9/19 Punderson State Park, Southwest of Cleveland, OH

These photos are actually of a couple of stays I made in this state park in the last month.  I used to stay here only in the cooler weather in spring and fall because this state park had only 20 amps of electric on its hookups, which meant you could not run air conditioning.  A couple of years ago, they upgraded the entire park to 30 and 50 amps, and also added a dozen or so full hookups sites including water and sewer hookups.  

In addition, they have built a new sewer treatment plant, which meant removing a lot of trees in the new sewer construction area.  This resulted in my finding a handful of new full hookup sites in this area that also had a clear southwest exposure for my Dish satellite TV service.  YEA!!!

One of the nice things about this state park is that it is one of the larger ones, so it has a hotel, restaurant, beach area, archery site, hiking and equine trails, sledding area in winter, and a lot of other things to do.   

 

This is the campground check-in area and small store.   You can get firewood and rent bikes here. 

 

 There is also a nature center, but it is open only on weekends, I believe. 

 

Overall, Punderson is heavily wooded, and many of the tent sites are tucked up in the woods, so are mostly hidden from the roadway.  These numbered parking sites indicate that tent sites are located at each of the marked sites.     

 

 

Before they put in the new full hookup sites near the new sewer treatment facility, my favorite spot in this campground was on top of the hill where the water tower was located.  There are fewer sites up here and not much traffic so it has always been a quieter place on busy weekends.   

 

One of the nice things about Ohio state parks is that each of the restroom and shower buildings also contains a laundry room with $1 per load washers and dryers.  I had to run three loads today!! 

 

These are some of the electric-only hookup sites near the water tower.  Got good cell service up here also!  

 

 

Most of the camp sites, however, are down by the lake.  This roadway is typical, and it has some of the older full hookup sites. 

The older full hookup sites are not bad, except most of them are under trees and in places that get muddy after rain. 

 My site here is one of the newer sites.  The parking area is a little wider and the hookups are on a cement pad, which means they don't get muddy or turn into ponds after rains.   They are also a lot more level than the regular sites.  From the second photo below, you can see how much longer these new sites are!!  A wider parking pad means you no longer will have to step out of your RV and land in mud!!   That is a HUGE improvement, as if the paved picnic area. 

My site is directly across from the new sewer treatment plant.  It is working, but they are tearing down an older building and putting gravel around the new areas.  I assume they will be doing landscaping in the spring.  The building in the back is the new one, and the one being torn down using jackhammers and a bulldozer is the brick building in the front.  They were working on the roof today, and apparently it was very strongly built and they seemed to be doing a lot of work with little result.  

 

 

They seem to be adding another full hookup site here, but it is very noisy this close to the treatment center, so I don't think it will make campers very happy with all the noise.   

Not too far down the road from Punderson is this county nature center.  I stopped in and took a look at the nature center, but it was too hot to walk any of the trails.  I'll come back in the spring.