Campsites Books

I like how this couple presents their information. The book is full of useful data. I have purchased this in preparation for our journey to Alaska, British Columbia, Yukon and Northwest Territories. It does a superb job of helping you understand what to look for, where to look for it, how much things cost relative to other areas. Excellent job.

Having lived in the Pacific NW for many years I know lots of places for camping and RVing. I found this book accurate and very resourcefull. With rising fuel prices, we are all looking for closer to home places to "get away" and this book is a required resource to help find them, and determine their suitability. The only criticism I have is the way its organized. A little hard to find individual places since it is organized based on tour routes.

I bough thtis with the MOON bok, and am using both of them , this one is helpful with trip ideas, and the best of the large campgrounds, a very usefull book.

This is a fun book to read along the trail or to curl up with in front of the fire on a long winter's night. All of these camping stories are true, ranging from heart-stopping encounters with grizzly bears to delinquent teens on the run (with no place "civilized" to go!) and of course, park rangers never get lost (ahem.) Then there's the wilderness wedding, complete with an aiklifted dress and the gift of a toaster (yes, folks, a real TOASTER -- can you imagine anything more useless on a canoe trip?) Whether you are a veteran camper of just dreaming about it, this book will tickle your innards.

Whether directing you along abandoned logging roads to vanished settlements or describing the geologic events that shaped the mountains, Barbara McMartin is a stimulating guide. Her keen observations on the wealth of natural and human history along these trails are as fascinating as they are informative.

This hiking classic, which presents 360 miles of the Adirondacks' best trails, has been completely revised by McMartin. Two entirely new hikes are included, and the others have been rehiked and thoroughly updated. All maps have been redone for greater clarity and up-to-date accuracy, and many new photographs have been included.

Primarily concentrating on day trips, this guide is for hikers of all ages and degrees of experience. It includes short walks to introduce novices and vacationers to the pleasures of the Adirondacks and several strenuous extended hikes into the wilderness to challenge the most experienced backpacker.
--- from book's back cover.

This is a great book, which is easy to read and understand. They use several images to make it even easier. The information they give is very detailed. Much of the information is available right on the Internet. I use a metal detector to hunt Civil War sites. I have been metal detecting for several years and I have found this book very useful. If you have any interest in finding Civil War sites or even finding old towns and places that you need to locate, this book will help you. From the experienced, to the novice you will get something out of this book. If you metal detect for anything old you must have this book. Thanks goes out to the authors of this great book!

Charles Jansen wrote a classic of light backpacking. Though this book is dated, it has a lot of good basic information for the minimalist hiker or camper.

What's dated are the materials of camping; tents have gotten cheaper and lighter with new nylon materials and flexible tent frames. Ditto the backpacks and Gore-Tex has revolutionized boots and outerwear.

What's still good is the basic camping advice and the ideas for packing meals out of dehydrated or concentrated foods. Charles and his family took many family vacations in the woods and left a minimal impact with simple walking in and out and carrying what they needed. If you like to hike and camp, this is still a great book to use for basic camping know-how.

Just returned from an extended camping and hiking trip in Washington and Oregon. This book was GREAT. We used it every day to find where to stay and what to expect, and to chose our evening domiciles. We found it to be totally accurate and fun to read too. Nice one. I plan to get the other Stienstra camping guides too now that I know the quality of the info.

This book offers a serious, well-informed, insider view of the hotels currently at the avant-garde of interior designing. Many of the properties illustrated represent "la creme de la creme" of the hotel industry in the past decade; and least to say are well worth staying at.

I would particularly recommend this fascinating book to the experienced traveler who takes pride in indulging him or herself in an ambience of exclusiveness and inspiration. A must have!

This guide book is so much better than Trailer Life or Woodall's.
The campground inspections were done without the owner's knowledge and there is no advertising. You want the best camp site, and with this book, you can skip all the ads and biased write-ups
and go right to the best campground. The information given for
each campground is much more complete and easy to read, unlike
the other campground directories.

We are going to yellowstone this summer so I thought this would be a good read, as sad and gross as some of it is, it was a real eye opener and I think anyone with kids should read it before they go. I will be taking a child and I will be watching him like a hawk. The book itself starts out well but it does putter out towards the end like other readers reported. Still worth a read.

I've lived in Yellowstone Park for about 6 years now, and every summer I'm appalled how easily the tourists leave thier common sense at the gate. This should be required reading before anyone is allowed to enter. This book is as entertaining as the Darwin Awards, with a few sad twists, and some fun wild west shinanigans thrown in. Some of the accounts are far more detailed than others, as there was more research information available. It has personal meaning to me, because I frequent the cemeteries mentioned in the book, and it gives more depth to that experience. (If you're ever in the Gardiner, MT area check out Tinker Cemerery--very cool, very old. There's also one by the horse corrals at Maammoth Hot Springs, you can park there and take a short hike on the trail--it's mostly employees from the days the army was running the place.) Bottom line--this is a terrific, necessary book. If you fall or jump into a pool of boiling geyser water you will die--if you're lucky it'll be quick. The animals are wild, and most of them a hell of alot stronger and faster than you. Yellowstone is definitely worth the trip. Just, please, if you come here don't be stupid. Happy trails!

As the title suggests, many stories are recounted in detail. Some of these stories are a bit shocking, and we are reminded that the wildness of nature knows nothing about the sanctity of human life. The book would be especially interesting to prior visitors who are somewhat familiar with Yellowstone National Park.

I read this book while I was an employee in the park (called a savage in the book). I know first hand how amazingly bizarre some people will behave in the park. On my most recent return to yellowstone I saw a family of 4 (2 kids under ten) less than 10 ft away from a grizzly and her cubs. I have seen tourists trying to get their children close to Bison to take a picture, people touching the hot springs to "see how hot it is" (you would think steam in the middle of summer would give them a good idea)and I myself have 3rd degree burns on my right foot from breaking through thin ground that was covering a hot pot.
This book does a wonderful job of describing just how wonderful but dangerous Yellowstone can be. I do not consider this to be morbid book at all, just informative. I think that the narrative is as entertaining as it can possibly be covering this kind of subject matter.
If you are familiar with the park at all I think that you would find this book will give you a somewhat different view of the park than most uninformed visitors may have.

The last decade has seen a slew of books dealing with deaths in the national parks. The authors assure us that they publish these volumes to warn visitors of the dangers they face in the parks. The reality of course is that many in the literate public are fascinated by death, especially in unusual or exotic circumstances, and these books cater to that morbid demand. Nonetheless, they make for interesting reading and serve as a cautious reminder that visits to the wilderness, while safer than certain neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas, still contain very real hazards. This volume by Lee Whittlesey, was one of the first in this genre, and is still one of the best.

From grizzly attacks to death by poisonous gasses and murders, Whittlesey exhaustively covers all known deaths in Yellowstone from before the founding of the park to 1995 when the book was published. For me the descriptions of people falling into the hot springs were by far the most riveting, and the most grusome, portions of the book. Cooked alive, the victims of these accidents rarely died quickly, but often instead lingered on for many hours, a pretty horrific way to go. Whittlesey also catalogs the many mistakes victims and some lucky survivors made to help visitors to the park avoid similar fates.

One thing that sets this book apart from others in this genre is that Whittlesey, in addition to experience as a park tour guide and ranger, is a lawyer. This background shows itself in various ways. The book includes, for example, extensive discussion of court cases that resulted from fatalities in Yellowstone and how they have influenced park management. It also shows in the author's broader philosophy about the deaths in the park. True accidents, he argues, are rare. For the most part, people who have died in the parks were, he argues, actually negligent when it came to their own safety and sometimes the safety of others. This attitude towards the victims shows itself throughout the book, and most of the time Whittlesey makes a pretty convincing case.

But not always. When discussing the 1986 death of William Tesinsky (by mauling from a grizzly bear) Whittlesey notes, "Bear 59 was a semi habituated bear, ... But she had never even approached a human aggressively." This is not entirely true. I should know, because I was chased by Bear 59 on June 20 of that very year while hiking (alone) between the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River and Yellowstone Lake. Indeed, it was my report to the Lake ranger station that led to the temporary closure of that trail, and the bear's eventual relocation by the Park Service. At that time, Bear 59 had two cubs and a large person walking nearby was, as the ranger explained to me, considered a threat. But 59 no longer had the cubs with her when she killed and partially ate the unfortunate Mr. Tesinsky. No doubt, as Whittlesey says, he was too close for 59's liking while trying to get the perfect photograph. But the retelling of this story, that follows the park's official report which I saw a few years later, is interesting in that it does not mention my earlier encounter with 59. Whittlesey the lawyer argues that, much as we don't want to admit it, negligence is more common than accident. He forgot to add that humans, including park rangers, might sometimes unintentionally omit certain bits of information that do not fit their preconceived notions.

(I asked a ranger about what had become of my incident report during a 1998 visit to the park. She said that it had not been included since the bear had not actually come into physical contact with me. I understand that answer, but it certainly does undermine the claim the bear had never before shown aggressive tendencies. In my case, I was unaware of her existence till I saw her charge out of the woods, two cubs at her heals, and easily 50 yards away.)

This covers everything from fees-dogs-hook-ups... the works! Also got the Foghorn Fishing to go with it! Awesome!

Stienstra seems to think people only go camping to go fishing--it's clearly the reason he goes. A campsite could be a pit, but if there's trout nearby he gives it a high rating. He never lets you know if the water is swimmable (i.e. above 55 degress)--something people in Northern California need to know in the summertime. He also gives something a high rating if the area it is in is nice even if the campsites are horrible. I've been disappointed many times using his book, yet there is no real competition for his book as it's the only really comprehensive one on the market. I wish someone else would tackle (no fishing pun intended there Tom) this subject.

This author is a camping god! Bow down before him!
If you are camping in California this is the ONLY book you will ever need, throw the rest away!
The details are precise and accurate. Directions to Camps are explicit and perfect. This is well written - easy to follow and contains all you will ever need to find your way around California.
We recently used it on a 6 week vacation to Calfornia - trust me this is the most precious item you can take.
Buy it! Forget the ratings he uses in the book as these are meaningless, and if you do not know California then get a good map - otherwise you will need nothing else. It has all the camp site numbers and infinite detail about their facilities.
I wish I could shake the author's hand!

We tent camp several times a year in different locations and have used past editions of this book. This new edition is the best. The maps and directions are very good. The author continues to use the "5%" icon which indicates a campground that is used by less than 5% of campers and typically is more remote. These are our favorite locations. I don't always agree with the ratings but we've learned that we're usually always pleased with a 5% site. This year we selected a site, hated it (too crowded), and found another wonderful location within 30 miles. There is no way we could have done this without the guide. We don't leave for a camping trip without it.

This book should have been called Northern California Camping rather than California Camping. I started reading reviews about places up north, and it gives plenty of descriptions and commentary. They're much longer than the ones in Los Angeles. I don't think he's camped down here. Just compiled a list of campsites here. Also, his rating scale is very questionable. One campground I know to be a virtual parking lot, he gave a 9 out of 10 rating for. I should have bought a different book.
This book will be helpful if I decide to take a camping trip up north. otherwise, thumbs down :(