Originally Posted by
indyfabz
Do those sites list U.S.F.S. and BLM camgrounds? State parks and other public campgrounds?
The Allstays site and app do . The campsites are coded in terms of Forest Service, BLM, state parks and private campgrounds. It's also pretty accurate about private campgrounds that are RV only.
Originally Posted by
indyfabz
In general, when I am planning a route I get a general idea of mileages between places and search Google Maps for "campgrounds near [name of town]". Zooming in and out broadens the results. Sure. You have to do some research re: the private campgrounds that you find, but that doesn't take long. You should to do the same with places like U.S.F.S. campgrounds because not all of them have water. I also want to know how many sites there are to assess potential availability on the day I plan to arrive since most are first-come.
The Allstays site tells you if there is water. If it doesn't say "water" in the description, you can assume that water isn't available. Some of the sites are near a water source but you'll need to carry your own purification. The Allstays site will also tell you how many sites each campground has with breakdowns of how many tent and how many RV sites. Google seems to be okay but they miss a lot of private sites and quite a few public ones, in my experience.
The Free Campsites webpage seems to have less information about the campsites. It's seems harder to find out if the free campsites have water or other amenities. That's probably due to the crowd sourcing nature of the website.