2gypsies wrote:
First, since you seem to have the time, can you go mid-August or later rather than July? July is absolutely packed. How much time do you have?
I'd highly suggest you stay IN the parks themselves for the best overall experience. Each national park, the Canadian parks and basically all the state parks have excellent web sites with camping information, road information, things to do, etc. Explore them thoroughly and especially Yellowstone, look on the park map to see where the campgrounds are located. It's a huge park and since you have a small van you could choose 2 or 3 different areas to move and explore the more immediate area. It saves a lot of driving. With your van some nice campgrounds in Yellowstone are Pebble Creek, Slough Creek and Indian Creek and more centralized campgrounds are Madison, Tower or Canyon. Even in Yellowstone and the other parks, some campgrounds are not even reservable. If you get there early morning you would get a site.
Here is Yellowstone's:
https://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/campgrounds.htm
For Grand Teton, there are two campgrounds that don't accept reservations. Each has 300 sites and they rarely fill, even in July. You'll get a site. They are Colter Bay and Gros Ventre campgrounds.
The Oregon/Washington State parks are awesome so be sure to stay there. We've gotten sites without reservations even with our 40' motorhome. Again...early morning is the key.
For the Oregon coast, choose to stay at the northern end, the middle and at the lower end. Then it's easy to cover the whole coastline with minimal driving.
Thanks for the reply gypsies. I plan to go early july to early sept or mid july to mid sept
I do plan to stay in the parks, unless there is somewhere special to stay on the way to the next stop. I also plan on moving campgrounds often, probably wouldn't stay anywhere more than 2 nights. Will likely stay at a fair amount of "first come first serve sites" but looking to see if there is anything special I need to book now that fills up immediately every day. (although, even with 2 months, I know won't see EVERYTHING :) )
Wasn't planning on getting this van yet, but was offered an awd van at a price I couldn't walk away from and now trying to make sure I won't miss out on anything next year.
