Wayne, I've been camping since before I was born when my dad rented a small Scotty trailer for a week vacation and sure enough 9 months later I appeared! In the years since I've probably seen and/or done every possibility while travelling. My parents would take a 2 week vacation every summer and hit the road with a pop-up and the goal was to see as much as possible. Pretty sure mom would plan a general route and have a punch list of sights and dad would have to find places to stay each night. I remember times we'd have to go on because the campground was full but mostly not so I'm guessing they didn't reserve ahead. What I do remember was my sister and I just wanting to stay somewhere for a few days and swim, play, fish, whatever. As a result of that when we started camping with our kids we'd pick a destination and drive there and stay a week and do things and get to know the area. Usually reachable in a day's drive but when it took more than a day we'd have a spot reserved somewhere to have 1 less thing to stress over after a full day of driving. Coming from the East where all camping is in some sort of campground I just can't get comfortable alone back a dirt road, don't sleep well. Now the kids are long gone we still drive to a destination and set up a base camp. As you know in the West you can boondock almost anywhere and we've done it a time or 2 including in a Walmart lot and back a dirt road but we'd rather pay the $25 and plug in and hook up water and not worry about the battery and like you say it does get HOT around here and I hate hauling a generator.
