Reservations and Military Campgrounds

Here's an article written by a website user. It was too lengthy to post in these forums, so I made it an article on the website.

Reservations and Military Campgrounds

After reading the complete article, I have a couple of comments for the author. First, I totally agree that the entire MCG world should have a reservation system in place - and yesterday wouldn't be soon enough. And second, it will be a very steep uphill drive to get there because to make it happen, MCG staff will have to actually perform some work and we all know exactly how hard that will be to accomplish. Generating a little more work to make life easier for your customers involves thinking outside the box and that isn't a strong suit for most NAF employees. Keep your boss happy with as little effort as is possible seems to be the norm in my experience. But I'm in full support of your core concept.

hello,
New to forum. New to making an extended trip, trying to us Military or Government RV Campgrounds.
Drive a 31' Motorhome with CRV wheels down.
I read your topic about reservations and discovered you were traveling on the East Coast. My route is different, but planning the trip is the same.
My destination is leaving Florida and going Southwest and then trying to go NW beginning April 2018 to returning to FL the Fall of 2018.
I am Retired Navy.

So I have a few questions and hope you have answers or suggestions.
1. Does each branch of the military have separate websites to book reservations (when allowed)?
(Meaning: can I use this site to make all my reservations or for example does the Army have a separate site from Air Force?)
2. Have you used Army Corp of Engineer Campground? If yes, what was your experience? Is there a website?
3. What about overnight suggestions, other than Walmart, Truck Stops, Cracker-barrel, Camping World?

My goal is to plan my trip, make reservations and have an option to cancel if weather or traffic conditions have me changing my route. At least if I cancel my reservations I want to keep the fee as small as possible. We have found private campgrounds to have very tight windows of canceling and we found ourselves out our entire reservation (one was 7 days) twice last year.

Any suggestions or referrals are welcome.
Thanks ahead of time,
Oliver



I guess since the "west" is such a mystery to me, I am worried about new weather patterns and roads creating obstacles. I am anticipating my driving goals to be different and unknown. I have traveled up and down the East Coast and want to venture out. My trip is suppose to be fun, exciting, seeing landscapes that are brand new to me. Traveling in a motorhome has built in stressors, I am trying to plan so that when I stop driving, my stress ends that night with a place to hook up.

oliverquibble wrote: hello,
New to forum. Welcome to the site. New to making an extended trip, trying to us Military or Government RV Campgrounds.
Drive a 31' Motorhome with CRV wheels down.
I read your topic about reservations and discovered you were traveling on the East Coast. My route is different, but planning the trip is the same.
My destination is leaving Florida and going Southwest and then trying to go NW beginning April 2018 to returning to FL the Fall of 2018.
I am Retired Navy. I'm curious as to how somebody can leave Florida and go 'Southwest.' You can go north or west, but going east or south might be difficult unless you go by boat. :laugh:

So I have a few questions and hope you have answers or suggestions.
1. Does each branch of the military have separate websites to book reservations (when allowed)?
(Meaning: can I use this site to make all my reservations or for example does the Army have a separate site from Air Force?) I think you can access all of them from this website: DoD Lodging .
2. Have you used Army Corp of Engineer Campground? If yes, what was your experience? Is there a website? You can reach them here: Recreation.gov .
3. What about overnight suggestions, other than Walmart, Truck Stops, Cracker-barrel, Camping World?

My goal is to plan my trip, make reservations and have an option to cancel if weather or traffic conditions have me changing my route. At least if I cancel my reservations I want to keep the fee as small as possible. We have found private campgrounds to have very tight windows of canceling and we found ourselves out our entire reservation (one was 7 days) twice last year. Exactly why I almost never make a private campground reservation until the morning of the day I will stop there. I'm usually about 99.9% sure I'll be using the site by then. Very seldom have I found a campground full on the day I needed it. And of course, I always have one or two backup campgrounds plus or minus 50 miles from my first choice.

Any suggestions or referrals are welcome. There are far too many military campgrounds that don't take reservations which is a mystery for most of us retired RV travelers given today's computer technology. But it is what it is, and we don't expect it to change anytime soon. Good luck on your trip and enjoy seeing our beautiful country.
Thanks ahead of time,
Oliver



I guess since the "west" is such a mystery to me, I am worried about new weather patterns and roads creating obstacles. I am anticipating my driving goals to be different and unknown. I have traveled up and down the East Coast and want to venture out. My trip is suppose to be fun, exciting, seeing landscapes that are brand new to me. Traveling in a motorhome has built in stressors, I am trying to plan so that when I stop driving, my stress ends that night with a place to hook up.

Correction to dubob's reply. The "DoD Lodging" website only takes reservations for Navy campgrounds. There's been plenty of problems using it.

I only use the DoD Lodging site to find a phone number that I can call to get information. I have never actually made a reservation on-line using that link. I make all reservations over the phone where allowed. It works fine to find the phone number. Sorry for any confusion my earlier statement may have caused.