Saturday, March 21, 2015

KOC Kampground - New Iberia, Louisiana

There used to be a chain of restaurants in the south called Po Folks. Less than ten survive today. If you ate there, you know that the menu was full of country cooking and spelling errors.
That gimmick was cute the first time you visited a Po Folks restaurant. It started to grow old the second time you went there. I discovered that I prefer menus that passed a spelling check.
There was a "cringe" factor when we pulled Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer, up to the KOC Kampground in New Iberia, Lousiana. The faded sign along the road clearly proclaimed that we were entering a "kampground." Memories of drinking from mason jars at Po Folks started flashing through my mind.
Campground sign at entrance
We arrived with a group of 25 Airstreamers as part of a Wally Byam caravan. We joined the group a few days late because of a medical issue. As we pulled into the park, our caravan group was leaving for a special event. The campground staff person escorting us to our assigned site apologized for it being so muddy by saying it had rained for four days before we arrived. Our small site was a mud pit and I was certain that our truck would get stuck in the parking process.
After asking if that site was the best the park had to offer, the park host gave us a quick tour of several open sites there. It appeared that some people stored their RVs in that park and probably abandoned them years ago. Fortunately, there was one dry site surrounded by active campers. We took it.
Rosie among the WBCCI caravan units
Another thing at this park reminded me of Po Folks. Both places loved to put signs on everything. The front door to the campground office was covered with signs mostly declaring what we could not do while in the park. The signs took an ugly turn in the restroom as some were addressed to "You Monkeys." I guess they know their normal clientele.
This park is not a destination, but a stop on the way to somewhere else.
If you are asking why we stopped at this place, the answer is simple--it was part of a WBCCI caravan. We were not there to enjoy the park, but to visit some interesting places in that area. In that context, the campground was OK. There were some amazing places our caravan visited while camped at this park.
While the park may not be on our "A" list, it appeared that the park's staff tried very hard to be helpful to us while we were there.
Here are some specifics about this park:
  • Sites have water, electrical and sewer connections. Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp service.
  • Our site also had a cable TV connection. We didn't use it because an army of ants were roaming around in the cable-TV connection box and I didn't want to provide them with a quick path to our trailer by hooking-up the coax.
  • We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC. We also saw Antenna-TV, CW, ME-TV and THiS digital signals at this park.
  • The park has WiFi--sort of. It was a challenge to get Google's main page to load over the park's WiFi. I could not help but think that my old 300 baud modem I used 30 years ago was faster than KOC's WiFi.
  • AT&T provided strong 4G service over the park for voice. For some reason, the 4G data service tended to lag. You can lower your frustration level a little by skipping the park's WiFi and creating a smartphone hotspot.
  • Some sites are tiny while others are not. While our site wasn't the smallest, the view out our back window was of the camper less than 10 feet away.
  • Maybe we were a little too paranoid, but we left nothing outside at this park. That feeling may have been shared because we didn't see many chairs or other normal things you would see at campgrounds.
  • Sites do not have picnic tables nor fire rings. That is OK because I doubt many people want to spend time outside their RVs in this park.
There are several state parks in this area and anyone of them must be a better choice than this park.


1 comment:

  1. Agreed!
    I've never been there and I live here! Seems kind of "shady" --not in a good way. We have interesting places to visit here, but we are not known for our campgrounds :(
    The closest "nice" campground that I know of is Cajun Palms. Although, I've never been there, people seem to appreciate it.

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