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Music Festival Fairgrounds, Campgrounds or Resorts: What’s Your Park?

With so many RV parks and event and music festival campgrounds out there, and so little personal insight into them all, how can someone find the right park for them? We were looking for a quick RV getaway recently when I floated an ask out to the Facebook community. “We’re in SoFla and building a list of wooded full h/u campgrounds (not ‘resorts’) north to G’ville (Gainesville). What’re your favorites – and why?” The “not resorts” caveat was key. We want the woods, or at least wooded, preferably on water.

How do people pick the RV destination that’s right for them – especially a campground they’ve never visited before? Just ask…

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Tools That Smooth RV and Music Festival Camping

Bought or buying an RV? That check you wrote or the finance agreement you’ll sign is only the start of the cash outflow. But don’t think of it as some investment that keeps on sapping your bankbook. Leave that to boat owners. Shopping for your camper is exciting. Not as thrilling as buying that clear acrylic elbow attachment for the sewer pipe to watch the tanks eventually run clear while dumping. But it’s close.

You’ll want camping supplies and festival accessories and chairs and tables and stuff for sitting around the campfire and creating the the perfect campsite. Consider this your post-holiday list of must-have gadgets for RV and festival camping.

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Camping Memories Made Where You Park It

We were sitting in our backyard recently and I noticed something I’d never noticed before. Two of our palms were perfectly spaced to hang our hammock. A nearby was a spot perfect for a fire pit. Trees for the hammock, a safe spot for a fire pit, and plenty of room to sprawl. This is stuff I look for when camping. Why had I never thought of it in our own backyard?

So that got me thinking… How important is the site to the camping experience? When we called Camp Venice Retreat in November to book a week’s stay, I tried to cut straight to the chase with the manager, Tamara. I’d eyed their site map, but those things can be so deceiving. Often not drawn to scale and designed to make every site look spacious enough for Will Smith’s monster rig, you don’t know if the site they’re offering is the spatial equivalent of a parking spot at the outlet mall.

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Games and Camping: What Are You Playing?

My wife is a camping card and board game player in search of an opponent. No sooner is the RV hooked up and the awning out, than she’s suggesting we set up the cornhole board. Later, after dinner is cleaned up and the fire has burned low, she’s rattling off board or card games to pass the evening.

This is deeply ingrained in her camping DNA. Many of the same games we carry today – Sorry, Uno, Rummykub – are the same ones, I mean the same actual games, her family carried across Ontario, Canada, in their RV five decades ago. We added Yahtzee, a few decks of cards, and National Parks Monopoly.

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Campers & RVers: Why We Hit the Road Again

When COVID-19 hit, Mary and Scott Hercik-Sladek started canceling camping and festival camping reservations. Partly to cut back a bit, partly out of a healthy concern about getting sick, they pulled the plugs on all their events. Even if they wanted to camp, managers at parks, campgrounds, and other campsites, at least those that were open, everyone was saying, “Camp at your own risk.” Who wants to risk that?

In time, when COVID seemed to chill a bit, they decided to hitch up the trailer and head out – with their fear in check. “Once we finally started camping again, it instantly became our escape from the world of COVID,” she said. “Since it’s just Scott and I, we can go from our home to the campground and back home without having to speak to another soul.”

It’s not about being anti-social. It’s about being safe.

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