Review Detail

We arrived in a driving rainstorm at 8pm, with no reservations. Pulled up next to the office and waited for the rain to at least allow us to open the door without drowning. The office was closed at that hour, so when the rain eased up a bit, we went in search of the on-duty host. Found that there were two hosts, and BOTH were OFF-DUTY. Some guy at the bath house said to "just find an empty slot and take an envelope from the registration shelter over there." (Like the self register deals at some national and state parks). The instructions said to "drop the completed envelope with payment into the mail slot." However, no mail slot was evident at the office/bath house, so I just decided to figure it out in the morning. There were plenty of empty sites, so I chose one, hooked up, and fell into bed for some much needed sleep. Next morning, when my wife headed for the bath house, she found a keypad on the door, to which she didn't have the combination. Since there was no host on duty to ask, yet another helpful stranger was kind enough to give it to her. About that same time, I took a walk around the camp, with a cup of coffee in hand to see what was what. As I walked by the two off-duty host sites, one of the hosts must have seen this suspicious looking stranger, because he came out in his bathrobe to see what I was up to. I told him I was trying to pay my fee so I could get on the road ASAP. He told me to wait a minute to let him put on some clothes, and ten minutes later he opened the office, took my credit card, and I gave him some OJT on how to use the credit card machine. Regarding the mail slot, it was on the door of the former "office," which is a tiny shack that looks like a poorly maintained tool shed. My off-duty host informed me they just hadn't gotten around to changing the instructions yet. Hmmmmm... Now, to the campground itself. The new office/bath house/day room is a wonderful facility. It's so new they hadn't got the furniture in the office part organized yet. The paint smelled like it was still drying. There'll be WIFI, but the off-duty host said it wasn't installed yet. From my walk around, it appears that about 75% of the concrete pad installations are completed and the contractors were on-site at 7am examining the effects of the previous night's deluge. Those areas to the sides of the road and concrete pads were complete quagmires. Pity the young troop living in a tent in that swamp near our site. The good news is that the concrete pads in the old section of the campground are a much needed improvement. The bad news is that, even with the upgraded electric, water and sewer hookups, they're on the wrong side for half of the users, since they went for the cheap solution and paired them back to back. Regarding the electric hookups, there was a sign on the bulletin board at the registration shelter that said in big black letters, "THE ELECTRICITY IN THIS CAMPGROUND IS BELOW 110 VOLTS." Seeing that, I got out my precision voltmeter and checked it before hooking up (I would have anyway) and found that it was in fact 117.5 volts, a perfectly acceptable voltage for normal electric connections. I suspected it would be normal, because all the concrete padded sites had brand new junction boxes and wiring. Must be another instruction they "just haven't gotten around to changing." There are six new back-in sites ajacent to the bath house, separate from the main loop. They all have the hookups correctly located. The road into the campground and around the loop is made of compacted red dirt and heavy gravel mix. It is raised above the swampy areas and about even with the concrete pads, so you can have a smooth back-in. The road appeared to drain well after the deluge (into the low swampy areas -- poor tent guy), and didn't appear to have suffered any noticeable washout around the edges. And you could walk to the bath house without tracking mud onto raised surfaces. With all that standing water in the low areas, I expect in a couple more weeks there'll be a serious mosquito problem, unless they have a major abatement program going for the base. Shortly after paying the bill, we left and noted on the way out that both hosts were still off duty.