What a surprise in my mailbox today!

A little over a month ago, as I was going through all of my Big Bend National Park photos, I happened to get a promo email from RVParking.com to enter their Favorite Places contest.  All you had to do was submit a campground review and attach a few photos to it, and boom, you were entered!

I enjoyed and used RVParking.com a few years ago when the site first launched, but admittedly, I had gotten rather lazy about continuing to post campground reviews there (or even on their competitor’s site, the old-school, mobile app-less RVParkReviews.com).

But I was immediately impressed when I logged back in to RVParking.com.  They’ve made a number of website and iOS mobile app improvements lately, and the site is much more engaging and fun to use.  Best of all, it allows users to add photos to their reviews, and provides this outstanding user profile view to easily see all of a reviewer’s past photos and reviews on a neat map view.  Cool!

So, I uploaded a few of my photos from my visit to Big Bend’s Rio Grande Village campground, and didn’t give it a further thought.

To my complete amazement, two weeks ago,  I got an email from RVParking.com saying that one of my photos had been chosen as the Runner Up winner to their Favorite Places contest!  Wow, I never win anything!!!  There had not been any prizes announced for the runners up (that I was aware of), but they mentioned an America The Beautiful one-year National Parks Pass, and that sounded like an absolutely fabulous gift for this photo-bug RVer!

Today, I received my prize package, and was delightfully surprised at the extra goodies they included-- besides the Parks pass, they also included a $50 Shell gift card and a “Top Reviewer” magnetic bumper sticker!   I was also really touched and impressed by the care and personalized way in which it was presented.  Thanks Beth, and thanks RVParking.com!

 

Browsing reviews on the RVParking.com site is available to anyone, and they also have free mobile iPhone and iPad apps for iOS that you can download from the Apple AppStore as well.

But joining the site (it’s free) allows you to go one step further and create your own profile to publish reviews and photos. Beth mentioned that they’ll be running periodic contests like this in the future, so I encourage you all to sign up and start adding your reviews and photos!  

What a fun way for us all to share useful campground information and inspirational photos with each other!

 

 

 

Check out 300 of our most-favorite things!