at least 45 years.
Edited to add: I should have mentioned when practicing driving in your new land yacht, practice both directions - forward and reverse. If you get to your camp space and are unable to back into the only parking spot, it will not be pretty.
Rick's advice about going to a large parking lot to practice driving is excellent.
Just yestedary, at the gas station near my home, I encountered a woman who had just purchased a large used RV. She was pulling in to the gas pump for the first time and turned a little too sharp. She contacted one of the bollards that protect the pump and tore the heck out of the side of her new rig. On top of that, instead of turning the front wheels in such a manner that the rig would move away from the bollard, she just tried to back up along the same path and doubled the damage. Damage to the bollard and pump island was also going to be expensive.
Last week in Idaho, I was behind a large trailer pulled by a big pickup when the driver failed to use lower gears on a steep downgrade. He lost his brakes -- but happily not too far from the bottom with only one sharp turn left. When he hit that last turn, he was as far over on the wrong side of the road as he could get and still keep his wheels on pavement. Thank goodness there were no oncoming vehicles or there'd have been one big Kabam. The trailer brakes were smoking so badly I was afraid of fire so I pulled over to help if needed. I haven't seen a man and woman so pale in a long time.
Heed Rick's advice and become a student driver again --- even if you've simply moved from one RV or trailer to another. They all handle just a little differently, and little differences can have big consequences.
If you are near a Lazy Days Rv Center, they have an RV driving course I believe...at least they did many years ago at the Tampa dealership.
Karen, maximum length of what?
The answer to that question varies tremendously depending upon where you are and what you're trying to do.
We want to travel with our 2 dogs. Are we permitted to have them with us in the RV at the national and state parks. We know there are limitations on where we can take them within most parks, but are more concerned with them being permitted to be in the RV camping areas.
Is there a driving class I can take before I buy my truck and travel trailer ??
I want to retire, live year 'round on the road.
Julie, check online for courses for driving class. Some are online, some in person. An online one: https://shop.rveducation101.com/rv-driver-s-education-c30.php
Julie, there are several options for learning to drive with a trailer.
Ask the dealer. They will probably know someone who can teach you.
AARP has Driver Safety Courses and many of our instructors know things they can teach you.
Contact your state's Highway Patrol and ask for suggestions about instruction.
Find someone who holds a Commercial Drivers License or even a local trucking company. Driving a pickup pulling a camper is just like driving a 16-wheeler.
See if there is a CDL instruction school anywhere near you.
You don't need to be fearful -- but you DO need to be very careful and have enough knowledge to keep you safe.
Enjoy your retirement !
Just bought our first trailer. It is 23'3". Our Tunda is 19'. Will the combination of length prohibit most national parks?
My wife and I recently stayed at Leith Run Campground. The host of the of the campground was not very kind gentlemen at all. The shower faciility and the handicap site above and below are black and sink bowl is also very filty, the worst I've ever seen. The mens toilet had feces on the whole three days that we stayed there. I reported it a lady parks person who was there,Wednesday. she said she would look into it, but nothing was done at all to anything. The sidewalks where heavally covered with grass. It never used to be this way and I highly doubt will be retiurning to this campground again. Also while talking to other campers they've also seen a great decline in the campground. Such a shame it's such Ohio river beauty.