Sometimes you are simply lucky when it comes to picking a campground for the night. We figured how far we wanted to travel our first day heading home from the North Carolina Outer Banks, then used the AllStays, RVParky and Campendium apps on our iPhones to find a campground.
The campground closest to our target destination for the night had horrible reviews on all three apps. It appeared that the campground was nice, but the owners enjoyed abusing their guests. We decided to avoid that one.
Our next choice was the Dan Nicholas Park. This was a county campground in Rowan County, North Carolina. It was farther than we wanted to travel that day and it was farther from I-85 than we really wanted to go for a simple one-nighter.
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| A sign at Dan Nicholas Park |
Another problem was that we would be staying there on a Friday evening in August and that is prime camping time for families. Still, it was worth giving the park a call to see if they could squeeze us in for the night.
We were impressed with how friendly and helpful the park’s staff was when we called. The campground had a two night minimum over weekends, but found us a site reserved by another family the following night. That meant we could be scheduled for one night and not their normal two day minimum over weekends.
The friendliness of the staff carried over when we arrived. The campground staff members made sure we knew of the other amenities the park offered across the lake and where the bike path was to the other side of the park.
We quickly parked Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer and rode our bikes over the bridge because the “other side” was closing in about an hour.
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| Rosie in Dan Nicholas Park's campground |
The other side included a nice park for families. It included paddle boats on the lake, a carousel, a train, petting zoo, miniature golf, tennis courts, an expanded playground for the children, a water splash area and then a gem mine. It was a surprisingly nice and fun park across the lake.
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| The bridge to the amusement area of the park |
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| Riding our bikes |
There was another family that joined us on the train ride. They selected the area close to the engine and we took the caboose. We enjoyed the train ride through the amusement area of the park.
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| On the train ride |
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| We decided to sit in the caboose |
The animal experience and the gem mine were closed when we reached them so they will have to be on our agenda for another day.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- Out site was a back-in
- Our site was paved with packed dirt and we needed to use our leveling tools to correct a side-to-side lean
- Our site had a distant view of the lake through the trees
- Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
- Our site had a water connection
- Our site did not have a sewer connection
- There was a dump station in the park
- According to the TVTowers iPhone app, we should have been able to watch about a dozen TV channels. We plan to fix our antenna problem before we head out again
- AT&T didn’t place a usable signal over our site
- The park provided surprisingly good WiFi service
- The park had several bathhouses. The one nearest Rosie was clean and well maintained
It was great to return to the woods in Rosie after spending a week along the Atlantic coast. We loved how the sites in this park were wooded with a nice amount of space between rigs. This park had the feel of campgrounds developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
What a great find! We really enjoyed our visit to Dan Nicholas Campground.
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| Mom and her babies on the lake |
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| On the train ride |
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