Category: Tent Campgrounds
A Really Nasty Bug
December 28, 2011 by Professor95 · 6 Comments
A winter-night’s dream finds me walking through the middle of a tall grassy field ablaze with warm sunshine, songbirds singing, and butterflies darting about. Nearby is a brook overflowing with large rainbow trout hungry for the fly on the end of my line. As the sun sets, we will dine on trout cooked over glowing campfire embers. . My dream excludes the reality of chiggers, ticks, mosquitoes, gnats, wasps, spiders, and biting flies also enjoying the habitat and dining on me as I reach out for my dream. Like it or not, we share the world with bugs and their presence can make our real life experiences a lot less pleasant if control measures are not taken. Adult EAB with wings open One insect, or bug, that has recently changed the landscape of at least fifteen eastern states and parts of Canada is the Emerald Ash Borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire – an exotic beetle that was first discovered in southeastern Michigan near Detroit in the summer of 2002. By exotic, I mean... [Read more...]
Valdez is for Campers, RVers, and Adventurers!
November 30, 2011 by Melissa A. Trainer · 2 Comments
Photo by Michael De Young/ATIA Are you planning a road trip to Alaska? Are you thinking of traveling to and camping in America’s Last Frontier next summer? If so, then I would like to suggest adding Valdez to the itinerary. I must admit that I haven’t been there myself, but it was on my “to do” list when we lived in Anchorage about five years ago. Unfortunately, we got sidetracked with other destinations that summer, but when I was at the Alaska Media Road Show in Santa Barbara about a month ago, I was fortunate to meet with Colleen Stephens while I was there. Colleen is from the Valdez Convention and Visitors Bureau. She seemed to know exactly what I was interested in! Colleen explained that Valdez caters to campers! I was really happy to hear this because camping in Alaska can take a fair amount of initiative and organization. I know this because I’ve done it many times myself! Colleen explained that Valdez has many RV sites around town and that many... [Read more...]
An Alaska Travel Roundup
November 5, 2011 by Melissa A. Trainer · Leave a Comment
Denali National Park/Melissa Trainer I was very fortunate last week because the State of Alaska invited me to attend the Alaska Media Road Show. Held at the luxurious Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, this annual event brings together top travel writers and key players in Alaska’s tourism industry. As many of you know, I write quite a bit about Alaska. I lived there with my family and we traveled extensively throughout the state while we were there. We covered a lot of territory and ventured to many amazing remote locations during that time. We knew that we could be self sufficient with our travel trailer and we utilized our trailer to the max. We knew that amenities were few and far between on many of the remote roads, so we learned to pack accordingly. Our trailer was an absolutely priceless tool for navigating the region. Even though our three children were all under the age of 11 at the time, we were all willing to take the road less traveled.... [Read more...]
Chinese Company Copies the SylvanSport GO
October 6, 2011 by Rex Vogel · Leave a Comment
In an earlier post, Meet the GO! by SylvanSport, I reported on the GO, a lightweight, reconfigurable, pop-up trailer manufactured by Brevard, North Carolina-based SylvanSport LLC. Meet the Go! All ready to Go! (Credit: sylvansport.com) SylvanSport has learned that Wuyi Tiandi Motion Apparatus Co. Ltd., a manufacturing company operating out of Zhejiang, China has begun manufacturing and selling counterfeit versions of the popular SylvanSport GO, according to a press release. Designed and manufactured entirely in the U.S., the SylvanSport GO has been widely praised for its innovative design features. The GO “was copied down to the color scheme and even the marketing support materials,” said Tom Dempsey, founder and president of Sylvan Sport. Sylvan Sport said that “this is an unusually blatant example illustrating the increasing problem of many of China’s most accomplished companies achieving their success by pilfering the intellectual property of other industrialized nations.” The... [Read more...]
Why My RV of Choice is Not an RV
September 22, 2011 by Genevieve · 9 Comments
The Revelations & Denials of a Happy Tent Camper… With an entire week devoted to our bloggers’ “RVs of Choice” I felt the need to represent tent campers just like me across North America, who faithfully read the Woodall’s Camping Blog enjoying posts about camp-cooking, unique things to do, and tips for not killing your kids on road trips. See, there is a misnomer amongst RVers that tent campers are in a deeply jealous state of their luxurious RV accommodations, while in fact that often isn’t the case at all. (The truth is, is tent campers are only a little jealous, and slightly more so during winter months.) Our littlest camper in 2011 RVers and tent campers are cut out of the same cloth. In fact, how many of you RVers enjoyed tent camping for years before finally deciding that even the air mattress on the ground isn’t going to provide your grown-up bones with enough comfort to continue on in a tent? At Woodall’s we enjoy reading the annual reader survey... [Read more...]
Tips for Choosing RV Parks/Campgrounds
September 10, 2011 by Rex Vogel · 3 Comments
Choices for RV parks and campgrounds include luxurious RV resorts, activity-filled family destinations, 55+ parks, secluded natural settings, and basic parks conveniently located for an overnight stay. Prices also run the gamut. Campsite at Devil's Garden Campground in Arches National Park. © Rex Vogel, all rights reserved There is a variety of campgrounds, each offering different amenities and activities. These include private RV parks; casino camping; membership parks; national, state, and county park campgrounds; Army Corps of Engineers parks; national and state forest campgrounds; and service club facilities. Consider Your Needs What are the best tips for choosing a campground and campsite that you and your family will love? Nothing can make or break your RV trip like choosing a campground not suited to your family’s needs and interests. When selecting a park, think about your camping style and ask yourself the following questions: Are you camping with a young family? Are... [Read more...]
Sally’s Revenge and the Bear that came to Dinner – Part 2
August 17, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 2 Comments
(Continued from “Sally’s Revenge and the Bear that came to Dinner,” Part 1) Well, that big pile of hair that Sally pulled out of the bag wasn’t a wig; which was my first guess. As both families stood around that first morning; deep in the forest in Matthew’s Arm Campground at beautiful Shenandoah National Park, I might have grumbled a bit. We had been waiting for forty-five minutes while Sally finished her morning preparations for taking a short hike on the Appalachian Trail. She primped, painted and brushed. But it was the amount of time and effort that she was taking with that huge mass of hair that she was pinning onto her head that finally got to me. “Is she ever going to be finished with that wig?” I whined (yes, I whined, but I was at my breaking point, okay?). It’s not a Wig; it’s a Fall!” my wife hissed, “And keep your voice down!” “Well,” I hissed back, “I’m going to go berserk if she decides that she needs a pedicure before we... [Read more...]
Camping in Brooklyn!
August 16, 2011 by Melissa A. Trainer · 1 Comment
Okay, fellow campers, you know that camping is really going mainstream when a campground grows in Brooklyn!! Yes, that’s correct, there is now a campground in Brooklyn. I chuckled in disbelief when I was sitting at breakfast reading The Wall Street Journal last week. I was tired of reading about the world’s financial carnage, but an article by Barry Newman ignited my enthusiasm. The article is entitled ”A Campground Grows in Brooklyn, Bringing a New York Edge to Roughing It” and reports on the new campground at Floyd Bennett Field near Jamaica Bay. Floyd Bennett Field is on the National Register of Historic places–it was New York’s first municipal airport. The National Park Service recently added forty campsites. Most of the sites are for tent campers, but six are suitable for recreational vehicles. There are even fire rings, grills, and picnic tables at each site. I was born and raised on Long Island only a stone’s throw from Brooklyn.... [Read more...]
Sally’s Revenge and the Bear that came to Dinner – Part 1
August 8, 2011 by Traveler8343 · 2 Comments
Dateline: Late 1970’s, Shenandoah National Park, Matthew’s Arm Campground, Virginia Although this story didn’t just happen, I thought that you might appreciate it. It came up during a story telling evening around a campfire while we were in Moab, Utah. If you’ve been camping long enough, you’ll each have stories like this to tell. If you don’t, well you’re just not trying hard enough! BTW, since this story is a bit longer than my usual, I’ve broken it down into what will hopefully be two easy-to-absorb sections. I hope that you’ll enjoy them. *** After car-pooling to work in Manhattan for nearly a year, we were, in some ways, like an old married couple; finishing each other’s sentences and familiar with every like, dislike, and mood. One thing we learned about our likes was that we both enjoyed camping. And so Ted and I began hatching a plan to take our families camping together in the Shenandoah National Park. It all sounded great in the planning stage, but we should... [Read more...]
Another Quiet Escape in Wisconsin
July 31, 2011 by Diane Berry · 8 Comments
In a recent post, I profiled one of our favorite northwoods campgrounds, Anvil Lake Campground, a simple Forest Service campground located in Wisconsin in the Nicolet National Forest. However, our favorite such camping spot, also in the Nicolet is the beautiful Franklin Lake Campground a few miles away in essentially the same neck of the woods. It was to this lovely spot we first brought our son camping when he was barely six months old. It was Memorial Day weekend in 1992 and a frosty one at that. Temperatures plunged to freezing during the night and he slept in my sleeping bag with me in his snowsuit. In fact, he spent the entire weekend in that snowsuit. I think that early experience served him well as he is our child that most loves the out of doors, accompanies us on every camping or RV trip even at age 20 and, is an avid hiker and climber. As I write this we are preparing for our annual trip out west where we have planned to climb two more “Fourteeners” (peaks in excess of 14,000... [Read more...]
