Our go-to place when we want to camp near home is Gunter Hill Corp of Engineers (COE) Campground.We called the campground volunteer's office and space was available, but we were told we needed to call Reserve America to reserve a site.
If you have never called Reserve America, your call is quickly answered by a computerized voice who asks a series of questions. The detailed instructions and examples spewed out by the computer tends to drag on the pseudo conversation. The starter questions included what campground you want to reserve, when your plan to arrive there, how long you will stay, what type of camper you have, it’s length, the number of people in your party and if you need utilities. Eventually, the computer responds by saying this call is being transferred to an agent to complete the reservation.
The “real person” agent starts off asking the same questions you spent the last 15 minutes responding to with the computerized voice. It is as if the computer portion of the call is to test your patience and to see if you really, really, really, really want to make a reservation.
Sadly, information sharing between the computer voicemail system and the agent wasn’t the only problem. The agent was convinced that the campground we wanted reservations in was either closed or full. After multiple attempts to tell the agent we called the volunteer at the park before getting ensnared in the Reserve America phone tree and we were told the park had plenty of open sites for the night, the agent said that he removed his computer filters and suddenly discovered that Gunter Hill existed and had open campsites. He could book us in for one night. Finally!
I think we will use the app next time and save ourselves from more than 30 minutes of annoying conversation with a computer that doesn’t share information or an agent who couldn’t find an opening in a park that was half full.
 |
| One of a half-dozen deer seen in this park |
We arrived a few minutes before 5 p.m. and noticed the volunteer looked through a stack of check-in cards to find our information. When asked about what appeared to be a large number of late check-ins, the camp host said those were for the Halloween campers who reserve early to make sure they get reservations and he expected them to show up over the weekend, put their decorations up and enjoy camping there over the holiday.
We camped in Gunter Hill several years ago over Halloween and it was fun. Many of the sites were decorated and children in costumes were going site-to-site trick-or-treating. It appears that this year will be well attended as some sites were already decorated.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- There were two main loops in the campground. The Antioch loop is older, has only electric and water connections and sites were paved with dirt. The Catoma loop had paved roads, concrete site pads and full hook-ups
- Our site was a back in
- Our site had shade
- Most sites had ample space on both sides
- Our site was paved with concrete and level
- Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
- Our site had a water connection
- Our site had a sewer connection
- There was a dump station in this park
- The trash dumpsters were at the entrance of each campground loop. It was easy to walk there with your trash
- There were several bathhouses in the campground. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we did not check on their conditions
- The park did not provide WiFi service
- AT&T provided 2 bars of 4G voice and data service over our campsites
- We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. More than 40 digital channels were seen including Antenna-TV, Buzzr, Circle, CW, Decades, Ion, Get, Grit, Justice, LAFF and ME-TV
- Restaurants and shopping are a 10 minute drive from the campground
- This was a pet friendly park
Unloading and cleaning Rosie after a trip is always tiring. We were glad we decided to spend another night in Rosie and unload in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment