travel dates: July, 2023
I’ve been reflecting a lot on RVing cities this summer, since our trip took us to Toronto, Montreal, Quebec City, and Washington DC (so much city!)…and what I keep coming back to is that city camping doesn’t get much better than Pippy Park in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
Pippy Park is right in the city, less than a 10 minute drive from most of the main attractions, it offers a big variety of roomy sites, a great network of trails right in the park, very affordable prices, and, incidentally, the fastest campground wifi we’ve ever encountered. (Dave is reading a real book and not using the wifi in the picture…but if he HAD been using the wifi, it would have been so fast!)
Of course, city is a relative term, particularly in Newfoundland. I imagine it’s a lot easier to build a lovely campground in the middle of St. John’s (population approximately 110,000) than, say, Manhattan. But still. It’s always lovely when one can tour a major city without major hassles.
Location
St. John’s is the capital of Newfoundland and by far the largest city. We really enjoy visiting these “small big cities” because you get a lot of the perks of big cities without all the congestion and sprawl. So you’ve got world-class museums, tons of historic sites, shopping, restaurants, etc. etc. all in a city that’s easy to navigate (and park in! For the most part). St. John’s is on the east coast of Newfoundland; if you’re arriving via the Port Aux Basques ferry, you’ll still be a 9 hour drive away, but it’s just an hour and a half from the Argentia ferry. Pippy Park itself is on the north side of the city, just outside of downtown. The campground isn’t really easily walkable to anything outside of Pippy Park itself, so having a car is definitely helpful (IIRC, there are no Ubers or Lyfts in St. John’s, though taxis are a possibility. Wait! I just googled, and apparently Uber and Lyft just started up in Newfoundland in spring of 2024. So maybe!)
Booking and Arrival
Pippy Park is a big campground, with over 200 sites, but it stayed very busy while we were there the first week of July–and was maybe nearly completely full on the weekend (the weekend after Canada Day weekend). As is typical in Newfoundland, you can’t book for the summer until spring, but I think it’s worth booking as soon as they open up, particularly if you’re looking at a weekend. Driving to the park is easy; make sure you don’t try to drive an RV through the downtown area, where there are many narrow road and very steep hills, but your GPS should route you around that central area, where the roads are fine for RVs. This is a public campground with seasonal teen workers, so the people checking you in won’t likely be experienced RVers, but everyone there is friendly and helpful.
Campsites
This is a very big, sprawling campground with over 200 sites. Most of the sites are in three big, wooded loops (loops 1-3). The remainder of the sites are in a big, open field (loop 4). All of the sites are full hook-up; the big difference is that loop 4 has lightning fast wi-fi. And the other loops have no wi-fi at all (although our cell signal was pretty good everywhere, and there’s a picnic shelter in loop 4 where people can sit and partake of the wi-fi). At this point in our trip we’d been wandering around Newfoundland with very limited internet for quite awhile, so a week with unlimited fast internet felt luxurious and let us catch up on some things. The wi-fi was as good as our internet at home–totally adequate for working, streaming, whatever we wanted to do.
Wi-fi aside, you might want Loop 4 if you have a bigger rig, as the sites are all wide open pull-throughs, easy to navigate for any size RV. There’s plenty of separation between sites here, but not much in the way of privacy. We really booked this section more for the ease of navigation than the wi-fi, but when we got there we realized we would have been fine with our 32 foot trailer in most of the wooded sites as well. They’re all back-ins, but most of them are very roomy, and we saw plenty of motorhomes and 5th wheels back there (the interior roads might be a little tricky to navigate for some larger RVs, though). Here’s an example of one of the wooded sites:
Last thing to note about loop selection is that Loop 4 doesn’t have a bathhouse, so you’ll be looking at a long hike to them if you need them. But, again, all the sites have sewer hookups, so not necessarily an issue.
Amenities
Speaking of those bathrooms…they were not my favorite. They’re…fine, but fairly dated, buggy, and just generally kind of rough around the edges. The showers are free, but they’re the kind where you have to keep pushing the button every minute or so and you can’t adjust the water temperature.
There’s a small camp store (understocked when we were there) and a laundry room (which we didn’t use). Also a playground:
Pippy Park is not just a campground but a big urban park, so there’s an extensive trail network and…the Fluvarium! We didn’t go to the Fluvarium, because it had really limited hours, but you can go there and learn about the river and ecosystems in the area.
We did walk the Long Pond Loop one day with Abe. It’s about a 2 mile walk that goes around, as you might expect, a long pond. It’s a pretty walk if you’re looking for something right at the campground, though it couldn’t compete with other Newfoundland hikes we did.
Lupins! And also a power plant:
If you want to RV St. John’s, you don’t have a lot of options aside from Pippy Park. So it works out very well that Pippy Park happens to be a great campground!
2023 Newfoundland Trip Posts
Visiting Newfoundland: Overview and General Thoughts
Grand Codroy RV Park and Codroy Valley
Water’s Edge RV Park in Gros Morne
Gros Morne National Park: South
Port Au Choix and the Great Northern Peninsula
Gros Morne National Park: North
Sanger Memorial RV Park/Grand Falls-Windsor
Fogo Island/Brimstone Head RV Park
Twillingate and Dildo Run Provincial Park
Pippy Park, St. John’s Campground Review
Four Days on the Bonavista Peninsula
maybe you would like to pin this?
Leave a Reply