Camping in the Lower 48

Hi everyone,

I'm looking for some information about camping in the lower 48.

This summer my friends and I are taking a 10,000+ mile road trip from our hometown of Fairbanks, AK down to San Diego and back through the Midwest and the AK highway again. In order to cut down on costs we're planning on camping 90% of the time. We are all very experienced campers and have no problem roughing it up here in AK.

The problem is even if we know how to deal with bears, hoards of mosquitos and -20f we have no idea how to deal with things like poison ivy, ticks, snakes, poisonous spiders, tetnus and what-have-you. None of which are found in Fairbanks. I especially don't know what to be aware of as I have very little experience outside the state/Yukon territory.

So by region what the the things I need to watch out for?
We're going down to Seattle then taking 101 down the coast with a inland side trip of Crater Lake.
Continuing down 101 until northern CA where we'll head down CA 1 until San Diego.
Over to Phoenix, up to Salt Lake City, diagonal to Minneapolis, over to Chicago and back up to Fairbanks.

I would ask at each campground about specific local issues. If you are using a commercial campground ask at the office, if you are camping in a park ask the rangers.

Hello and welcome to the RTA forums !

As glc pointed out getting local advice is best but to be honest you don't have anything to be unduly worried about, millions of people/families camp out and don't ever see a snake or a spider. I am sure that if there is a particular problem of any sort in any given area there will be notices and leaflet advice all over the place.

Most camping is done in designated areas and a permit would be needed in most parks to do back country camping and even then you can't beat the experience of the local rangers for advice on anything you should be aware of.

Have fun !