I’ve received requests to share how I planned our trip from California to Maine, and to share the campgrounds and our experiences with them. Skip to the end if all you want is a summary of the sites with mileage and links. I receive no compensation from any of the links provided in this post.

We purchased our RV, a 2025 Brinkley Z3515, in December 2024 from a dealership in Southern California. We moved into it officially on Christmas Eve, setting it up on Mountain Goat’s parents’ property in Mendocino County. We’d hoped to hit the road shortly thereafter, but were delayed due to medical treatments that needed to be done in Sonoma County.

We had warranty repairs to be completed, and because of the awful experience we’d had with the dealership through which we’d purchased, we decided to go with another dealership we’d been working with who had been great, Premier RV in Blue Grass, ID. We scheduled an appointment with them on 5/19, based on when we anticipated having medical care wrapped up. We gave ourselves about 3 weeks to make the trip, leaving 4/29.

Mountain Goat and I have our roles when it comes to RV travel- she does most of the driving, and I do the navigation and planning. I spent hours planning our route, deciding on sights to see and selecting campgrounds that could accommodate our setup.

Some relevant stats:

Our Z3515 is 39 feet, 11 inches long
It requires 50 amp electric, though we have “dog bone” adapters for 15, 20 and 30 amp
Our truck is a Ford F-350 dually
We need electricity for Mountain Goat’s CPAP and Starlink
Our dog, Emma, is part of our pit crew
Mountain Goat wanted to limit the actual drive time (not counting bathroom breaks, fueling and meals) to 3 hours per day whenever possible
I factored in time for errands, appointments, downtime and other “real life” miscellaneous
Because we have Starlink, cell reception and onsite wifi are not as important to us as they may be for some. We also use walkie talkies to communicate when arriving at and departing from a campsite so we aren’t at the mercy of cell reception and hand signals
We owned a home in Santa Rosa, California, which we sold, closing 4/28, freeing us up significantly, both financially and mentally
The RV was not available for purchase with a generator, so we planned to have one installed after our warranty repairs
We have kept our medical care in California, so we have to fly back for appointments as needed

On 4/29, we left Mendocino County and headed east. The first night, we “moochdocked” at my brother’s home near Sacramento.

We’d planned to spend 4/30 in the parking lot at Maverick Casino in Elko, NV, based on a tip I’d seen on Freecampsites.net. I’d attempted to contact the casino to confirm we could stay both by phone and e-mail with no success (not a fan of the “ask for forgiveness” approach to this), so we decided we’d drive out and take our chances asking them in-person. I also noted a couple of rest stops along the way that we could stay at if it didn’t work out.

When we arrived at the casino, they did not seem to know of any allowances for RVs to park overnight. Mountain Goat and I then discussed staying at one of the rest stops I’d noted, but we decided to continue on to Wells, NV, parking with other RVs in a small lot at the Flying J.

We then headed to our full hookup site at Lakeside RV Campground in Provo, UT. We had both spent time in and near Salt Lake City, but hadn’t been to Provo. I researched a few things to do in the area, our favorite of which was swimming at Homestead Crater/Utah Crater, a hot spring-fed crater.

Sites at Lakeside are assigned by the staff, and we ended up assigned to the site right next to Kyle and Renee Hanks, who have a YouTube channel, HappilyEverHanks.

The next place we visited was Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming, but to break up the drive, we spent a night at Bear Lake, which crosses the state line between Utah and Idaho. I surprised Mountain Goat with a pull-through site right on the lake, which had not yet been invaded by ski boats and jet skis, providing us with the peace and serenity we crave.

The only open campground at Grand Teton that could accommodate the length of our trailer was Gros Ventre, where I booked an electric site, with water and a dump station available near the entrance. Moose were in our site on more than one occasion, and we even had some surprise snow on our first day. I have a full report of our time at Grand Teton here.

Two moose (a cow and a bull) in our site and the one next to ours (the second is by the bear box in the middle)

Our next trek was toward Custer State Park, South Dakota, which is spectacular in its own right, but is also near Mt. Rushmore and Devil’s Tower National Monument. En route, we’d planned to boondock at Big Sandy Reservoir and Alcova. After driving out the long dirt road to the Big Sandy, we stopped at a few possible sites around the reservoir, but there were so many mosquitoes that we decided to continue down the road. I was able to move the next night’s reservation up a night and add another night at Custer as well.

The Full Hookup Campground at Alcova Reservoir requires advance reservations, and isn’t much itself, but the reservoir is right across the street and offers boating and more. We were there essentially to sleep and continue on our way.

Custer State Park has many campgrounds, and the one with availability for our stay with the added night that could accommodate us was in the Stockade North campground. The sites have some pine shade and are spaced apart nicely. There is one central bathroom with flush toilets and showers (we used the showers due to not having water and sewer at the site), vault toilets in other spots and a nice playground available. Our site also had 50 amp electric. We visited Mt. Rushmore and Devil’s Tower, but also enjoyed Custer’s scenic drives, where we encountered a lot of wildlife and some beautiful rock formations. When the most intense lightning storm I’ve ever seen hit on the night of 5/14, I returned to the Needles Eye area to photograph it. The storm set off thousands of lightning strikes per hour, affording many opportunities for photos, and I spent almost the whole night out, capturing images in multiple locations along the scenic drives.

Our next destination was Badlands National Park. There is a lot of boondocking in the vicinity, but we wanted an electric site, and one with 50 amp opened up in time for our visit. The sites are basically parallel parking spaces, rather than back-in or pull-through, and the water fountains/spigots in the campground do not work, so filling up at the dump station is the only water source. Group camping is also available. The tables at the sites have shade available, but this only offers minimal protection against the strong winds that are frequently present there (see screenshot from our stay). In addition to the wind, we had some solid rain, and we saw several tents damaged by the storm.

During our stay, we didn’t see wildlife in our site, but we saw several bison, pronghorns, bighorn sheep and other wildlife while checking out the park. I also received an aurora alert on our second night there, so I found a spot at a pullout on National Park Rd. to capture images with some of the incredible rock formations in the foreground.

It was then time to make our way to Iowa, where we had our warranty repairs scheduled. There are almost no campgrounds between Badlands and eastern Iowa that were anywhere close to our route, which made for a very long drive day from Badlands to Prairie Flower Recreation Area at Saylorville Lake. The roads in Iowa are a bit on the rough side, especially when you’re hauling a trailer, and even in the Recreation Area heading into the campground. The sites themselves are quite nice, especially for the price, being paved and level, and our site backed up to some nice greenery. Town is not far with all the amenities anyone could need.

We spent the next night a few minutes from the RV dealership and right along the Mississippi River at the Shady Creek campground, which has wide paved sites and water close enough to fill from your site. There was a playground very close to the campground and lots of grass between us and the river, which, between pollution, water traffic and swiftness, is NOT swim-friendly for humans or dogs.

After dropping off our rig at Premier, we visited Mountain Goat’s sister near Milwaukee for a week, and then headed to a hotel in Davenport, about 25 minutes from the dealership so that we could be available when we got the word that our rig would be ready. We spent almost 3 weeks there, visiting different sites like Maquoketa Caves State Park, Mississippi Palisades State Park and Amôwa Forest Preserve, and eating more Hurts Donuts than I’d like to admit.

Along the way, we made a commitment to be in Maine once we got our home back. I also had some appointments I had to attend in California in June, so we decided to schedule my flight from Chicago, regardless of whether the RV was ready, and we could either continue our stay in Davenport until it was ready, or start heading east on my return.

My flight left on a Sunday, and our rig ended up being ready the Friday prior. I found a campsite an hour or so from O’Hare International at Big Rock Campground, IL. It was close to town, but very quiet and green for Mountain Goat in my absence. It’s a pretty new campground that was created in a field, so the trees in the campground are young, but it offers electric at water at the RV sites and a dump station onsite, with a good amount of space between the gravel sites and trails for walking. More of the forest preserve it sits within is accessible nearby, though I didn’t get to see it since I was gone most of the time there. I did, however, enjoy photographing the wildflowers in the field at the entrance.

On my return, a storm hit the Chicagoland area, so we hung tight and left the next morning. We planned to drive until we were done, staying where we could along the way.

In Ohio, there are rest areas about every 30 miles, and they offer 20/30/50 amp electric sites for $20/night, with a 24 hour max, for people like us. Check the max length at each location if you consider one of these, because facilities do vary (the max was 40 feet at the one we visited). The one we stayed at had back-in sites only and possibly the worst Panera Bread location I’ve ever visited. Another we visited during the day had pull-through sites. These locations also offer water, dumping (free even if you’re just passing through), public wifi and dog areas. I wish more states had these types of “campgrounds” available. I’m guessing this is where Love’s got the idea for their RV sites. The sites at these rest areas are basically RV parking lots with room for slides, but that’s about it.

We continued east, stopping in Westfield, NY for an early lunch and to let Emma get some sniffing (and other things) out. A large RV draws a lot of attention, especially with plates from far away. A woman walking by saw our California plates and mentioned that she had lived in Southern California for several years. We told her where we planned to eat, and she redirected us to another restaurant and told us of another place to stop that ended up having the best banana cream pie either of us have ever tried.

Our last night on the road we spent at Lake Lauderdale in upstate NY. On our arrival, they had a live band at the main/office building, and probably 100 campground guests there. A woman I assume is the owner greeted us and hopped in a golf cart to escort us to our site, a grass pull-through with electric and water. Wifi is offered, and no cell service is available at the site we were in. A dump station is available on a hill, which we backed up to access it (the only other way was to basically drive back to the entrance and loop around from there). Many of the campers are clearly residents, as it looks like they offer good seasonal rates on their website.

We left early in the morning and drove on through Vermont and New Hampshire, passing the Green Mountains and Mt. Washington, known for its weather extremes, including the highest wind speed ever recorded, at 231 MPH.

On arrival in Maine, we were greeted by hungry mosquitoes and beautiful river views. We set up our rig and grabbed some tasty sourdough pizza in town before settling in at home with some leftover pie and finally rest, knowing we didn’t have to be up early in the morning to hit the road.

Summary of sites with links, rates we paid (not including taxes) and mileage:

Coastal Mendocino County, CA to Flying J, Wells, NV (over 2 days)- ~675 miles
Parking lot, no hookups, free

Lakeside Campground, Provo, UT- 223 miles
Full hookups with 50 amp, $68/95/night minus 10% military discount

Mountain Fawn Campground, Bear Lake, ID- 175 miles
50 amp and water (close enough to stay connected), dump site, $63.86/night

Gros Ventre Campground, Grand Teton National Park, WY- 150 miles
50 amp electric, water and dump onside, $77/night including electric and water fees, minus pass discount

Full Hookup Campground, Alcova Reservoir, WY (had planned to boondock at Big Sandy Reservoir, but very buggy- 140 miles)- 284 miles
Full hookups, $43.75/night

Custer State Park, SD- Stockade North CG- 240 miles
50 amp electric, water and dump onsite, $34/night plus 10 nonresident fee

Cedar Pass Campground site 68, Badlands National Park, SD- 111 miles
50 amp electric, water and dump onsite, $47/night minus pass discount

Prairie Flower Campground, Saylorville Lake, Polk City, IA- 566 miles (large gap of campgrounds)
50 amp electric, water and dump onsite, $26/night minus pass discount

Shady Creek Campground, Muscatine, IA- 167 miles
50 amp electric, water close enough to fill from campsite, dump onsite, $26/night minus pass discount

Big Rock Campground, Big Rock, IL- 149 miles
50 amp electric, water, dump onsite, $41/night

Vermilion Valley Service Plaza RV Lot, Ohio- 358 miles
50 amp electric, water and dump onsite, $20/night

Lake Lauderdale Campground, Cambridge, NY- 526 miles
50 amp electric and water, dump onsite, $49/night

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