WE ARE FINALLY LIVE!
The Moment Has Arrived
The Raccoon Report is Live
First, the exciting part. The Raccoon Report is officially live and open to the public. Our 2026 trip review is already posted, along with all of 2025, and what might be our favorite campground we’ve ever stayed at (you’ll know it when you see the score). Over the next few weeks I’ll be backloading reviews from 2021 through 2024, so stay tuned.
How It Started
This project started toward the end of 2025 with a simple, unglamorous problem.
I asked my wife which site number we had reserved at a campground we were rebooking for 2026. She had to physically walk out to the camper to check her camping journal. I love analog journaling, I’m not knocking it at all, but in that moment I thought: there has to be a better way to keep track of all of this.
I didn’t want a YouTube channel. I didn’t want TikTok. I have zero interest in putting my family in front of a camera or broadcasting our lives to the internet. What I wanted was a clean, honest digital record of everywhere we’d been. What a campground had, and more importantly, what it was actually like.
That distinction matters more than it sounds.
We’ve stayed at campgrounds loaded with amenities that still managed to disappoint. We’ve also stayed at campgrounds with modest write-ups that completely blew us away, and others with glowing reputations that frankly didn’t deserve them. You’ll see both reflected in upcoming reviews.
Part of the problem is how campground reviews work. A hotel on a major booking platform might have fifty thousand reviews, enough data that one bad night barely moves the needle. A campground might have forty. One frustrated camper on a rough weekend can tank a genuinely great place. One overly generous review can prop up one that doesn’t deserve it. That felt unfair to campgrounds and misleading to travelers.
So I started building a scoring system that was fair, consistent, and weighted. One that separated objective facts from subjective experience and treated every campground by the same standard regardless of size or popularity.
The other thing I knew from the start: the reviewer has to be independent. No free stays. No sponsored visits. No campground paying to be featured. The moment money flows from a campground to a reviewer, the review stops meaning anything. That’s the foundation this whole thing is built on.
The Platform Was Born
Instead of just a camping journal, I decided to turn this initiative into a whole platform. I asked myself what “I” value when researching campgrounds to book trips. The list was pretty short and simple.
I don’t need or want another login or password
I don’t want to read a novel about the entire stay. If i’m going with kids, let me read about just the entertainment and activities available if I want.
I don’t want to be bombarded with ads at every click
I don’t want to have to sift through junk just to get to a review
I want to be able to filter reviews to find campgrounds that meet my needs
I don’t want to read through pages and pages of just “star” reviews with no comments.
I want to be able to read it easily on any device
Simple to navigate, easy on the eyes
So I got to work! The premise was simple. Campground reviews, easy navigation, provide value, respecting your privacy. I didn’t need to provide a massive suite of services just one platform people want to use of all skill level.
The first iteration was kinda ugly. It looked like something I would’ve built 20 years ago.
I wasn’t really a fan of the first draft, and it felt more like a utility website than a helpful tool for campers. One evening, I was goofing off and being a fan of 50’s style art, and art deco architeture, I decided to put a campfire and an old fashioned camper on the main page. I loved the design so much I expanded on it, and kept going.
It turned into a moment where you tell yourself you’ll only have a small piece of pizza, and the next thing you know you can’t stop yourself and wind up eating 3/4 of the pie!!! I kept going and going and going, and every night for months getting little sleep, I got to the prototype phase, sent it to some friends to provide feedback, and started entering reviews one by one. Which brings us to today.
Why I’m Doing This For The Camping Community
The more obvious is the reasons stated above. The less obvious is twofold.
First, this initiative is a love letter to the entire camping industry. It is not an easy industry to run a business in. It is a lot of hard work, dedication, and commitment. Whether its running a campground, or gear manufacturing. Its hard work, and this initiative is a big “thank you” for providing the foundation for my family and I to build great memories on.
Last, is a more personal reason. Selfishly, I want to give my time back to my family. I have spent most of my adult life working hard to provide my family the life I didn’t have growing up. When we got our first travel trailer in 2021 and started our adventures, I was able to slow down and really spend the most time with them I ever had. Once I got a taste for what “slowing down” really felt like, it was addictive. When the idea struck to create the most trusted platform in campground reviews, I saw the potential to turn my hobby and passion of RV camping into one that generates revenue, which will in turn continue to fund our travels to spend even MORE time with each other while more rapidly contributing more and more reviews to you, the reader.
Passion Is Free, But Running The Platform Isn’t
I will always journal my camping experiences as long as I am able, whether this site exists or not. I love being out on the road with the family, and I will always take rolls of photos, and document our travels. However, while passion is free, this initiative to bring my adventures to you isn’t
There are various costs involved in running, and continuing to provide real life independent campground reviews. Domain hosting, site management/upgrades, and all the costs that go along with camping like camping fees, fuel, maintenance, etc. After all, no camping, no reviews!
If you notice, I do not require a login, or your email. That is, unless you want to follow this glorious Substack, or as we call them, Raccoon Report “Field Notes”. Since we don’t collect your private information, it doesn’t get handed off to Lord knows who. However, we do collect generally public information such as where in the world you’re visiting the site from, and what reviews people look at. It helps us provide overall insights to our industry partners and prospective partners in hopes of generating revenue generating partnerships to keep funding this initiative!
How You Can Help
Share, Share, Share!
The Raccoon Report will only get bigger, better, and provide more value the more people that see it. The more folks see it, the more value we can provide to our partners, the more opportunities for monetization, which funds our work and site hosting.
Buy From Our Partners
The Trading Post on the website hosts links for our partners. We will only form partnerships with companies that our reviewers like, use, and vouch for. As of the time of this writing, we partner with RV Snap Pads and RV Life, and I personally use both heavily. Every purchase from our partners using one of our links and/or promo codes earns The Raccoon Report a small commission, which helps fund this project.
Donating
If you like our work and want to continue to see more reviews in more states, donations are not required but always welcome! You can donate directly on our site via Paypal!
Feedback!
This is the first iteration of the Raccoon Report, and there is no such thing as bad feedback! Please use the contact form on the site to drop us a line! Whether it is feedback on the site, or something that you would find valuable to add (or remove) from reviews! Or even if you think we should consider an entirely separate line of reviews like rustic tent camping, etc.
Thank You
Thank you to everyone who provided early feedback and testing while the platform was built and launched. Thank you to the hard working campground operators, equipment and accessory manufacturers, and RV industry experts. Thank you to the influencers on Youtube that make every camping trip look seamless while simultaneously making you feel comfortable with cleaning out your black tank.
The RV Life provided peace and harmony back into my life, and allowed me to find amazing campgrounds to create lifelong memories with my kids who will not be little forever. I hope that the Raccoon Report can help you do the same.
Congrats! Very Exciting. I will have time on Monday to start enjoying The Raccoon Report!