Dump stations and drinking water

Two questions shape every RV route through federal campgrounds: where does fresh water go in, and where does everything else go out. The amenity data answers both, unevenly, and the words it uses ("drinking water," "water hookup," "dump station") name three different pieces of plumbing that get confused constantly. Here's how to read them.

Where they are

A campground dump station sits near the entrance or exit, a single concrete lane with a sewer inlet and a rinse spigot, positioned so you hit it on the way out. Water spigots are scattered among the loops, but the fill station, the spigot where you can top a fresh tank without blocking a loop road, is usually at the same pad as the dump station, on your way in. Plenty of federal campgrounds have neither, especially Forest Service and BLM sites, and the nearest dump may be a state rest area or a private RV park thirty miles on. Plan the route around that fact. Dumping on the way out of one campground beats hunting a station on the way into the next, and the search radius gets expensive when the freeway exits stop having services.

Hookup, spigot, fill station

A water hookup is a threaded faucet at your own site, meant for a continuous hose connection. Bring a pressure regulator; campground plumbing is not gentle. Hookups are the exception at federal campgrounds, most common at Corps of Engineers parks and rare in the forests. "Drinking water" as a listed amenity usually means shared spigots among the loops: fill jugs there, carry them back. Camping with a hose left attached to a shared spigot ties up forty families' water source and is usually posted against. The fill station is where the fresh tank gets topped, once, on arrival.

Dump station etiquette

The line moves at the speed of the least prepared person, so be ready before your wheels touch the pad, with gloves on, hose out and caps loose. Black tank first, then gray, so the gray water rinses the hose. Rinse the pad if you splashed. Don't wash the rig, don't run a twenty-minute backflush with a line behind you, and if the layout allows it, pull off the pad before doing anything slow, filling fresh water included. As of 2026, dumping is commonly free for registered campers and something like $5 to $20 for drive-ups; the campground's page here links the managing office that sets the current fee.

Two hoses

The rinse spigot at a dump station is not drinking water. It exists to rinse sewer hoses, which means it has touched every sewer hose that ever visited, and it's usually painted or tagged non-potable for exactly that reason. Keep a dedicated white potable hose that never comes out of its bin at the dump pad. Fill the fresh tank only at spigots marked potable. If a spigot has someone's stinky slinky hanging on it, find another.

Stretching tanks

At campgrounds with no dump station, the tanks are the trip clock. Arrive with the fresh tank full and the waste tanks empty, use the campground vault toilets instead of your own bathroom, and wash dishes in a tub you carry to a utility sink or pack out. Gray water goes in the gray tank, full stop. Draining it on the ground is illegal at developed federal campgrounds, posted or not, and the soap smell draws animals long after you leave. A couple who does all three routinely gets a week from tanks that last a weekend when the rig's bathroom does everything.

Winter shutoffs

In freeze country the water system gets blown out in fall and repressurized in late spring, roughly October through May at elevation, and the campground often stays open the whole time with vault toilets and no water at all. Our nightly refresh carries what the federal data reports, and the federal data mostly describes the summer configuration. Traveling in shoulder season, call the managing office linked on the campground's page and assume dry until told otherwise.

Hauling for a dry stay means a gallon per person per day, more if you're cooking, and the math is easier at the fill station than twenty miles up a washboard road. The RV page filters campgrounds by the amenities that matter to a rig, dump stations included.