Review Detail

Perhaps Waymen's ICE report did generate some thought and actions by the MWR folks that oversee the management of Lake O’Neill. We recently completed a two-week stay at Lake O’Neill. Over the years we have enjoyed visiting Southern California and usually stay at Lake O’Neill. We choose Lake O’Neill because of its location relative to POI’s north, south and east of Camp Pendleton. We also give strong consideration to all the other things that encourage you to stay at a MCG. By no means are we saying that Lake O’Neill is ideal, there are many procedural and physical issues that have a lot of room for change and/or improvement. On a previous visit we planned for a one-month stay at Lake O’Neill and had to play the game of two weeks with full-hookups then move to a partial hookups site. We reduced our planned one-month stay to four-weeks in order to avoid having to move for a third time to another site. Packing up, moving and then setting up an RV again at a different site is not an easy task. In addition, the move to a different site was very disruptive to our planned recreational activities. Since that visit we have limited our stay at Lake O’Neill to two-weeks thus avoiding having to move to a different site. It is time to get back to Waynem's review. The homesteaders that were staying in the no-hookups sites are gone. There appears to be a few active duty and retired homesteaders rotating between the full and partial hookup sites. During our stay there were many open sites in the full and partial hookup sites. Overall, the appearance of Lake O’Neill has improved with the elimination of the “trailer park” stigma. We believe that management is well aware of the shortcomings of the back-in sites. Any changes to the landscape will probably require environmental approval and of course the money for construction. There was one ongoing project while we were there. It looks like they are building a new restroom next to the full-hookup back-in site #49. We were also told that the campground host positions will be eliminated on 9/12. We enjoy staying at Lake O’Neill and will return.