This will be my last post for a few weeks, as I am heading to the UK for a new weeks soon. If you want to follow me there, check the blog site to the right.
Anyway, I wanted to post some photos of the newly constructed full-hookup sites at West Branch SP, where I often stay when I am in Ohio visiting family. The last post described very similar new full-hookup sites at another state park in Ohio, but there are some changes with these at West Branch.
The biggest change is that they repaved the new sites at this state park and widened them slightly. Note in the photo below that this site has a foot or so of extra space, which means i can step out of my door onto asphalt instead of mud.
This photo below shows the extra asphalt on the wider site that makes getting to your door a LOT easier!!!
This photo shows one of the new sites without a rig parked on it.
The utility pad is one of the nicest I have seen anywhere!!! Nice to be able to walk behind your rig and hook up without getting your shoes muddy. And the nice, green cement-filled post will keep campers from running into the water and electric hookups when they back up.
Now for the problem areas. The drainage ditches along the campground make backing into a site a little tricky, and having these exposed pipes so close to the entrance to the campsites makes it even more tricky. If I miss the driveway and get into on of these "holes," I will end up having to call CoachNet to send a wrecker to lift my vehicle up and out.
The one on this side is not so bad.
There is another problem in this new area. The streets are very narrow, and while it helps that the roads are one-way, many people park vehicles very close to the roadway, causing other large vehicles driving past, especially on curves, to end up driving on the grass. This causes ruts in the mud, as shown in the next two photos. They really needed to make these a couple of feet wider to prevent this mess.
Another one of the improvements this state park really needs to make is replacing the dump station. There are several problems with it: 1) It is down in a little valley with a sharp turn required to get down to it, 2) There is no lighting down there, so it is hard to use in the dark, and 3) The slope makes it hard to accurately determine how much fresh water you have or to fill your fresh water tanks completely.
This shows the first entrance to the dump area, but unfortunately, it does not accurately show the slope.
The fresh water fills are on the outside, past the dump area, and on a fairly steep slope. The slope makes it tricky to completely fill tanks as the water in them tends to want to find its own level.
The second entrance to the dump area requires a sharp turn for rigs leaving the campground. I don't have much of a problem with it with my motorhome, but very long trailers plus tow vehicles do have trouble. Some cannot make the turn, so the line gets longer for the other entrance.
It would be a LOT easier and reduce lines at the dump station for the
state park to put in a couple of new, water-fill stations somewhere
else, such as the large, flat parking lot that is nearby.
Below is an example of what many of the camping pads look like at West Branch. In other words, they are short and no where near level. I refer to these as "ski ramps" because they are so steep that many RVs cannot possibly get level on them Most are also electric-only, meaning that you have to hit the dump station area to fill with fresh water before you set up.
Clearly, the people who paved these sites several decades ago had never done any RV camping so they did not understand the need to make sites level. (Have you ever gotten out of bed in the middle of the night and lurched downhill?) Also, at that time, maybe 30-40 years ago, rigs were a lot shorter. The state park needs to replace many of these sites, making them wider and longer, and certainly more level.
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