In my posts about places we’ve stayed, you may have noticed some patterns in the names, e.g. Shadow Hills RV Resort and Coyote Valley RV Resort, compared to Sonoran Desert RV Park and Orange Grove RV Park.

You may have wondered, what makes some an “RV resort”, and others an “RV park”? (Or you may not.)

Well, places can call themselves whatever they want, of course, but generally an RV resort will have nicer facilities and amenities. For example, a resort would typically have large paved sites, compared to gravel for a park; a nicer pool and clubhouse; and services like garbage pickup from the site, where you just put garbage bags out front and they collect it, vs taking it to a dumpster, and propane refilling, where they collect an empty propane cylinder and refill it for you, instead of lugging it yourself.

A comparison; here’s our site at Coyote Valley RV Resort:

vs our site at Orange Grove RV Park:

Both very nice, in different ways, but some differences.

Then there are other types, for example Thousand Trails San Benito Preserve I would characterize as a campground; a mixture of RV sites, tent sites, and cabins. A little more rustic than a typical RV park:

Similarly, state parks like Valley of the Rogue State Park I would also call a campground, also with lots of trees, and sometimes not full hookups (though in this case paved sites):

There are other situations, such as services like Harvest Hosts, where companies let people stay overnight in their parking lot, and Boondockers Welcome, where people let RVs stay for a day or two on their property. (These two services have now merged.) We tried the latter a while back, at Kevin and Julie’s Boondockers Welcome site; they often don’t have any hookups, but this was a nice one, with power and water provided:

A similar concept is “moochdocking”, where one stays on the property of a friend or family member. We did that at Mom’s place, with just 15 amp power:

There is also dispersed camping, where RVs can spread out on public lands, in designated sites. And boondocking, where RVs just stop anywhere (in authorized areas) on public lands. Those situations are dry camping, with no hookups. We haven’t done those yet, but plan to soon.

I hope this was interesting! A bit different than my usual posts.