Last summer a bunch of friends and I decided we would go camping. I have been camping before, when I was a kid, so I knew what I was getting myself into. First off I had to find out if I had all of the proper equipment. I found my Tent, sleeping bag, propane grill and some big blue tarps. Once I gathered all of my stuff and dusted it off, I needed to check with my friends to see if they had everything they needed as well. After a few weeks we all gathered all of the stuff we needed, and all agreeed on a weekend that worked for everyone. Once we had that done, we thought it would be a piece of cake to find a campground to fit our needs. Were we wrong.
The first thing we did was hit the internet, we found a bunch of websites for campgrounds in Maine, but they were all marketing hype, no real testimonials from real campers that we could find. We eventually narrowed it down to 3 or 4 different campgrounds and we just had to pick. We picked the one we thought was the best fit for us, in the traveling range that we agreed upon (less than 1 hours drive). We went camping and we used my big blue tarps more then anything else, since it rained off and on the whole weekend. Other than that it was a pretty good experience.
As my friends and I were talking around the campfire, we were wondering why in this day and age, it took us so long for us to find a good campground. We realized that there wasn’t any one website out there where we could go to, and search all of the campgrounds at once, and compare what they had, and then read reviews from people who have actually been there. Since we were all in the software industry, and we all have developed many websites, we decided this might be a good website to develop. It would help people find a campground that they want faster, and you can actually see if the campground is as good as they say it is, on their website.
That is how CampRate.com was born. We wanted to create a website that would list all of the campgrounds in the US and the visitor could pick a state or zip code and search for what amenities that they wanted to have in a campground. Once they got a list back, they could then sort by rating type. For instance, if you wanted good clean bathrooms, then you could sort your results so that all of the campgrounds that had very clean bathrooms come up first. You could also do this for other areas such as Pet and Kid Friendly campgrounds. We figured campgrounds would like it as well since they would be able to see what their visitors are saying, and if they are saying something bad, such as the bathrooms are not clean, then they know that they better clean up their bathrooms or they could lose more customers.
We released CampRate.com on June 1st, 2005 and we are still adding features, and making it look nicer, but right now we are only adding campgrounds for the state of Maine. Once we get all of those added we will slowly move out to the different states, growing slowly until we have the whole USA. One day we hope to make it so that picking a campground won’t be so hard, and you could then spend more of your valuable time doing more important things. If you get a chance you should check us out, and if you can think of anything that would make our site better, please let us know.
CampRate.com - Campground Directory and Reviews
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