State and Federal Camping

We have been at Thompson Causeway in Illinois with our 36' and fit in just fine. Might need to spend a bit more time getting it in place but we often have plenty of extra room.

Every park is different. Some will have lots of sites that can accommodate big rigs, some will have just a few. There isn't any rule of thumb that you can use. I can tell you for example that most state parks in WI have sites that can accommodate a big rig, but some of the parks only have a few large sites like this.

Many state and federal facilities are reservable through Reserve America. They usually list the lengths of the pads. Another resource is RV Park Reviews. A lot of folks with big rigs will often make comments about a given park's ability to accommodate big rigs, state and federal CGs included.

There is no blanket answer to that one. We have a 36 ft montana and have found some parks and camp grounds to be perfectly fine and others, particularly FS campgrounds that you would be hard pressed to get anything longer than 26 ft. into.
I'm afraid that with a 40 you are pushing the envelope in a lot of public campgrounds especially in the western states. You will need to walk in and survey the situation before entering to be safe.

If you look on the Federal reservation site:

Recreation.gov

You'll find length limits for many if not all sites. States often, but not always use:

Reserve America

Which is run by the same company and also usually has length limits on a site by site basis.

I think you'll find a lot of older parks, Fed and State, have a 34-35 foot limit for their campgrounds. COE campground seem to be able to take RV's of any length.

BK

I just jumped on the Maryland State Park (DNR) web site and did a general search for any camp site beginning October 1 for 5 nights. A list came up of all available sites. Each site had a "description" link that gave more information about that specific site. All the sites lengths are listed. The first one I hit had a length of 50 feet. I don't know what campground that was, I was just curious if they provided the length.

This is the way many State DNR web sites are going. The look and feel is identical to Indiana's. More than likely, Reserve America is running them all now. Still, for your State Park camping sites, this is the quickest and fasted way to find the information you are looking for.

Maryland DNR web site, link to camping sites on the page.

If you want to volunteer at a state or federal park, log onto the park's website and look for volunteering opportunities. Most will take you to a section for campground volunteers and show availability and even the phone number for the campground volunteer coordinator. Call and check about volunteer site size. You usually have to fill out some sort of application and the park will conduct a background investigation. We also had to pay a $10 insurance fee when we were volunteers in a Georgia State Park. If you are really interested in a location and you fill out your application but do not here back, call the volunteer coordinator. In our limited experience, they are sometime lackadaisical in getting in touch with you even when they need volunteers.

Just the length of the site isn't always enough information....

For instance, I have a short Class A, 30ft, when we check on the sites in Kings Canyon they are large enough for much larger rigs.

But, getting to that site might be an issue. The roads inside the campground are narrow and have lots of trees. To get to the site that I like I have to "wiggle" the rig through a couple of pretty tight areas.

Would I be safe camping in federal parks with a 40 ft fifth wheel.

You will most likely will be 'safe'. What you might have are some maneuverability issues. And that depends on how well you can back-up and park the RV; and to some extent the layout of the federal park. If you need 'pull-thrus' all the time state and federal parks and campgrounds could very well be an issue.

Oops. Thought it was about volunteering.

We like state parks and have a 37ft. Fiver and soon a 40 ft. Fiver. Anyway there are sites in many state and federal parks and coe parks that a 40ft fiver will fit. If you have time to kill start searching the bps page and the coe page as well as the states you are interested in. Yes there are parks which you won't find sites but there are many that do. The biggest problem I found is some of the older parks have narrow roads which will require to navigate the back in procedure a little more. You may have to ask people to move their cars and trucks but never had a problem with that.