Hi zekegb - I'm glad you tried the map search again and I hear your thoughts on the public campgrounds being hard to find. Users do need to zoom in to an area to see the public parks locations represented by the logo - a green fir tree in a circle. Good Sam Parks appear by default and other private parks appear when All Camping is checked under Refine Search.
Although we highlight Good Sam Parks in our search results initially, with the Map Search you can still see how far a park is from a chosen location, and in the Campground Search tool you can limit by a specific a mile range from a city or zip code and results in order of Good Sam Parks by distance and then other parks by distance.
We will be revisiting at the search results order for 2014.
Thanks,
Ellen
Good Sam RV Travel Guide.