Quiet

[iowahiker]

smlobx, We camp coast-to-coast and actually find it easier to find quiet campgrounds in the East:

- June in Mathews Arm and Lewis Mountain campgrounds June mid-week Shenandoah NP, we were the only campers on our campground loop with DC only 60 miles away (crow fly distance).

- April in Hurricane campground (hot showers) Mount Rogers NRA Monday night, we were the only campers.

- "Your neck of the woods": White Rocks campground (flush toilets) mid-week in June, we were the only campers on our loop.

- June in Otter Creek CG, Blue Ridge Parkway mid-week, we were the only campers on our loop.

We love camping in the East during April, May, and June because the crowds are small excluding weekends. Besides, the East has the best hiking trail system in the world (but poor landscape pictures).

We spent two Memorial Day weekends and an Easter weekend at a campground in the East the past two years with hot showers and flush toilets and no reservations (the locals are thinking of adopting us). We are planning a different campground this year without reservations and our forecast is the campground will not fill Memorial Day weekend (flush toilets, no showers). Try and do that out West.

Campgrounds are MUCH busier all week in the west where we rarely are the only campers. We love taking pictures in the West during July, August, September, and October. The West: best pictures and hiking trails combined in the world and the crowds to go with the views.

Mid October in Utah's Natural Bridges NM, mid-week, every bush was occupied with a dispersed camper just outside the NM.

Don't tell anyone the east is better than the west, keep everyone in the Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite, Yellowstone, and Glacier... (Great Smokey Mountains and Acadia can get bad but Cosby CG in GSM is usually OK in the April to June).

 

[rando]

At the risk of raising the ire of the mods for cross posting, please consider expressing your desire to keep one of the quietest places to camp (National Monuments) in existence - http://www.wanderthewest.com/forum/topic/14506-your-input-is-needed-now/

 

[buckland]

Excellent cross reference! Can't have one without the other.... (IMO) ... I have confidence that those who love the natural world and value what it gives us will "not be quiet" on this and protect those places which are becoming rarer by the day.
Thanks for the idea.

 

[PackRat]

I think that trying to hit the most popular or easily accessed camping areas or NPs is best done before school is out or after it is back in session. Couple that with going to those areas before the weather is perfect and after it gets a bit chilly and you may find even the popular places are, well, less populated. For as many years as I have been camping, I try to avoid the weekends and arrive on say, a Sunday afternoon or Monday and depart before Thursday afternoon or Friday morning.

The flexible schedule that even part-time retirement affords you the options to visit some of these places midweek but if you are going to something like Yosemite....forget it. Wall to wall during "the season" so you have to be ready to brave the elements when less hardy and less well-equipped campers are still in the planning phase.

Maybe ten years ago we went to Yosemite as a drive-by without reservations just to go see the valley and where we camped as a kid when I was about 6 to when I was about 12 years old...Camp 7 on the river. That was destroyed and never rebuild after the floods, but the amount of traffic was insane. We stayed outside the park, drove through, then after a side trip to Glacier Point the next day we doubled back over Tioga Pass.

Wasn't it Yogi Berra that said..."Nobody goes there any longer, its too crowded!"