8/29 - 31 Wednesday - Friday When you are retired, it is sometimes hard to keep track of the days. I was sitting around and looked at the atomic clock that shows the date and began to question why the 29th seemed important. It was important, as we were due to be on the road to Wilmington, Ohio and the 1000 Trails campground for three nights. About an hour later, we were on the road heading mostly south. A quick trip to Flying J for fuel and propane, when we suddenly decided to be lazy and just eat in their restaurant. About an hour later, seriously stuffed, we were back on the road.
Arriving at 1000 Trails about 6:30, we were extremely disappointed to find it is an old park that is about 8–10 years behind what are now normal amenities. They still have only 30-amp service at all sites; something we normally find only in the smaller, older family owned campgrounds. Although we elected to use a site with no sewer because the rain was picking up significantly and it was a site we could pull through vs. all the sites with sewer are back-ins requiring us to unhook the car in both driving rain and a major lightning storm. We were still surprised to find a major park chain with sites that lacked this basic service. We managed to get into our spot just after the skies open and the thunder really began to roll. We did not even bother to open the slides until after the storm had passed. The winds were severe enough that it fell a Bradford Pear tree with a trunk over 12 inches in another part of the park.
Thursday morning I took a drive around the park to see if our ‘first blush’ at the park was warranted or not; bottom line, it was worse. The roads are one-lane gravel and many were extremely rutted. It is possible the torrential rain contributed to the poor condition of some roads, but others looked like they were already rough to begin with. The tennis court had grass growing through the playing surface. The pavilion by our RV appears not to have had any attention in a long time. There area black cobwebs as well as general trash, dirt and leaves.
When we took the tour and were given the presentation by Greg. Finally, after 2:15 hours he got to the point of, “and all this will be yours for only $17,995” price tag, we knew this was not for us. I think this was just to be a member, and then you still had to pay $700 per year for life (it is a lifetime membership) for the 1000 Trails part (most of their parks are on the west coast where they began in Oregon plus many in the central portion of the east coast, but quite sparse in the other 40+ states). They wanted you to also pay an additional $149 per year for some extra park locations they only partner with. For this latter money, I think you get some phone numbers and two or three books. These parks offer things like one night guaranteed for $8 (no presumption of the services you would have; it might be dry-camping) or ½ off the regular rate; but definitely not free. In any case, it would take a very long time, at three nights here and another three there, to be of value to even someone who is on the road 365 days a year. So, to make the day better, we located a Mexican restaurant run by Mexicans who knew how to prepare food; the first good Mexican food we have found in almost 7 months!
Okay, so here we are on Friday and at 5PM, there is a knock on the door. It is Ruth, the sales manager, telling us we were supposed to leave today. This means that our reservation was messed up yet again by Donna who was to have corrected the 14-day mess-up made by Chris. We began packing and lacked only running the rooms in and starting the engine when she returned to say they had counted the spaces and they just had enough spaces so we could remain for the night on our site vs. dry camping on the parking lot; the original offer. Oh, how quickly can we get away from this place? !!!! We promise not to come back! Someone in our camping group said of another campground, “this is our first and will be last visit to this location”.
