Camping Journal

This campground, while actually in Greenbelt Maryland is inside the Washington DC beltway. For anyone visiting our nations capitol this is the closest campground. But there are NO electric or water campsites.

If you do decide to use this campground as a base to visit Washington DC I would recommend driving to the nearest "Metro" (the DC subway system) and then riding the subway into the city. Parking inside Washington is lousy and driving can be harder!

While the park web site boasts 174 camp sites, we found many are unusable for pop-up campers. Many of the sites are no more than a bump out in the pavement, parallel to road traffic. While this would be marginally acceptable on the right side of the road (other than traffic passing on your left all day) about half of these "bump out sites" are on the left side of the road, meaning your front door would open into traffic. A very poor design indeed. Other sites were too shallow for a pop-up and tow vehicle while others had the fire grill and table on the wrong side of the camper. I would guess that no more than 25% of the sites are acceptable for out use.

All sites are in a wonderful wooded setting but there is little cover between camp sites. On most sites, you will see a lot of your neighbors, a feeling I am more accustomed to in a private campground not a public park. While this is a wooded oasis surrounded by the city, you will hear traffic noise and trains from the campground, but this did not disturb our sleep.

An interesting event during our stay was the arrival of 20 motor homes visiting from Germany. Many were Mercedes Benz but others were of unknown manufacture. Very nice looking rigs. We went for a walk around 9:30 Saturday night to try to talk with some of the visitors but all were in bed at this hour.

For a camper with sufficient battery available, this would be a good base to visit Washington DC but it is not a destination campground.

From the Greenbelt NP website: The greenbelt campground has handicapped parking spaces and are near the handicapped accessible bathroom. Each bathroom in the park including campground and picnic areas is handicapped accessible.

It was noted that the washrooms each had a shower capable of roll in use by a wheelchair and a handicapped accessible sink with lever controls and a fold down mirror. The electric plug which was available in the washroom was mounted high between the sinks and would be out of reach of someone confined to a wheelchair.

Location: Greenbelt National Park	Date: 11/02/2001
Miles Towed: 75	Weather: H mid 60's L 50's