Another place I occasionally stay at when I am in Ohio is Mosquito Lake. I have no idea who would name a lake after nasty little blood-suckers, but they did. This is a large state park with a couple hundred campsites, but it is older and most of them are either electric-only or no-electric. However, as with the rest of the state parks in Ohio, about 15-20% were updated to larger, full-hookup a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, those updated sites are very popular and get booked up fast!
This state park is also a little farther away than I prefer, but it is a good option when other places are full. It also is closer to stores than some of the other state parks I stay in.
And why do I stay mainly at state parks instead of trying to find commercial campgrounds? Even though state parks can get crowded during summer weekends or big holidays, they are still a lot less crowded than commercial campgrounds where you are only a few feet from the next person's rig. In order to make a profit, most commercial campgrounds pack in RVs as closely as possible, so you can often hear conversations and music from people next door. There also is a lot more coming and going of cars and trucks in a commercial campgrounds, plus they are more expensive. In other words, I feel a lot more comfortable out in nature where campsites are spaced more widely apart and where there are trees and such to buffer sites from one another.
Anyway, here is the entrance to the Mosquito Lake Campground.
And, of course the check-in booth. One nice thing about this campground is the large water fill and dump station, as shown to the left.
Because I travel so much and often return to the same places, occasionally someone will recognize me, which is nice, but on this trip one of the camp hosts came running out loudly welcoming me and saying she wondered when I would be back! A bit embarrassing, I think, though her intentions were very nice!
My campsite has lots of space on either side, though it is on a main roadway.
Because I made a late reservation, I ended up in one of the old electric-only sites. Notice that the site is long enough, but very narrow. These sites were probably laid out 40 years ago when most campers were much smaller and more narrow.
The photo below shows the problem with such narrow sites and more modern RVs. As you can see, when your stairs deploy, you have to step out onto grass. Unfortunately, during wet weather, you often will step out into mud. This causes people to use those large plastic camping mats so they avoid the mud and can put chairs of drier ground. The problem with those mats is that they also kill the grass. And dead grass causes more mud in wet weather, which causes more people to use plastic mats, which causes more dead grass, etc. etc.
Almost all newer campsites are wider and have gravel patios which drain better. In addition, some campgrounds have completely banned the plastic mats, which makes campers very unhappy to have to camp in mud!!
Here is a view of my site before I parked in it. It looks nice, but is much too narrow for modern RVs like mine.
It was a quiet stay here because I stayed here during the week. It gets much busier on weekends.
This is one of the newer sites. It is about 2' wider than the older sites, and has a gravel or paved patio area, so if you pull back far enough, you can step out onto gravel instead of mud. It also has a paved area around the electric, water, and sewer hookups. This is the campground where about six years ago, after a rain, my electrical hookup in a pond. I complained about the dangers of wading in water while plugging a 30 amp plug into the receptacle, and they sent a man with rubber boots to do it for me! Still did not feel very safe, so I was happy to see that all the updated sites Ohio state parks have put in have these cement pads. They have also added gravel around a lot of the posts in older sites so rain water will drain.
I have had my last doctor's appointment and tests, and have only one more dentist appointment, so I will be headed to Florida for the winter, where I will stay almost entirely in state and Corps of Engineers campground! It's been a good visit, but I am looking forward to getting on the road again!
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