PETER

I've had the pleasure of doing a lot of traveling in my life, often to unusual places and under unusual circumstances.
Here I would like to collect stories and pictures of past travels along with the ongoing ones.
(I've got about 30 years of catching up to do, so this will always be a work in progress.)

K O A
During most of my North American Travels I often visit KOAs for overnights.
There are several advantages to KOAs, not the least of which is that they're easy to find. They always have clean restrooms and showers. And most of the time the staff is friendly and helpful.

Click here for my review of KOAs I have visited.

NATIONAL FOREST CAMPGROUNDS

I'm reluctant to put this info here, as these campgrounds are one of the best kept secrets for traveling in the U.S. Most National Forest areas have campgrounds. The trick is locating them. In order to reliably do that, you require several publications. The most important is the Coleman's National Forest Campground Directory (Ed. 2). This lists all of the campgrounds and gives you an indication of their size and facilities, but gives you very general maps. Then you have to use either a good map (like a Rand-McNally Atlas) or a GPS (since the co-ordinates are provided in the Coleman book) in order to locate it. If you want to plan a route and use these campgrounds, it takes a little work.

They can range in size from only a few sites to 100. Facilities don't include water and electrical services to individual sites. There are always washrooms and running water, but seldom showers. These are more rustic campgrounds than your KOAs, but there are three big, big advantages. 1. They are always out of the way, so there is little traffic noise. 2. The scenery is almost always much nicer. 3. The camping cost is a fraction of the cost in most campgrounds. Disadvantages: 1. They're out of the way, so they're often located far from major towns or facilities. 2. As I said, they're hard to find (-although much easier now with in car GPS). 3. Not many provide for reservations, so you could drive a long way and find the campground full. (That, however, has not been my experience, having used them extensively one summer in the south-west U.S.)

Also, there are many more in the western half of the U.S. than in the eastern half, -in fact there are states in the eastern half where there are none at all. There is an adventurous, unpredictable side to using these campgrounds, but I've always found the payoff very positive.