Recreation.gov

Backcountry beach camping requires even more careful preparation.

Reservations are required through recreation.gov. And an important planning tip is to arrange your island transportation before reserving your campsite.

You'll want to make sure that both transportation and camping availability align with your travel dates.

With restoration still underway, checking the latest park closures and visitor information before departure is essential.

I, I've seen that too.

I've, uh, witnessed that, you know, campsites full, permits all booked on recreation.gov, and the season did continue.

Yeah.

It had an interruption, but it, it, it came back in a robust way.

You know, it is primarily backcountry, so that would be hiking in, going to a lean-to, going to a first-come, first-served campsite.

But we also have reservable frontcountry campsites that can be booked through recreation.gov. That is the National Park Service portal for all of your national park booking and reservation needs, so recreation.gov. As the friends group, one of the first projects we did was help build out some campsites right along the east branch of the Penobscot River.

That's known as the Lungsus Campground.

There are five really beautiful tent sites.

in the winter is maintained

for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing as well.

And there are a few huts that you can reserve like a campsite on recreation.gov. that are really, really special.

And again, just I come back to that quiet and that solitude.

Do you know that? You don't have to pay anything to enter the park, but you do need a permit to park anywhere for more than 15 minutes.

And you can buy it online at recreation.gov. favorite time of year is when you wear a sweatshirt and a pair of shorts and the air is crisp it's cool daytime's up in the 70s but nights it gets down in the 40s 50s perfect sleeping weather the bugs are gone summer crowds are gone mountains are on fire with color so get there get out there now sitting here in the smokies just before the color peaks right now with our friends from the rv lifestyle community watching the ridge lines and doing our hiking this week i got to tell you this much fuel prices industry headaches all that stuff that doesn't mean a thing to the lifestyle this is why we do it to get out there hang together make friends find adventures and that doesn't change no matter what the fuel costs but once you're there like now There's no better place.

All right, that's our RV news for this week, and I want to thank you for being with us.

I appreciate the time you spent with the show.

It was built, I believe in around 10 ish years ago.

And they actually do research out there on, you know, stars and it has its own website that you can go to.

It's, great basin observatory.org and you can learn more about it but it's the only national park in the united states that has an official observatory on its grounds so they really do celebrate that they are part of this dark skies area and that they do have such magnificent stargazing and they even are part of i believe the annual international dark skies festival is that what it's called

Is that what it's called? I think

Yes, absolutely.

If you don't

have the recreation.gov app or you don't know the website, which I just said, recreation.gov, the tours are capped at 20 people and they do sell out.

In fact, when we were there, there was a gentleman and his, I think his son, they were trying to get tickets for like that day.

As of twenty twenty-six, standard sites run around thirty dollars a night, reflecting a significant fee increase implemented in twenty twenty-five, the first change in site pricing in about two decades.

Reservations are recommended and effectively required in practice from March through November, opening six months ahead on recreation.gov. Site availability during peak season disappears fast, so do not wait until a month before your trip.

Outside that peak window, first-come options may still be available, but confirm directly before you count on that, since exactly how this campground handles shoulder season demand can shift year to year.

Desert View Campground sits about twenty-five miles east of the village, near the watchtower, open roughly mid-May through mid-October.

It used to run first come, first served, but that has changed.

It now requires reservations during peak season through recreation.gov, same as Mather, at a similar nightly rate.

This is a good example of exactly the kind of policy shift I flagged at the top of this episode.

What was once a reliable walk-up option is not anymore, and if you show up expecting the old system, you may find yourself with nowhere to camp.

five days before they're available.

So you go to the reservation.gov, you look at the campground, you see, you know, the next available date, and it'll tell you when you have to register.

So like we were going up Wednesday.

So Saturday morning at eight o'clock, I was on that website and I was able to book a campsite.

It covers everybody in your car and knocks 50% off many campground fees, too.

Passes are fully digital now, so you buy it at recreation.gov, and it lives on your phone.

Now, here's the insider move.

Bought three annual passes over the years? Ask a ranger to trade them for a lifetime pass for free.

You see, back in 1916, Basin Cove was not a campground.

According to Recreation.gov, Basin Cove was a thriving community of over 50 families from the years 1863 to 1916.

Cassandra McGuire, writing for the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill's Doc South Project, gives a very comprehensive overview of that community's history in her article, Reinterpreting the Caudill Cabin.

Early in the piece, she quotes a longtime resident of the area, interviewed in 1975, who explained that at the foot of the mountain there were around 75 acres, just the prettiest bottomland you've ever seen, where families like that of Harrison Caudill raised wheat, corn, potatoes, beans, and other vegetables on their farms, both to feed themselves and to sell in nearby Wilkesboro, Mount Airy, or Winston.