Cozy Rosie: White Acres Campground - Bardstown, Kentucky, Churchill Downs, Louisville, Kentucky Derby

Tuesday, July 11, 2017

White Acres Campground - Bardstown, Kentucky, Churchill Downs, Louisville, Kentucky Derby

Derby week in Louisville is a crazy and fun time. We parked during Derby Week in the White Acres Campground near Bardsville (Kentucky) because it was about 45 minutes away from Louisville. That is close enough to slip into Louisville, then escape before things turn wacky over the Kentucky Derby.

In front of Churchill Downs during Derby Week

To put things in perspective, it doesn't take much to nudge things into a crazy spin during Derby Week. Still, there probably isn't a more exciting time to visit the Louisville area.
We didn't expect cold and wind while camping in White Acres Campground. Temperatures in the low 40s and winds gusting to 45 MPH plus rain made it difficult to enjoy anything outdoors while we were there.

This campground has a few quirks that you rarely see on the road. The first is shared hookups. I'm sure it saves money when building a campground to share the hookup sites. That means that one trailer has to face north and the other south. It also means that you are parked very close to your neighbor sharing your connections.

Shared utilities between sites

Overview of the park

Besides being parked too close to your neighbor, this style of parking trailers next to each other means that someone may have to exit the park by driving through an open field. As things turned out, it rained the night before we were to depart and the field became too soggy to be a viable option. Fortunately, the campers next to us had a four-wheel drive and they needed that extra traction to back out of their site.

The second odd thing was that the park only offered 50 amp service. I guess you can say that the campground is more big-rig friendly than anything else. The problem with that line of logic is that big rigs are more likely to get stuck in the mud when exiting the park.
Here are some specifics about this park.

There is one camping loop in this park. Several of the sites are heading down a sharp slope that appears to be along the path that excess water runs off the property.
Our site, along with all other sites, had only 50 amp power connections. We had to use our 50-to-30 amp converter cable for Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer.
In addition to electrical service, our site had a water connection. We were told that water pressure was high in the park and we needed to make sure we used our water pressure regulator.
Our site had a sewer connection.
There was a bathhouse near the front of this park. That put it a long, long, long way from the camping sites. It was in an old barn that appeared to be low on the maintenance list. We were not curious enough to see what was behind the doors and its condition, but several fellow campers did. Their descriptions included words similar to "disgusting, moldy and awful." I'm glad we kept our distance from the bathhouse.
The park has WiFi service, but it was very slow. How slow? I measured it at 130 baud and that was less than half the speed of my first 300 baud modem.
Fortunately, AT&T placed a strong 4G voice and data signal over the park. We created an iPhone hotspot and avoided the park's WiFi.
Our site was mostly grass/weeds with some gravel mixed in. It was not level and became very slick when it rained.
We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and PBS using Rosie's TV antenna. Plus, we were able to see Antenna, CW, GET, ME-TV and several other digital channels.

There is one more item that we need to bring up. This park had a bumper crop of ticks and red bugs. An alarming number of people in our group found ticks or red bugs on their bodies and pets while camping in White Acres. You need to take precautions to protect yourself from these pests and check yourself often while camping here.

This is not a park we would willingly return to in the future.