Neither Apple nor Google Maps had any idea where this campground was located. Needless to say, Ford’s navigation system was also clueless. All of our GPS systems wanted to take us to the center of town. We had to set our GPS systems to the fairgrounds to find this campground.
The frustrating thing wasn’t the GPS systems confusion about the park’s location, it was the rain and cold as we were setting up. It was miserable as we unhitched Rosie, our Airstream trailer.
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| Sign at entrance of this campground |
This was a large campground with more than 180 sites. All of the sites were angled the same way and equally spaced. This gave the appearance of a large parking lot.
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| Rosie in the campground among friends |
We had a first at this park. The power connections were positioned in a way on our site that prevented using our surge protector. I was very uncomfortable directly plugging Rosie into their power connection without a protector.
Fortunately, the rain stopped after the first day. Temperatures remained cold and dipped below freezing one night.
There was a horse exhibition over the weekend at the fairgrounds. It was interesting to catch a few glimpses of that competition and hear the sounds of the horses.
Some of the places we visited while at this campground were the Rip van Winkle gardens, the Tabasco factory and Martin Cajun Accordions. The gardens and accordion factories were interesting. The Tabasco factory tour did not live up to its hype.
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| Rip Van Winkles Gardens on Johnson Island |
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| A Catholic Church near our campground |
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Enjoying a Cajun music performance at the Martin Accordion Factory |
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| Avery Island Jungle Experience |
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| Bamboo near the Tabasco factory |
We had another first while camping in this park. I used our Garmin GPS to find a gas station near the park selling gas at a cheaper price than the overpriced station across from this campground. Gas Buddy found a strong contender less than four miles away. I loaded the station in the GPS as our destination and started following its directions. I was surprised when it turned me onto a street with about 30 cars in front of me and everyone was stopped. I was in an elementary school car pickup lane inside a school zone and there was no passing or getting out of that lane. The lane moved quicker than I feared and soon I was at the point where a teacher came up to my truck and asked what child I was there to pick up. I told her my GPS made a bad decision routing me to a gas station and I was gullible enough to follow it. She told me to stop at child loading area two and explain my story to the teacher there. I did and was told to follow the car in loading area one away from the school. It seemed as though the shortcut Garmin came up with added about 30 minutes to that trip.
The big question unanswered remains. Is this a resort as the name boldly stated? There are no published standards for the title "resort" campgrounds. This campground had a lazy river and a swimming pool. Of course, these were not open because of the weather. I’m sure the place had many exciting amenities during fair season, but it was a stretch for me to call this place a resort during the campground's off season.
Here are some specifics about this campground:
- There were multiple loops in the campground
- Our site was a pull-thru
- Our site had no shade
- Our site could be described as a parking lot as the sites were close together
- Our site was paved with concrete and was level
- Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service
- There was an obstruction near the power connection that prevented us from using our surge protector
- Our site had a water connection
- Our site had a sewer connection
- The rules sheet said that trash left in bags along the road would be picked up by 9 a.m. That didn’t happen over the weekend
- There was a bathhouse in the campground. It wasn’t heated and was very cold
- The park provided very slow WiFi service. It would work for a few minutes then report that it no longer was connected to the Internet. It goes without saying that it was frustrating and unusable
- AT&T provided 3 bars of 5G voice and data service over our campsite
- We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC and PBS using Rosie’s TV antenna. Digital channels seen were Antenna-TV, Circle, Court-TV, ION, LAFF, ME-TV and MY-TV
- There were restaurants and shopping nearby
- This was a pet friendly park
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| Enjoying lunch in a restaurant with Cajun food and live music |
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