It’s almost the weekend, and the weather is looking fantastic. ☀️
You have no responsibilities. 🙌 You’d love to go camping.
But, it’s peak camping season, and you forgot to pre-book your entire year back in January. 😕
So, you decide to do what anyone reasonable adult would do. Sink into your comfy couch, binge watch ‘The Boys’, and order take-out.
Wait, no, that’s not right…we have way better options for you!
How to Find the Best Unique Campsites
Before you resign yourself to a lazy weekend, find yourself a unique campsite through one of these options and go have fun! It’s no secret that popular campgrounds, particularly here in the Pacific Northwest, can fill up before the weather even thinks about turning warm. After you’ve exhausted state park websites, Reserve America, and Recreation.gov, see if you can find something you love even more through one of these options! You may even get lucky and find the perfect spot for FREE!
Things to Consider When Finding Your Unique Campsite
- How much do you want to spend? Can you afford to pay for full hookups and better amenities or is free and roughing it okay?
- How will you be camping? Are you in a tent, an RV, or looking for a rustic cabin or glamping experience?
- If you are in an RV, what is its length? Some sites have restrictions, or simply not enough room for longer rigs.
- What amenities do you want or need? Are you self-contained and/or okay with roughing it? Are pit toilets enough or do you need full bathrooms with showers?
- Where is your campsite located in regards to the activities you have planned? If a free site is going to cost you a ton of time and gas, it may not be worth it.
Resources for Finding Your Unique Campsite
Campendium
Campendium is a great resource to start with when you are searching for your next unique campsite. It is a community of campers, primarily geared towards those with RV’s, where you will find detailed information on campsites all over the U.S. You’ll find everything from boondocking to BLM (Bureau of Land Management) land to campgrounds on this site. You start by searching for your destination. Or, choose to search from your current location. From there, you have several filters, including hookups, length, discounts, and land categories (such as BLM, Campground, etc.). If you become a supporter, you can even sort by cell service! There is also a handy price slider where you can choose your target budget or even choose to show only free options! Our collaboration with Wandervans on our trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park gave us the perfect opportunity to try out the campervan life. We took the opportunity to try out Campendium which led us to the Clark Hill Rest Area in Ririe, ID where we stayed for FREE! We found the reviews and photos to be accurate, and we even woke up to this killer view.
Harvest Hosts
Harvest Hosts is a network of over 850 campsites in unique locations like wineries, farms, distilleries, and more that allow you to stay on their land. For a (very) reasonable yearly membership fee, you get unlimited access to stay at any of the Host locations. Plus, you can get an additional 15% off when you sign up with this link.
In order to join, you must have a self-contained RV, and they do request that you support the Hosts by purchasing a product during your stay. So, grab yourself some cheese from a goat farm, fresh lavender, a bottle of wine, or even visit an alligator ranch! We can’t wait to hear about the adventures you take with this one!
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HipCamp
HipCamp lets you narrow your search for unique campsites based on tent camping, glamping or RV sites. There are over 300,000 choices for you to explore. Enter your location, desired dates, and type of camping and – voila! – you’ll find tons of unique options for your next adventure! On our recent trip, we searched for options with them as well and almost ended up at a ranch! If we had been able to spend more than 8 hours before moving on, we totally would have opted for the ranch instead of the rest area we slept at. However, with such a short time to spend, we knew we wouldn’t have been able to appreciate it fully. We can’t wait to check out some of the unique campsites from HipCamp in the future! HipCamp has also provided you with $10 towards your next trip with this link. And, if you wanna earn a little extra cash, you can list your own land on HipCamp to pad your bank account. Use this link to get $100 when you sign up! As we were browsing through HipCamp, we were stoked to find The Lamp Camp is included in their database! We loved our visit with them on our Long Beach Camping Weekend.
Choosing Your Unique Campsite
As you are searching for your next unique campsite, we have a few tips to make things a little easier.
Narrow Your Search
Each site has ways of narrowing down your results. And, thank goodness! Otherwise, you would be sorting through hundreds of options to find your perfect choice! If you know you are camping with a tent, RV, have your dog, need showers, etc., use the filters on each site to help you hone in on the best choices. Personally, at this point, I like to switch to map view instead of a grid or list view so I can see what options are available in relation to our planned activities.
Reviews!
Take some time to read through reviews and look at the photos other campers have shared. I promise it will be worth your time! I can’t tell you how many times a review has saved us from a horrible hotel or campsite.
ProTip: I always focus on the most recent results. If they have fantastic reviews from 3 years ago, but the most recent reviews sound less than stellar, things may be going downhill. Conversely, if the old reviews are terrible, but the newer ones are glowing, perhaps they changed ownership or revamped, and it may be worth considering.
Reservations
Some people are fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants type people. I am NOT one of those people. I much prefer to know where we are going to lay our heads at night. So, whenever possible, I do opt to make a reservation. I’m also terrible at planning all our trips 6 months in advance, so sometimes I make that reservation the day before we leave or even while we are driving. 🤷🏻♀️
However, there are exceptions – like when we risked it and ended up parking at a rest area on the way to Yellowstone. Occasionally, we find it to be worth the risk and uncertainty to be able to stop when we are tired or to see how far we make it. But, we will always try to make reservations for peak times and locations. It just makes everyone less stressed. And, by everyone, I mean me.
Final Thoughts on How to Find the Best Campsites
There you go! Those are all our favorite tips and tricks for finding the best unique campsites for getting out there and taking advantage of the perfect camping weekend. Is there anything you would add?
P.S. You should totally binge-watch ‘The Boys’ when you get back.
