Customer Reviews

Foghorn Outdoors West Coast RV Camping: More Than 1,800 RV Parks and Campgrounds in California, Oregon, and Washington

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(1)
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2 star:		(1)
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Exhaustively compiled and deftly organized by Tom Stienstra, West Coast RV Camping: The Complete Guide To More Than 1,800 RV Parks And Campgrounds In California, Oregon, And Washington is the definitive reference for anyone planning an RV vacation, day-trip, or scenic travel along the western coast of America. West Coast RV Camping is a 917-page compendium of helpful descriptions outlining campground features including wheelchair access, drive-through sites, and power hookups. Travelers are succinctly informed with respect to a variety of RV parks, including those near beaches, forests, lakes, rivers, hot springs, and urban areas. Precise driving directions and information on fees and reservations policies are also included. Of special note are Tom Stienstra's own "Picks" where he designates and recommends the prettiest lakes, best fishing, and best wildlife viewing in the three state area. If you have an RV and are bound for California, Oregon and/or Washington, then begin planning your itinerary with a copy of Tom Stienstra's West Coast RV Camping!

Being new to RVing, I wanted to explore all the books that would show where there was camping and parks while on the road. After buying and looking thru 4 other books, I came to the conclusion that my money was wasted on the others, and that I wished I had just bought this book. Fantastic setup, easy to read, very clear and informative for even a newby like me. I cannot say enough good about this book, I love it, it will always be in my RV!

I purchased both a Woodalls RV guide and Foghorn and compared them both this past Aug and Sept 2005 while RVing in WA, OR, NV and CA. I stopped using Woodalls after the first few nights -- there is no comparison between the two. The driving directions in Foghorn are far superior to Woodalls and the campground descriptions are more factual as I believe that Woodalls give an edge to those RV sites that advertise in their guidebook (just my gut feeling) whereas Foghorn does not accept any ads in their guidebook.

I haven't owned this book for a month yet and there are dogeared pages and a pencil placed in the middle of the book. There is so much information in this book I could read it for a year. Having just bought a travel trailer and time being as precious as it is, I wanted a guide that would keep me away from the "dumpy" campgrounds and point me in the direction of the ones worth my time. I found it all in this book. Kudos to the author. Lots of time and energy went into writing it and it shows.

Pamela

Ripon, CA

This guide is wonderful! It gives lots of information for not only the national park system but forest service, state, and private. I never knew so many campgrouds were available for our use. This book will become our mainstay for searching out where to go whether it's a weekend or full vacation. Thank you Foghorn!

Great book, I found a great campground in Columbia CA

that I would have never found without it.

Good information on the campgrounds including web site addresses, phone numbers etc.

WOW! This book has it all! I have camped in Oregon, Washington and California for over 50 years and, yes, I own a number of campground guides. I couldn't agree more with the author's ratings of the hundreds of campgrounds I have visited. He provides great details on the campgrounds, maximum site length, contact and reservation information and even fishing suggestions. This book has also opened my eyes to very highly rated campgrounds slightly off the beaten path that I wasn't aware of. The book is broken into easy to follow sections depending on what area of each state the reader is interested in. Furthermore, there are no advertisements in the book that make the reader wonder if the ratings have been influenced by advertising income. In short, this is the camper's bible.

The book has a comprehensive listing of campgrounds. However it didn't appear the author looked at the logistics of getting longer or wider RVs into the campgrounds or thoroughly address what size RVs the campgrounds are suitable for.

Example: Table Mountain in the LA area. From the book: "There are 115 sites for RVs up to 32 feet or tents."

I checked this campground in a Toyota Camry. It has several loops, most of which have very narrow access roads. I had the foliage scrape the narrow Camry on occasion. There were several sites which could accomodate a 32 foot trailer which were near the entrance of the campground. There were numerous un-level sites. The book had no warning about entering the narrow one-way loops with an average sized RV.

Example: O'Neill Regional park in Orange County. From the book: "There are 85 sites, eight drive-through, for RVs up to 35 feet and tents."

This park is the opposite from Table Mountain in that it has wide access roads and many very large sites. Even some of the average back-in sites are 50' long and some of the pull-throughs are a hundred feet long. The sites are relatively level.

My thought is the author isn't an RVer and didn't look at these campgrounds from an RV perspective. The guide is most useful from the point of view of a popup trailer, smaller truck camper, or class B motorhome.

The RV camping guide is one of the best because it gives you a little history of each region as you make your way down the road. Many of their property ratings are dead on, but I know of one highly rated RV resort in the book that is nothing like the book suggests.

On a scale of one to ten it was rated a 9 with a glowing review that made it sound like one of the finest RV parks in North America. When we arrived there was a run down dump of a place with mostly full-timers and an amazing amount of trash and junk strewn around. The full service sites with amazing views were actually muddy side by side parking spaces with potholes and hundreds of wild rabbits-- many of which were busy breeding. You had to drive around these rabbits because they weren't about to move. We turned our rig around and slowly drove around more passionate bunnies and sloshed through the mud and potholes to make our way out of this horrible so-called resort. As for the world famous pecan pie served in the resort's restaurant--- They can keep it.

I would still reccomend this book but only with a stern warning that the author sometimes gets it wrong.

We are convinced he must have had a nice meal there and was given a free slice of pecan pie for the road.

We got this book from the library and liked it so much we bought it. It has a lot of information that we can use for our future trips.