RV Camping BC: Strategies, Resources & BC Parks Update

Hi everyone as you can probably see we're in our van and we're actually still in our storage lot and Finch isn't with us he's at home lying in the sun enjoying a lazy afternoon. So we often get questions about from our viewers and subscribers about how we find and book campsites at BC Parks so we thought we'd cover that in this video here especially for those people who are new to BC and are planning to come here in the new future or some of you who are BCers and are planning to travel around the province this year. So we hope you'll find this video useful. So as Mickey noted a viewer asked us if we share some information on how we basically do our trip planning and what's our strategy for camping for RV camping in BC Parks and by the way we've got a laptop with some notes on it so if you see us look down we're just checking the notes. So he had a series of great questions that we thought we'd share with you today. One like how do we choose our site when we're in a park. The second one was how do we make reservations or you know should we make reservations so really when do we decide whether to have a reservation or not. Typical costs when they can vary and sort of what are some of the options in BC Parks like what are there what's there to do in a BC Park so we'll try and cover that all off over the course of the next several minutes. And he also had a few questions just in general for camping. First was the weather and how do we determine what's expected in the weather. He also asked about the provision of food and how much food we actually carry with us on our trips and what we use to rely on getting food on the road. He also asked actually about accessing internet while we're on the road and basically just trying to stay connected. So here's kind of our strategy or our approach and I also want to recognize that if you've watched a lot of our videos you know many times we just wing it or we show up at the van and drive and we're not sure whether we're going to turn left or right and that's kind of part of the fun in camping around here actually. So our go-to resource for planning is actually the GoCamping brochure and it's produced by BC Parks. They do an update and release I think a new version every year. Yeah most years they do yeah. So it lists all provincial parks in both day use and camping. It also has a listing underneath of all the different services that are in a park so you can quickly identify whether they have showers or children's playgrounds things like that. Powered sites. We check the area typically that we want to go to and then we take a look and see what park's available and open. Some have reservations, some don't have reservations. 45 percent of all parks in British Columbia actually have some first-come first-served sites but there are some park sites that are actually purely day use and there are some that are only first-come first-served so you can identify that in the brochure. And the other thing that's nice is they have a big BC map in the front and they also have more detailed regional maps within each section which tells you about the different campsites that are available in the different regions and BC for instance in the lower mainland which is Vancouver area, the Okanagan, the Thompson and the north and it's really handy to have those detailed maps as well to indicate exactly where the campsites are. BC Parks does have an online page called bcparks.ca. We found it a little bit difficult because you actually have to know the region that you're going to or the name of the park and sometimes you just want to look at options in general if you're just deciding to go for a trip in BC and don't know exactly where you're going. We don't use that option often but if you prefer to be online then you can do that as well. And then the other online option that we don't use very often but it's quite handy as well is the campingrvbc.com website and that site actually is very comprehensive. It actually includes all the privately operated campgrounds, the commercial campgrounds as well as all the publicly operated campgrounds which are national parks and BC parks and what you can do is search via map or you can also search by region or you can also search by the name of the camp ground or park. And all these resources we will put the link in the description below. Once we look at the go camping brochure and decide which campground we want to go then it's nice to be able to go online and check the specific park website and so you can just search it, google it and find the actual park itself and it'll tell you all the information about dates of operation and what's available at the park. Sometimes they'll have campground maps and park maps which are very handy and so that's a really good resource to go to once you know that you want to go to that particular park. They'll tell you how many campsites are available, times when the camping is reservable and also if there's any winter camping available at the park, the costs or if there are any first come first serve sites and that's really handy if we decide to just wing it for our shorter trips. So currently if you want to make a reservation you have to go to the Discover Camping website and follow the instructions there and just two things to note. First the only parks that are showing up on that website are the parks that actually allow reservations so there are many other parks that to our first come first serve are the ones that are probably going to be quieter and are often the ones that we might choose to if just going to wing it but if they don't allow reservations it won't show up on that website. Yeah so that's why the GoCamping brochure is really handy because it actually lists all the campgrounds and not just the ones that are reservable. The other thing I wanted to note is that this website has a pretty limited life. It's actually going to close down in roughly a month and we'll talk about that right now. We just found out that there is going to be a new reservation system in place so now we're going to explain what according to their website what the new reservation system is. So I suspect the website will probably just be a little bit more user-friendly than the existing BC Parks website. Yeah because there's right now there's two different websites that you have to go to. One for the information about the parks the bcparks.ca and the other one discovercamping.ca for reservations. I think what they're just going to do is consolidate both into one website. So as of February 28-22 is going to be the last day that you can make reservations under the current system that's discovercamping.ca for any dates up to March 31st for Porto Cove and for Garibaldi backcountry. Because those are the only two camping sites that you can currently reserve during the winter. And beginning in the first three weeks of March there's actually a blackout period so there's no booking at all accepted. March 15 the new website opens but it's for viewing only. You can also set up your new parks account for making reservations in the future. March 21st I think at 7am the new reservation site opens on the bcparks site so that's bcparks.ca and there will be a two-month rolling window for bookings for front country and backcountry reservations. An example of that would be if you wanted to go somewhere for June 5th you would be making your booking April 5th so as early as April 5th. Then March 24th the group reservation sites open. That doesn't usually impact Mickey and I because it's about group camping. And the interesting thing about the group site reservations is there is no two-month rolling window for reservations. You can book right to the end of I think December 2022. And just a note that this is just information we got from the bcparks site and obviously things might change so please check yourself to make sure what the current information is. bcparks.ca. We often get questions as well from viewers about you know how much that park costs and bcparks costs can range from in season because there's off-season rates as well and they're typically for the few parks that are open in the winter they're a lot less. But typically during the main season parks will range from about $18 to $32 per night. The more services effectively the park has generally the higher the price so if you're at a park that has showers and kids playground and flush toilets it's going to be more expensive than one that's basically rustic with an outhouse. And that also doesn't cover the reservation fee so currently and I don't know whether this will be the same under the new reservation system but currently there's a six dollar fee per night to reserve your site and there's a maximum charge of $18 so if you were to book five nights you would pay three nights of that you'd have to pay yeah you'd have to pay six dollars a night so $18 for that. Now as I noted you know winter camping can be significantly cheaper largely because there's very few services available at most campsites there's typically nothing much more than a an outhouse there's no usually no running water. An example of that was for us we were in I guess early winter camping or probably late fall in the Okanagan and we only paid $13 a night to camp at South Okanagan Park. In terms of choosing sites for us it really depends on the popularity of the park what time of year it is and the weather and what's left open yeah lots of different factors for us when we choose a park. Our own personal preference is we like to be in a campsite that's quiet and as private as possible and there's plenty of room between sites. We also like to be away from some of the the noisier areas where people congregate like playgrounds and beach spots and day use areas and shower buildings even sometimes get quite busy when people are walking back and forth. So some people prefer not to be near an outhouse but we found that it actually is easier to get a site near an outhouse when you're trying to book a site at a popular park at a very at the peak season. We found that sometimes the last remaining available sites are near the outhouse and we actually have stated those and they were perfectly fine. BC Parks outhouses in general are very clean and they don't smell. Yeah they're very well looked after and they're usually not very busy. And I actually personally like being near the outhouse in case I have to go in the middle of the night or you know when it's dark it's nice to be nearby. So we also have a little bit of flexibility in our schedule so we are able to avoid some of the the peak season. Peak season can be very busy at BC Parks especially the popular parks that are like right next to a lake for example. Or near large urban centers. Yeah we actually avoid weekends for sure. Long weekends definitely want to avoid that. We would consider the peak season really in BC to be late June, July and August and maybe up to say Labor Day in September. It can be quite busy but after that in general if you're looking for first come first serve you could always show up at a park as long as you're there maybe early afternoon and you're pretty much guaranteed to get a site. Yeah we've had a lot of luck even when we've gone out on long weekends without reservations but you know typically if we do that we go to a less popular park or we arrive sort of an extra day early so all sorts of strategies. Otherwise we will usually if it's going to be a busy weekend if we're going to Manning Park for example which is one of our favorite places in the summer we'll typically try and make a reservation in advance. Yeah and quite often people are very diligent about getting onto the website and making a reservation right when the reservation window opens for certain parks so you have to be prepared to be up early up early 7 a.m pacific time to make sure that you get the site that you want. But we found that even if we miss out on that period we can sometimes get a nice site even if it's a busy time because people have cancelled so yeah so you have to keep back and checking. When we're doing our often winged sort of approach to camping typically it's either off season or we'll look for less popular spots and they might be sites that are only first come first serve and they're nice areas but they're not necessarily the most popular areas. Yeah and quite often the first come first serve sites are usually near like a major highway and you might hear the highway or you might hear trains there sometimes we've stayed at places where there are a lot of train tracks around if it's an overnight stop then it's perfectly fine or if you're on the way to somewhere else or if you're going to an attraction that's close to that area then if you're just doing an overnight it's perfectly fine to stay at one of those campgrounds and bc parks pretty much guarantee that the campgrounds are quite nice and quite private. Yeah they're well maintained and feeling like you're back in nature which is very pleasant. Yeah it's very different from some of the national parks that we stayed at that sometimes feel like parking lots. We also got a request on sort of how do we source out our weather and typically for us we go on the Environment Canada website they also have an app that you can download and they'll do a seven day forecast and an hourly forecast and generally we find them quite reliable the only thing I would flag as a potential concern is that if you're in a major center so if you're in Vancouver if you're in Kelowna or Vernon and you're near those areas the weather forecasts are generally quite accurate but sometimes for some of the communities in between I think all the app does is sort of do an average so sometimes and doesn't necessarily account for things like elevation or something so you know you have to be just a little cautious on the area you're at it generally is going to be pretty accurate but if there's something if it's not a if it's not a major center and there's something unusual about it like you're down on the ocean or you're up high in a mountain that app may not be as accurate as as looking for other alternative ways. The one nice thing too about if you are on the Environment Canada app like many other weather apps it'll send you a notification if there's any sort of a weather warning so if there's going to be hail or heavy rain and something like that you'll get a notification usually several hours in advance which we found helpful a couple of times. Provisioning of food I think everyone has their own personal preference for me I usually like to decide how much food I bring depending on how long we're going to be going away and exactly where we are going as well so for example if we're going on a shorter trip and we're going to a place where that's near it's near an urban center or somewhere where there's a lot of services like for example Whistler I don't have to really prepare to bring a lot of food because they'll have places where you can eat out or do takeout. If we're deciding to go on a longer trip and make sure all of my food basically cover all our meals for one breakfast lunch and dinner and kind of prepare snacks and snacks is important for Gordon and also sort of do a little bit of meal planning you know the basic staples you want to have with you obviously if you're a coffee drinker you want to make sure you have your coffee. Non-perishables that might be handy is like instant oatmeal so if you're in a rush and you're wanting to get out of your campsite early in the morning and you want to do something quick then you just put some boiling water and instant oatmeal and you're ready to go and if we're going for a much longer trip like two or three weeks then I basically just you know do enough grocery shopping for about a week and then I'll just basically clear the fridge at home because you know anything that's perishable is going to go bad while we're away so we might as well take everything and then you know once we're on the road we can always schedule in some stops to major centers and stock up again. We'll stop at stores along the way and just pick up some extra groceries which is actually kind of fun because sometimes that you know we're in fruit stands or we're in you know just some unusual stores in that community which is kind of fun. All right internet access. You know we typically when we're when we're traveling we you know rely on the basic cell phone coverage for most of the areas that we go to. It's surprising actually now in British Columbia how many areas there is coverage for at least partial. We were in northern British Columbia and we were well past Fort Nelson and at one point we got full cell coverage and then we realized it's because we were actually in line a site with a mountain that had a cell phone tower on it. There was actually one other case where we were climbing up one of the local mountains and we got to the top and then suddenly we got full cell phone coverage but that was very strange and unusual. All the beeping on your phone suddenly. Yeah but typically what we'll do is we rely just on the local areas and most areas are pretty well covered but there are a lot of remote areas where you won't have cell phone and in some cases we actually have a WeBoost cell signal extender and we will hook that up and that's useful not so much if there's sometimes we've never seen any you know our cell coverage looked like there were no bars and we've hooked up the WeBoost and we may get one or two. More commonly we'll have you know one bar barely and then we'll hook up the WeBoost and we'll get three bars or something so that can be really helpful and then you know there are just some areas if we're in an area where we're between mountain ranges it's probably going to be that we're just going to not have any cell phone coverage for the period of time until we leave and that's fine most of the time for us. Yeah and some of the campgrounds you you actually don't have self-coverage so you have to prepare for that. If you're not in a near a major urban center then you probably won't have any cell coverage at your campground or campsite. You learn quickly though too so I'll use Manning Park at least currently at Manning Park there's really no cell phone reception anywhere in the park unless you go near the lodge so there's about a kilometer when you're near the lodge you can get cell phone reception so it's not uncommon for us to sometimes you know we'll be camping somewhere know that a kilometer or two away we can get cell phone so we might just you know pop over and have a coffee or take coffee with us and and spend 10 minutes in a cell phone area and update our emails if we need to. Yeah but in general in BC if as long as you're going near any town even like a smaller town you do have cell coverage so you know if you know that you're going to be traveling through a town then that's the opportunity for you to stop and check your emails and texts and look at your social media. Or maybe your chance to not stop and let it go. So we've largely covered off BC parks because that was actually the main question but in British Columbia there's also recreation sites and trails and there's a separate website it's called Recreation Sites and Trails BC. I think there's over 1700 in British Columbia. They tend to be very rustic sites and in many cases they're on roads that are more difficult to access. Actually if you go on the site it will often tell you whether it's accessible by a car a four-wheel drive or an RV and so it gives you an idea of just you know how how difficult it may be to access the roadways. The sites are always very rustic there are sometimes a fire pit there may be a picnic table and there's usually an outhouse but generally you have to pack your garbage out. Bring your own water. Yeah you have they typically don't have potable water so you know they're very it's very more sort of back to nature type camping and it can be very pleasant. Some of them do have fees and if they do have fees they tend to be on the low end of the park site fees. I think they're probably around $12 a night. Some are free and it really depends on how remote and where the site is. Yeah and the operator will come by and collect your fee typically. I think there was one place where they you actually had to check in but that's very rare for recreation sites. So they might either come in the evening or they might come first thing in morning or they might not come at all because that's happened to us. Even in BC parks but they're and and some are free so that's um it's certainly another option for people that are looking for typically a more rustic area. They can get busy though we've been to many recreation sites particularly if we've gone in on a weekend or a long weekend and if they're reasonably easy to access they're packed. If you've seen some of our videos you've seen us try some and they've been very busy and we've had to go elsewhere. I think the locals actually know where the spaces are and they'll go and grab on the sites. They'll get there they'll get there a day or two earlier possibly. Yeah the other thing that we wanted to note also as many of you are aware BC has experienced some very severe weather events last year and so we had the heat dome followed by the wildfires and then in November we had the really really bad floods in the atmospheric river that caused the floods. So um when I checked the BC parks website there was a couple of parks that were impacted. Now this could be this is subject to change at any time because they might be doing some work to make sure you can get access to those campgrounds but the one that in particular one of our favorite sites is uh Skihist Provincial Park which is not too far from Lytton BC and as you know Lytton had the really bad wildfire pretty much decimated the town and so um the Skihist Park has also been impacted so they're closed and we don't we have no idea when they'll reopen. We don't know if they will reopen this year so there you know there's a number of parks that have had significant damage trail damage some of the in some cases they're repairing it and some it might be delayed so just be aware of that this year that that the impact of that may vary depending on the area you're in. Yeah and so the other one that I also noted was Sasquatch Provincial Park which is near Harrison Lake and they are also closed and I think that was because of the flooding and then the other one that we stayed at which is a recreation site is not too far from Merritt I think it was between Merritt and Spences Bridge on highway number eight and some of you may know that highway number eight was pretty much almost all destroyed because of floods in November so the Koala Recreation Site that we really enjoyed staying at a few years ago they are actually closed and again we have no idea when they'll reopen. So we hope you found this information useful especially those of you who don't know too much about BC and are hoping to travel here in the near future and if you found this video useful and enjoyable please be sure to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel if you haven't done so already and please also check out our other videos as well and we will see you next time. See you next time.