You might get charging stations in the main campground, but don’t count on it consistently. Often if we’re at a school, you’ll have access to the outlets you can find in the cafeteria and hallways. There’s more demand than supply, so here are a few charging tips:

• Want to be the hero? Bring a power strip.
• Bring a battery pack capable of charging your phone multiple times. Not only will it help you if you have a day you can’t get to an outlet, you’ll feel better plugging in a battery and walking away for a couple of hours than you will leaving your phone behind.
• If you want to take matters into your own hands (like I’ve done the past few years), bring a solar panel and a battery. I use this panel from BigBlue. Output varies a bit as clouds come and go, so I find it works best to let it fill the battery and then I use the battery to charge my phone and GPS.
• Once you’re in camp, never leave your tent without your charger. You’ll never know when you find yourself relaxing in a restaurant or a library and an outlet is available.

Beyond all this, you’ll find some great main campgrounds and some not-so-great main campgrounds. My main complaint is a lack of thoughtfulness about the availability of water. When there are thousands of people needing to share one bottle filling station and they make it hard to find or hundreds of yards from the nearest tent, it’s annoying at best and dangerous at worst.