An Outdoorithm Study
America’s Camping Report Card
We read 623,020 real camper reviews and graded 43 states with enough data on the things that actually make or break a trip - scenery, facilities, crowds, bugs, value and more. No star ratings. Just what campers wrote.
Quick gut check. Of all written campground reviews, what share do you think include a complaint about the scenery - the views, the nature, the setting?
The view is a given
Nearly half of all campers - 47% - go out of their way to praise the scenery.
It’s the single most-loved thing about American camping. Almost no one complains about it. The view is rarely the problem.
The friction points
What actually ruins a trip is facilities.
Share of campers who complained about each thing, across every written review.
The paradox
The prettiest camping can still grade poorly.
Scenery is loved almost everywhere, so the curve is decided by the less romantic parts of a trip: campsites, facilities, noise, bugs, booking, value and access.
The receipts
The curve gives the headline. The raw numbers keep it honest.
A state can earn the same letter two ways: lots of faint praise or a few very loud warnings. Every grade travels with the share who praised it, the share who complained, sample size and confidence range.
Myth, busted
Everyone said the pandemic ruined camping. It recovered.
Crowding complaints spiked in 2020, then fell 28% by 2025. Camping got busier, briefly. Not worse.
Crowding complaints peaked at 11.5% in 2020, down to 8.3% in 2025.
So how does your state camp?
We graded every state with enough data on all of it. Find yours.
Find your state
Tap any state to open its full report card.
Re-ranked for Families - weighting the topics that matter most to how you camp.
Every graded state, best to worst
- 1B+VermontTop-ranked among graded states
- 2B+MaineBetter than 98% of graded states
- 3B+AlabamaBetter than 95% of graded states
- 4B+ArizonaBetter than 93% of graded states
- 5B+South DakotaBetter than 88% of graded states
- 6B+ColoradoBetter than 91% of graded states
- 7B+VirginiaBetter than 86% of graded states
- 8B+WisconsinBetter than 83% of graded states
- 9B+MinnesotaBetter than 79% of graded states
- 10B+MichiganBetter than 81% of graded states
- 11B+New HampshireBetter than 76% of graded states
- 12B+FloridaBetter than 74% of graded states
- 13B+IllinoisBetter than 71% of graded states
- 14B+WyomingBetter than 67% of graded states
- 15B+GeorgiaBetter than 69% of graded states
- 16B+New MexicoBetter than 64% of graded states
- 17B+IndianaBetter than 62% of graded states
- 18B+South CarolinaBetter than 60% of graded states
- 19B+North CarolinaBetter than 55% of graded states
- 20B+TennesseeBetter than 57% of graded states
- 21B+New YorkBetter than 52% of graded states
- 22B+AlaskaBetter than 50% of graded states
- 23B+MontanaBetter than 48% of graded states
- 24B+IowaBetter than 45% of graded states
- 25B+MarylandBetter than 43% of graded states
- 26B+MississippiBetter than 41% of graded states
- 27BWashingtonBetter than 38% of graded states
- 28B+North DakotaBetter than 36% of graded states
- 29B+UtahBetter than 33% of graded states
- 30B+IdahoBetter than 31% of graded states
- 31B+West VirginiaBetter than 26% of graded states
- 32B+TexasBetter than 29% of graded states
- 33B+NebraskaBetter than 24% of graded states
- 34B+NevadaBetter than 21% of graded states
- 35B+MissouriBetter than 19% of graded states
- 36BArkansasBetter than 17% of graded states
- 37BCaliforniaBetter than 14% of graded states
- 38BPennsylvaniaBetter than 12% of graded states
- 39BOregonBetter than 10% of graded states
- 40BKansasBetter than 7% of graded states
- 41BKentuckyBetter than 5% of graded states
- 42BOhioBetter than 2% of graded states
- 43BOklahomaLowest-ranked among graded states
Each topic gets an absolute grade from what campers wrote — A means they loved it, F means they were frustrated, on a fixed scale, not a curve. Most states are genuinely good, so the rank (the colors and order here) is what tells them apart. Open any state and switch to Raw numbers to see the share who praised vs. warned.
States with fewer than 2,000 written reviews aren’t graded. An Outdoorithm study of 623,020 written camper reviews · updated June 2026.