I've been writing a sort of report card on the state of NWT parks the last couple of years, usually upon return from my annual pilgrimage to the Deh Cho each May, so I see no reason to stop now.

My campground of choice each spring is Sambaa Deh Territorial Park, but I always try to check out some untested or infrequently visited places as well. This year Fort Simpson Territorial Park was the benefactor of my salutations, as such the case may or may not be.

Of course, some readers have come to expect a right brutal thrashing from the get-go but I'm feeling generous this morning, so I feel obliged to dispense some positive pontification first.

I have to say Sambaa Deh was marvellous, as always. The Jean Marie River-based attendants are fanatical about litter, and apparently, toward fixing potholes as I observed one morning when one young man working there stopped his ATV and tamped fresh gravel into every minute dimple throughout the campground. Now that's dedication.

Best of all, I didn't have to drive six hours this year to discover the reservation I had paid extra money for weeks prior had disappeared into a gassy expanse of Internet ether. Not only has Sambaa Deh entered the modern digital age, the people there made darn sure no one was pulling up and claiming any campsite they fancied without having reserved it first - online. God be praised! A little piece of wilderness heaven, and it's even got broadband.

Future plans for a falls viewing station and a developed hiking trail by the river canyon are both excellent ideas, as are plans for improvements at several other campgrounds in the NWT, including those near Yellowknife, introducing flush toilets and solar powered showers.

I've said it before, if the NWT is going to bill itself as a "spectacular" place to visit, the first place it has to shore up are its parks. According to the government's report on parks, Naturally Spectacular, released earlier this year, park visitors from outside the NWT represent the single largest volume of tourists to the territory. There were some 32,600 bookings to the territory's parks in 2008, and this number will continue to climb the more our road system improves, and the more expensive (and uninviting) it becomes to travel by plane. Dressing up a parking lot with an outhouse and a few fire pits and calling it a campground won't cut it anymore.

As a total aside, I made what I thought was an astute observation after pulling into Sambaa Deh a couple weeks back.

In case you're not familiar, the Deh Cho region is one muddy place in May. You don't so much drive on the highways there but surf on them. Once safely parked, and whitened knuckles have been pried off the steering wheel, you step outside to find your vehicle has been transformed into a giant chocolate fudge cake. You half-expect to see a girl wearing a birthday ribbon come jumping out of the top, but no one does. Only mosquitoes come to greet you.

Every vehicle entering Sambaa Deh was covered completely in Deh Cho road muck. It made me wonder how much tourism value - and to Johnny Law - our new $10 "spectacular" plates will have in a territory full of dirt roads, at least in spring, or after a good rain.

Anyway, back to the parks. Sambaa Deh is one of the best anywhere in North America, I think, but the fact is NWT's campgrounds are wildly inconsistent. The three in the Yellowknife area, Fred Henne, Prelude, and Reid Lake, are in good shape. Others however - Little Buffalo River Crossing, for instance - are little more than a parking lot on the side of the road. Others still like Lady Evelyn Falls Territorial Park on the Kakisa River, seem a little tired to me.

This year was the first I've ever camped at the Fort Simpson campground - all in all a disappointment. Like Lady Evelyn it seems tired and run down. The campsite I had booked a month earlier was filled with piles of leaves waiting to be raked, and the roadway around a corrugated drain pipe at the entrance to the site was washed away.

It didn't matter anyway, as it turned out, because - surprise, surprise - the camp attendants didn't have any working Internet to monitor my reservation, so we just picked a different spot.

Lots of potential there. I mean, the campground is situated at the junction of two of the mightiest rivers in the world. I'm sure it would have the makings for a good hiking trail if the brambles and wailing wall of mud along the Liard River shoreline could be somehow overcome.

It's details, simple details, that hold our roadside tourism potential back.

• Mike W. Bryant is assignment editor for Yellowknifer. Contact him at 766-8236 or by e-mail at minder@nnsl.com