Had an email requesting that we provide information about the people we meet and some of the RV parks we visit so I will start including that information in my future post. I will summarize the past few months.
The first two months we stayed at Magnolia Forest RV Park while we handled the sale of the house. This is a new park probably only one year old. It is a gated park and is very well maintained. You had to actually fill out an application like you were renting an apartment, I don’t think they have many transient campers, most seemed to be there for extended periods. No pool or cabins to rent but there was a pond where you can fish (catch and release) and they had a very nice dog park that was fenced in where you could turn your dog loose as long as your were with it. They did not sale propane for those RV’s needing it but they did arrange for a service to come out monthly to fill tanks. They are also the ones that arranged for the pressure washing company to come out and clean RVs. It was very quite.
We have stayed at several KOA parks and they are very similar in what they offer. Most have the cabins you can rent or you can get full hookups for the RV and they usually have WiFi and cable for TV. The WiFI is not always the best, although one we stayed at had fantastic WiFI, almost as good as what we had at our house. It was surprising since they were heavily wooded and you had to use their cable TV because the satellite could not get a signal.
Private campgrounds have varied, the one we are at now has full hookups and cabins to rent. Their Wifi is a joke, they say they have it but 99% of the time it will not connect. Don’t even get Bruce started on the parking for the RV. Said they were able to handle big rigs but that is also a joke. Whoever designed it did not take into account slide outs on an RV, they put the electrical box so close to the concrete pad that it is nightmare trying to get the RV parked where you can open all your slides without hitting the box. Bruce went back to office to try to get them to switch us to one of the other open slots but they said they were all reserved. We tried calling the place we had stayed last year but they had no openings. We gave up and parked the passenger side a little over onto the grass and lined it up where we could get the slide out pass the electrical box. You are not supposed to park on the grass per their rules but we don’t care we also had to park the car in the grassy area as not sufficient room left on the concrete because of where we had to place the RV. Normally we can park either in the front or the back of the RV. The top of the sewer pipe is about a foot above the ground level so it makes for an issue as liquids don’t flow uphill. Fortunately we have a rack to hold our hose up high but many of the other sites have theirs laying on the ground. Needless to say we will not be giving them a high rating.
The park we stated at in Lake City was a former KOA. It was pretty bad in that it has been allowed to run down (probably why they are former KOA), appear to have a lot of long term campers that have trashed around their areas. The sewer pipe at our site was broke and Bruce went to the office and told them. They came and picked up the piece of pipe but did to fix it. Since it was broke off below ground level I am guessing that lots of dirt washed into the pipe around our connection when we had a heavy rain one day. The water pressure was so low it was hard to shower. They will also get a low rating.
The last private park we stayed at was pretty good except trying to turn into the entrance off of a main highway that constantly backed up because of a left hand tune lane.
The private park we stay at in Pensacola is nice. Full hook ups and a pretty good WiFi signal. No pool or cabins to rent. My younger sister mentioned another park for us to try next time, apparently it is on a lake in the area.
In terms of views, the Stephen C. Foster State Park was the best. Of course no cell signal but the cottages looked nice and they had a laundry room by the bathroom facilities. Surprised to see a laundry room in a state park.
So much for parks, now an example of someone we have met.
The most unique has to be an older rather ragged looking lady we meet during our first month at the park in Magnolia. She came to our door one evening as we were getting ready to go somewhere. I stepped outside to talk with her and got to hear her rather long story of how she has been called on by God to proclaim the second coming of Jesus. As part of her mission she is buy a bunch of motor coaches for use by her group (reporters, photographers and musicians that will be traveling with her) and she was interested in our Ventana. My first thought was that she wanted me to let her in our coach to look at it and my second thought was she was going to try to convenience me to donate the coach to her cause. I got to hear her long story of how she has been looking at coaches in Florida and God has told her to buy the Ventana and told her the price she should offer. She said the dealership in Florida agreed with her offer but she did not have the money yet but was expecting it to come in shortly. She wanted to know where we bought ours and did I think she should visit with them. Since I was not happy with our dealership, I immediately encouraged her to go see them. About that time Bruce came outside and she started over with her story. Not sure how she got in the park, we guess she was staying there in one of the RVs. We did walk around later trying to locate her but no luck.