In terms of etiquette, with our prior PUP, we avoided 50A service sites and full-hook sites in order to leave them for folks who could take advantage of them. Often, those were large pull-thru sites, and we would've felt odd with a 10' box without even a slideout dinette. We've only had our HW PUP for one season and, at that, we only went on one trip last summer to a state park, so electric was our only real option. But, if we go to a KOA, we MIGHT consider trying a full hook-up for the first time since we have a toilet. Oh, and of course, we don't reserve the paved, wheelchair accessible sites.
We’ve only had full hook up one time. I reserved 4 spots together, for a family camping trip. All the sights were 30amp, water, and sewer. My niece and her DH and rugrats, used 1 site for there tent. 2 of the sites had PUPs, and the last was a hybrid. The funny thing was, almost every other site around us was a PUP, or a tent, and 1 land yacht, and they were all full hook up sites.
We very rarely camp in private campgrounds, and it's rare for public ones to have sewer around here. We're not even set up to be able to use sewer, so I'm not going to pay extra for it anyway. It's actually pretty rare that we have water hookup, and electric is maybe half the time. So much easier to get these low-utility sites without having to reserve a year in advance, or stay in a private RV Parking lot.
We used to go to state parks, but it's not cheap, even tenting, last couple of years we've been going to state forest campgrounds, and national park, with a year pass it's so much less money, and there aren't very many hookups anyway. It can be 1/2 off. Lots of trees too, and water!!
The parks (state and county) we tend to camp are usually around $25 a night. Iowa parks I think are closer to $15. Private campgrounds seem to tend toward $50-75 and up for the same type of site. One of the reasons we avoid them.
We live in St. Paul, not too far away from you. We started going to George Washington state forest campgrounds last year, but at the middle of summer we started going to the Ely area, wow. Fun to explore, so much to see. Cant wait till this polar vortex is done!! Freaking cold.
In the past, the only time I stayed on a site with hookups were at clipper rallies. The club members were lost without hookups. Even then I only hooked to electric during my stay. I will say on my trip to Death Valley, I spent the first fight in Bakersfield at a private RV Park. All sites were hookups, all sites were 40+ft pull throughs. Again, I only hooked up to electric, but it was really nice being able to pull in that night and pull out in the morning. For future long trips, I will seriously consider pull through sites for overnighters.
Yes, private RV parks have a very specific purpose for us: when we're desperately in need of convenience. Used a KOA in Colorado once in late winter to basically store my camper overnight while we visited a friend's house on an unplowed road at 11,000 feet. Used another RV park in southern Illinois once in early summer after finding nothing in the forest and badly needing a place to plug in the air conditioner after a long day of driving.
