Where are the good camping blogs?
Posted on 08/03/2020 in misc
I just spent 30 minutes clicking through several "Top 20 camping blogs you must be reading now" articles. Do you know what I found?
A bunch of SEO optimized, glossy online magazines with all the soul of a piece of white bread. It was all "Top 15 places to stay in The Great Smokey Mountains" and "Top 10 cooking accessories you need in your RV now" and "15 Great campsites for kids." Everything was keyword optimized to maximize affiliate income. None of it was optimized for the actual enjoyment of the reader. In several cases it was obvious the blogger hadn't actually been to the places they were writing about. They are just following a formula to collect checks.
BLARGH!
It all sucked. I did find some homespun, interesting blogs with character, and even the occasional typo. Most of them hadn't been updated since 2014.
The Facebook camping groups are okay, but people have learned that an update with more than 12 words will get skipped. So it's all "Great time at Campground X this weekend" with 12 photos. Which is fine, and useful, but boring. Especially when after 3 weeks you start to see the see campgrounds every weekend.
Google and Facebook killed the Internet.
Maybe I should search Google but start looking at about page 10. Maybe the good stuff is lurking back there because the authors just want to write and share their experiences. So they don't think about keyword optimization and affiliate links.
I'm done now.
And stay off my damn lawn.
Seriously, are there any good camping blogs?