Epic?!? CA to NJ to FL to CA trip

[daverave]

The spousal unit and I are planning on a trip from Sacto to the east coast and back starting the day after Labor Day. We both have family there and a niece's wedding to attend plus my 40th college reunion. Although we grew up back there, we've been in CA since 1980 and don't have much of a sense of what camping is like outside our western public lands. We've put 6,000 miles on our Hawk since picking it up in late January.

The tentative route has us going through NV, ID, MT (friends in Bozeman), SD, MN, into Canada along the north shore of the Great Lakes, before dropping back into the States around Niagara Falls and hitting the wedding in south NJ. I'm guessing/hoping that being in the wilds of Canada may be more like the western dispersed camping experience. We've allowed 16 days or so to get to NJ. Once on the east coast there will be friends/family driveways to camp in.

After the wedding we hope to visit my brother in NH then make a quick jaunt to Maine/Acadia NP, then head to my reunion in the Albany, NY area. Then we'll be driving south to Daytona, FL to visit my wife's 91 y.o. mother. I'd like to take at least 4-5 days for that with a stop in the Smokies and perhaps some beaches? I've read that beach camping can be problematic for campers like ours without on-board toileting facilities so the beach plan may have to be abandoned or massaged. Insight/suggestions on this appreciated.

From there we will drive across the south, through Texas, NM, AZ, and back home. (The return trip is pretty much what our honeymoon in 1980 consisted of, although we did it my wife's '77 Celica. Gotta train 'em early ;-) I figure the entire journey will be 6-8 weeks long. We prefer to limit driving time to 5-6 hours max per day. I expect that we will roll in motel stays every 4-5 days or so to get the stink off.

Any feedback on southern Canada and the east of the Mississippi camping experience would be greatly appreciated. Are there dispersed camping opportunities in national forests or is it all campgrounds? Oh, did I mention that we will have our 15 y.o. cat with us the whole way?
Cheers!

 

[billharr]

Add a grey water tank, 4" PVC in your truck bed and you will be good to go on the beaches. There are several of us who have done this modification. I have done the east coast from Stockton Twice.

Link to my first trip

Link to my second trip, three parts..

 

[Foy]

Sounds like a great trip. September and October will be great times of the year back this way (we're in Raleigh, NC). Some thoughts about camping in the East, particularly Atlantic Coast beach camping, follow below:

There are National Forest lands (NFs) in every state. All NFs which I am familiar with (including NC, VA, WV, TN, SC, GA, and AL) offer disbursed camping. Most states east of the Mississippi are NOT part of the Public Lands Survey System (PLSS) which divides land into rectangular or square sections where generally large swaths of many entire 1 mile square Sections are NF lands or other public lands. Our NFs are very much "patchwork" in nature, with many in-holdings of private lands. The point being it can be a little difficult to even tell when you're on NF property, so figuring out where it's OK to set up a disbursed campsite may take a bit more time than you're used to.

In addition to NF lands, there are large areas administered by the US Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). I can't say for certain if disbursed camping is allowed on Corps lands or TVA lands, but I doubt it. Their lands are generally along the shorelines of the many large flood control/navigation projects or hydroelectric projects reservoirs, and they each operate networks of small, often primitive, campgrounds.

For your trip south from Albany, you might want to look at heading to Cape May, NJ and booking a passage over the mouth of the Delaware River on the Cape May Ferry (reservations highly recommended). It's a nice 2 hour cruise to Lewes, DE at the top of the Delmarva Peninsula. Not far south of there is Assateague Island National Seashore (NS) along the MD/VA line. There is "oceanside camping" for tents and small rigs, and there is a "over sand vehicle" permit system allowing beach driving for a few miles, but to the best of my knowledge beach camping is not permitted at Assateague Island NS.

For that matter, I am not aware of but a very small handful of places along the entire Atlantic Coast where beach camping is allowed.

Around 60 miles south of Assateague, the town of Cape Charles, VA is a nice stop and Kiptopeake State Park (SP) has a nice campground on the Bay side of the Peninsula. Just a few miles south of Kiptopeake SP US 13 passes over and under the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel (CBBT). A stop at the rest area on the southernmost of the 4 man-made islands allows viewing of commercial and Navy shipping from just a couple hundred yards away as they pass over the tunnel between the two man-made islands.

About 2 hours south of the CBBT is the northern end of NC's Outer Banks. On both sides of Oregon Inlet the Cape Hatteras NS controls the beaches with but a short portion north of the Inlet but much of the remainder of Hatteras Island and Ocracoke Island below the Inlet under NS control. CHNS has a beach driving permit system but nowhere is camping allowed right on the beach. CHNS has designated campgrounds off of the beach on both Hatteras and Ocracoke Islands.

A short-hop NC Dept of Transportation ferry from Hatteras Village gets you to Ocracoke and a much longer ferry ride (nearly 3 hours) gets you to Cedar Island, NC, just outside of the villages of Atlantic and Davis, NC. A $15-25 or so fee is charged for this longer ferry and reservations are strongly recommended.

Once at Atlantic and Davis, you're at the jumping-off point for the only "on the beach" camping opportunities I'm aware of on the entire Atlantic Coast, outside of a truly urban beach campground at Freeman Park at Carolina Beach, NC, just south of Wilmington. The Cape Lookout NS administers the beaches of Portsmouth Island, Core Banks, and Shackleford Banks, with the first two having beach driving and camping opportunities. Private ferry services operate under CLNS concession rights and take "beach buggies" over to the islands for daytrips and overnight trips. I would assume most ferry users are multi-day visitors given the logistics and expense of getting a vehicle on to and off of the islands (around $80 per vehicle plus around $15 per passenger--see the CLNS website for links and rules). Once there, however, each island offers around 25 miles of beach which can be driven and camped on. Portsmouth Island included Portsmouth Village at its northern end and it is lovingly preserved but now uninhabited. The southern end of Core Banks includes the Cape Lookout Lighthouse.

Leaving Atlantic and Davis, it's all routine State and US highways all the way down the Atlantic Coast, including the 60 mile highly developed commercial resort gauntlet known as Myrtle Beach, SC. With very few exceptions, there are no views of the Atlantic Ocean along US 17, so side trips over to barrier islands are required to see and access the ocean all the way to Florida, where below Jacksonville you can get right on the coast on A1A Highway the rest of the way to Daytona.

If you want to include the Smokies or other Southern Appalachians spots in the mix, and if you do the CLNS beach camping thing, you'll need a full day and a half to traverse NC's 600 mile width. With essentially no easy ocean access below CLNS, you might as well just drop south of the Smokies/Blue Ridge to either I-95 or I-75 (taking care to avoid Atlanta unless you enjoy Sou Cal style traffic) to reach Daytona Beach. There are huge swaths of NF lands in the area where NC, TN, SC, and GA come together, and it's about as remote as it gets in the Southeastern US.

Traffic/crowds items to be aware of include college football weekends and NASCAR weekends. It's possible to find yourself in a serious crowd if you end up at a venue hosting either on a Saturday or Sunday.

Enjoy the trip!

Foy

 

[Old Crow]

Sounds like a great adventure, daverave!

A few comments on the Canadian portion of your trip....

The apps "Allstays Camp and RV" and "Ultimate Canadian Campground Project" are useful tools for finding campgrounds in Canada. Remember, though, that your phone or ipad may not work in Canada. You can of course do your planning in advance but I've also used Allstays in Offline mode in such situations to find the campground details and GPS position, then navigate to them via GPS (note, however, that you will probably have to change the GPS coordinates format to enter them). I've not tried the Ultimate one offline but see they say they also keep the database in the app. (I just tried it in Airplane mode and that appears to be the case, i.e. even without an internet connection you can get the basic info including GPS position, phone number, etc. but of course the link to the campground's website won't work)

Provincial Parks are fairly expensive (IMHO). Here's a link to 2016 Ontario camping rates (in Canadian dollars)

Dispersed camping in Ontario is possible on so-called 'Crown land' but it's not necessarily easy to find candidate sites and the government says non-residents need a permit costing around $10 CDN per person per night. Getting the permits can be a problem for those of us just passing through, particularly if our phones don't work. We've had reasonably good luck just asking locals and visitor centers where we might camp on crown land or less expensively than in a provincial park.

-Old Crow

 

[daverave]

Thanks for the detailed replies, folks. Above and beyond the call of duty. A lot of useful ideas/suggestions/etc.

 

[mikedunn]

Will be a great trip. We have done the Pacific to Atlantic trip 3 times and Great Lakes 2 times. Last one was Washington to Maine in 2013. My wife's family lives in the Smoky Mt's . ( a must visit in fall) Learned to find a campsite Friday early and stay through Saturday. Durning the Fall campgrounds fill up back east because of the colors and hunting. Of course we were traveling when the National Parks locked their gates (congress did not vote a fed budget that year.) But everywhere on Saturdays traffic can get heavy. College football games, small town festivals and youth football games. One Saturday we ended up in a parade when traveling through a small New Jersey town, just waved and smiled for a few blocks. Did hit the Cleveland Browns traffic and crazies in Ohio. Just a few cautions, but also fun experiences.
Have fun and be patients, east coast is a bit more dense and faster paced, but everywhere we met great people.
Take a look at my trip link.
West - East Triphttp://mikedunnphoto.blogspot.com/2013/07/coasttocoast.html

 

[smlobx]

Just a couple of points to add to Foy' s excellent comments..

There are at least 3 NP campgrounds on the Outer Banks of NC and are pretty nice. Two on Hatteras Island and one on Ocrakoke so depending on your travel times you should be able to spend the night there if you want.

Driving the beaches there require a permit and a capable vehicle. The sand can be very soft so if you do go out on the beach be sure to air down.

Enjoy the trip...sounds epic!