Campground Cretins
I love the fulltime RV lifestyle, but I’m sure glad I don’t own a campground! If I did, I think Bad Nick would be in the morning news for throttling somebody within a week.
In our ten years on the road, we have met a lot of RV park owners, managers, and workampers, and they have shared some real horror stories with us, and we have witnessed more than a few ourselves. Most RVers are nice folks, and seem to know their way around their rig and a campsite. But there are always a few, whether through ignorance or because they are just jerks, who really make me respect the folks running the campgrounds.
Several years ago we were at an RV park in Wisconsin when a couple in a motorhome refused to be guided into their site by the staff, and then cursed and screamed at each other as they tried and failed to get their rig parked several times.
After disrupting the peace and quite of the campground for quite some time, they finally got parked and plugged in. Suddenly the man was yelling again, this time claiming that something was wrong with the campground’s electric pedestal because it had fried everything inside his RV. We had known the folks in the RV that was parked in that site previously had no problems, and they left only an hour or so earlier. But this guy was convinced that the campground owner was responsible for his problems, even though he later said the same thing had happened twice before at other campgrounds.
Just yesterday, Bob and Gita Patel, owners of Elkhart Campground, told us about somebody who pulled in at midnight Thursday and promptly ran over the water bib on his pull-thru RV site, creating a flood. Bob had to get out of bed and make a late night repair, and the next morning the RVer was amazed that they expected him to pay for the damages!
It was just a year ago that we watched a fellow in a big motorhome, here at the same campground, drive over a large rock, well off the road, and get his rig high centered. He ignored everyone’s attempts to help him, and managed to do a lot of damage to his rig as he gunned it and finally got free. Then he expected the campground owners to pay for repairs to his rig!
Every campground has had RVers who pull in late at night, hook up to electric and water, grab a few hours sleep, and then sneak out without paying. Last year when we spent several weeks at the Casa Grande Fairgrounds in Arizona preparing for our Gypsy Gathering rally, we watched a group of five Canadian RVs come in every Friday night after the office was closed, dump their holding tanks, hook up to water and electric all weekend, and then take off late Sunday night to park at nearby truck stops and empty shopping centers where they could freeload all week. A couple of guys in the group bragged that they never paid for camping or dumping all winter long.
I have also heard workampers complaining about the nasty ways some guests leave the restrooms, showers, and laundry rooms. One exasperated woman said she and her husband had owned a bar in a college town, and the young people who came to their establishment to party never left the restrooms in such poor condition.
Another workamper told me that a guest had threatened to sue the campground under the Americans With Disabilities Act because they told her to get her dog out of the swimming pool. According to the dog’s owner, it was a service animal, but the only service they saw it performing was fetching a ball her kids repeatedly threw into the water for it to retrieve.
These kinds of people are in the minority, of course. Most RVers are nice folks, but there are always those bad apples that spoil everything. But it would only take one or two to push Bad Nick over the edge.
Thought For The Day – I keep telling myself I’m not fat, I’m just swollen.
