I haven't posted in a while because I have returned for a few days to T.H. Stone Memorial State Park, and I posted about that earlier this month. I am headed out today for another Florida state park on the Atlantic and will post about that in a few days. In the meantime, here is a story that happened to me about 9 or 10 years ago that was a kind of horror RVing experience!
I had made reservations in a large campground in the Nevada town of Pahrump, which is about 30 miles west of Las Vegas. The campground is part of a large casino, but seemed like a good place to stay. A couple of days before I was to arrive there, I got a phone call from the campground office asking when I would be arriving and letting me know there would be "a few trick and treaters" and asking if I wanted to pass out candy. She said they would be walking around the campground from about 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm.
She said it might be hard to get into my site if I arrived too late. I told her I had planned a long day of driving that day and really needed to get into my site when I arrived. She said security would help me, and she said she would let them know.
When I arrived a little after 5:30 pm, security would NOT let me into the campground, and directed me to a parking lot. The big problem was the parking lot was full and part of it, where you turn around, was blocked by a huge pile of dirt. I ended up parking my rig in the middle of a lane, blocking traffic, because I could not turn around. I tried calling the campground office, but no one was there.
THEN, I found out that the "few trick and treaters" were actually 1,500 trick and treaters, and that a big invitation for the entire town had been posted in the local papers. I was furious, hungry, and exhausted. I tried to find security to have them help me back out of the parking lot. While wandering around, a cartoon-like drunk kept following me around. He literally had a bottle he was swigging on in a paper bag! Then he got really sympathetic and kept trying to console me by putting his arm around me, which really got me irritated.
Amidst all of this, I had to keep moving my rig back and forth while parents and kids returned and needed to get their cars out. And I could not get rid of the drunk following me wherever i went. I was really exhausted and had had no time to fix something to eat, but I could not leave my rig as it was blocking traffic, and I did not want to try backing up with all the kids around. I ran quickly into the casino a couple of times to try to get help but no luck.
It was after 8 pm that the crowd finally left and I could get out of the dead-end parking lot! By then, as I drove around the campground it was too dark to see camp site numbers, so I stopped and asked a group of people sitting near the curb if they knew where my site was. However, it turned out that THESE people were as drunk as the guy with the paper bag, so instead of giving me a straight answer, they tried to get funny and gave me nonsense answers!
I finally found my site, got set up in the dark, and next morning headed to the campground office to complain. I was really furious because they had lied to me about the number of kids expected and that I would be prevented getting in by security! The comped me my site, but I remember that place and have never been back to Pahrump!
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