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We
are assembling a family of directories, guides if you will, of
Recreational Vehicle friendly parks which are convenient to the
exits of certain Interstate highways in the 48 states of the United
States of America. Selection of these Interstates is based on U.S.
government statistics on highway use and estimated need for RVers
enroute to desired overnight parking.
We have interviewed a large number of RVers asking them, among
other things, what they look for in an RV park and categorizing
these 'needs' into 'urgent need' and 'like to have'. Some of the
answers are very much a reflection on our new age, the Internet age.
Most are no different from those needs we had decades ago when we
would think: wouldn't it be nice if...
There are several excellent directories of RV Parks and Campgrounds
published in the U.S. The complaints we have heard is that you have
to know the name of the town that they have listed and/or you have
to know where the towns are as listed (they may tell you the county
but how many people know where most of these towns are much more the
counties?
KOATM
has, when we feel, is the best graphical (using maps) approach to
finding their campgrounds. It isn't current but the approach is well
thought out. That approach requires the kind of control KOA seems to
have over their franchisees but it does assure they all have web
sites (shouldn't all RV parks?) and, usually, e-mail addresses. They
also (usually) list the physical addresses — also very important
when trying to find them.
Good SamTM
also uses maps (though not 'on-line') in the front of their official
directory. To a lesser degree, some of the other organizations
attempt to visualize the locations of their members. But this
information is scattered almost to the point of uselessness. We felt
that the need to have this information available through a single
channel would be very important to RVers looking for a place to park
overnight while traveling through unfamiliar territory.
We are building a family of web sites to graphically reveal the
locations of RV parks convenient to carefully selected primary
Interstate highway exits. This includes all the west-to-east
transcontinental Interstates (10, 40, 70, 80 and 90) and most of the
major south-to-north Interstates. We may include some others, later,
if we have enough energy left over. Through the use of specially
designed maps (which are actually diagrams to portray relative
locations) and geographically structured tables, you can easily find
a selection of RV parks in almost any area of the country — as long
as it is convenient (let's say within 10 miles with a few
exceptions) to an Interstate exit.
Now
we will need feedback from you to know just how successful our
effort is.
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