Today we traveled the Interstates between Appomattox and Williamsburg, Virginia, largely under a leaden sky, and didn't stop for much of anything. For most of the day the only sun we saw was for few moments at noon, when we had done our shopping at a Walmart in Richmond, and were just exiting the building with our shopping cart. But the sunny respite was brief, and we decided not to count on seeing it again.
On a brighter note, the forecast calls for an 80% chance of sun tomorrow for our visit to Colonial Williamsburg, so maybe we'll be able to snap a few photos of our adventures to show you. But today there just wasn't anything to shoot, and other then a couple of Civil War battlefield references along the Interstate, we didn't even see any points of interest to entice us into one of the many small towns we passed.
This evening we're staying at a beautiful but pricey KOA near Williamsburg, which might just turn out to be the nicest, most obviously well-run camp I've ever seen. Obviously, since this is the most expensive camp in which we've stayed this trip, I got to thinking about just what makes a great camp. I probably missed a few things, but here's the list that I came up with:
1. Lots of room between camp sites.
2. Ground-level sewer connections instead of needlessly elevated pipes.
3. Both 30 and 50 amp connections which are up-to-date and well maintained.
4. Either concrete or adequate gravel on entrance side of rig so you’re not stepping out on mud or wet grass.
5. Meticulously leveled sites whenever humanly possible.
6. Laundry facilities enough for at least three campers to be working simultaneously using three machines each.
7. An easy-to-use dump station with working flush water.
8. A well maintained picnic table and above-ground barbecue unit at each site.
9. Water spigot that extends far enough above ground so that you’re not down on your knees to hook up hoses.
10. Play area for children where feasible and supervision is possible.
11. A good supply of RV-related items in camp store so that most potential problems are addressed.
12. A good supply of grocery items so that minor food emergencies are addressed.
13. An easily-accessible propane filling operation for filling RV tanks, as well as the trained personnel to operate the site.
14. Easily-read site numbers.
15. No more than 20% of sites should be rented to long-term guests, or else the camp should state in the Good Sam book and other sources that camp sites might be severely limited because of long-termers. All long-term guests should be kept at one end of the park and made to keep their sites presentable.
16. Provisions for pets such as special exercise areas and plastic bag dispensers for waste. Also, laundry room should post sign asking that pet-related items NOT be washed in the park washing machines.
Okay, so the first item is sufficient room between camps. Just as it appears on my list, this item is very important to Concetta and me. Though your best bet for finding lots of room between your rig and the next guy's rig is to stay in state parks, if you do that you won't find many of the other items on my list.
We've seen all sorts of camp layouts in the last several years since we took up RVing, and space runs the gamut from incredibly spacious to so crowded you could almost hand your neighbor a cup of sugar without leaving your rig. We have only experienced this problem a few times, but the KOA in Grand Junction, Colorado is a good example. I think a minimum of twenty feet between rigs should be minimum, in our opinion, and twice that would be really, really nice.
The KOA camp where we're staying tonight near Colonial Williamsburg has about twenty feet between camps, possibly a bit more. There's sufficient room for a concrete or brick pad under a picnic table, as well as a barbecue grill, without making the sites feel crowded. Grass covers most of the space between sites. Of course a nice distance like twenty feet won't stifle sounds like running air conditioners, but it will dampen most other noises.
The next most important item I have listed is the need for a "ground level" sewer pipe in your campsite. Many, many, MANY camps install their sewer collection pipes so that they stick 8 to 10 inches above the ground. This makes it really difficult to get any sort of slope on your rig's sewer line as you run it from the exit pipe of your black and gray tanks over to the camp's in-ground pipe.
Every RVer knows about the standard scissors-style unit that you use to support your expandable plastic sewer line once you twist it onto the exit pipe on your rig. They come in both plastic and metal and allow you to establish a constantly-sloping gradient toward the camp's exit pipe. Without the gradient, water from your black and gray tanks will not effectively drain and might ultimately result in an embarrassing spill when you disconnect the line from your rig.
Sometimes when I'm unable to use the scissors support unit, I'm able to employ a couple of six-foot lengths of PVC rain gutter material. Supported at the RV end, and run towards the camp exit pipe, the gutters allow you to establish a gradient that is much steeper than the plastic or metal scissors supports can handle. These handy lengths of PVC should be in every RVers kit.
Next on my list is the power supply towers. You would think that if anything in a campsite should be up-to-date it definitely should be the power supply towers. But that turns out to be the case only about half of the time. Here in our KOA camp tonight the towers are in top notch shape. All the receptacles are new-looking and undamaged in any way. All the breakers work properly. And the lift-up door shuts properly. Plus, they park has provided a cable TV connection right on the power supply tower.
The very worst supply tower we've seen so far on this trip we found in a park just south of the Grand Canyon (photo left). There the guts of the tower were hanging out and I was truly reluctant to touch it at all. I'm not sure how they were getting away with such slipshod equipment, but later the clerk in the office told me the camp had been sold to a hotel chain and was about to be bulldozed. Not that such a safety violation would have kept them out of court if someone had gotten fried.
The biggest problem with power supply towers that I encounter is receptacles that are so old that the power cord from my rig will barely stay plugged. Were it not, sometimes, for the lid that swings down to cover the receptacles, I think the head of the cord would simply fall out.
Item number four is definitely a problem in many, many campsites. Camps simply don't make the spaces wide enough to accommodate both the rigs and the humans who need to exit the rigs. This is almost always a problem when they use expensive concrete. But even when they use cheaper gravel the camp owners still don't make the gravel wide enough. This means when you step out of your RV it's usually onto wet grass or even mud. And, if it's grass, they usually don't want you to use any pieces of carpet or matting you've brought with you as it kills the grass over time.
The best camps I've seen put a patio right next to the rig drive-up area so you can jockey the coach around until the door lies opposite the patio. The one I remember the best was a KOA in San Antonio, Texas. Their sites were gravel, and their brick patios were strategically located to make it easy to spot your door next to the brick expanse.
Here at the KOA in Williamsburg, we have a gravel site with a nice brick patio. So stepping out of the rig is great, but unfortunately, the gravel is too narrow which means when you step off the brick as you walk toward the front or rear of the rig it's onto wet grass. They really do try hard here to make your camping experience near perfect, but the spaces do need to be a bit wider.
Now to the leveling of sites. You would think that this would be the easiest part of any camp owner's regimen. Just tell the tractor jockey to make the darn sites level and you're done. But this turns out to be the case only about half the time in our experience. Though I don't really mind dragging out the drive-up blocks, it does extend both your set-up and break-down times another quarter hour or so.
As you may have noted in the past, I built my own drive-up blocks out of treated pieces of 2"x6" boards. I crafted the blocks in a three-level elevation change, which almost always lifts the rig as high as I need it. I made four of these blocks so that I could lift all four wheels in the rear, or I could lift both wheels in the front, and perhaps one set of the dualies in the rear if the rig was off level side to side.
Usually, if you're going to encounter a campsite that is especially out of level, most times it's going to be in a county-run facility where a minimum of money has been spent on site leveling. You may remember that we encountered this phenomena at a county-run site near Roodhouse, Illinois, where I had to lift the front end of the rig nine full inches off the ground. That particular time I not only used the drive-up blocks, but an additional stack of pieces of wood that I carry along for just such emergencies.
It looks like it's time for bed so I'll leave off finishing this tonight. Look back a day or two from now and I'll try and finish it. Until then, we wish you Happy Travels!
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