This experience further encouraged us to look for more state or county
campsites, as did the fact we were in our third month of travelling and on a
serious saving spree. When we reached the Space Coast - Cape Canaveral -
we stayed at the Port Authority campsite and then, when we visited Universal
Studios for a week, we found a real gem in Orlando. Turkey Lake Park, a city
run campsite, was only $15 a night - including hookup and nice restrooms -
and was only five minutes from the theme park. This was one of the cheapest
camps of the whole three months, in a place where all the other camps would
have been at least twice as expensive - and further from Universal Studios.
One further benefit of the state/county/public campgrounds was that they
tended to have consistently friendly staff - possibly because unlike on private
sites they did not have the added stress of managing and owning the camps.
In fact, we would have stayed at more state parks, however they were often
off the beaten track and also tended not to allow night registration, having
padlocked gates after office hours. This sometimes forced us to abandon
plans to visit these cheap parks, or at least postpone them. In fact, one
important skill we needed for our travels was the ability to be flexible in the
face of unforeseeable events.
When we changed our minds about the campsites in Klamath, because
they looked like automobile graveyards, we were being a bit picky - having not
gone into the offices, chatted to staff and looked at the facilities. Likewise,
when we switched to the state park campground in St Augustine we were
leaving a serviceable - if a little unclean - campsite, in a slightly snobby move.