OK I now need to take reviews with a grain of salt. Or in this case many grains of dirt.

June 4: Jo warned me about sharing my experience with our visit to our lakefront campsite in Angola, Indiana. I feel I would be remiss to not share the good with the not so good and in this case the bad. I mentioned in my last blog post that I had snagged two days at a lake and had a site on the waterfront. Well I should have had alarm bells going off when I received an email saying if no one was present on our arrival to just go to our site which mysteriously had changed from site 2 to site 7 (what??? There are always people present or almost unless maybe a state park and then there are boards posted with your site at least.). Well we made several right turns and left turns going down narrower and narrower roads further into the woods but finally saw signs for the campground and headed into the entrance. On arrival we found what had clearly back in the day been a cute replica of an old west town but now was a conglomeration of boards over boards and other repairs made in a rush. The store where the sign said was te registration location was padlocked despite it being 4 PM on a Friday night. Another traveler that pulled in behind us was also baffled but I remembered the email saying to show myself to my site #2 no wait when I read again now it said site 7 hmmmm. We proceeded down a steep and narrow road toward the body of water (more a smallish pond but whatever it was waterfront right?) and not seeing signs or numbers but seeing multiple side by side trailers I was lost and getting nervous. Many of the trailers had giant propane tanks in front of them suggesting we would not be sharing travel stories. Patios, decks, 17 cords of firewood stacked by them also made it clear we were once again crashing a home. A nice man in one of the several hundred (OK Im exaggerating there may have only been fifty) golf carts running about loaded with kids and frazzled adults stopped and asked if we needed help. My pale face and tremors a give away. He found our site which was right on a road separating us from the water and now directly across from the lake and not the site down the way away from the activity resembling the Indy 500. He explained oh they probably changed your site to give the nicer one to a nurse who is a locus tenets traveling nurse because she is here for the summer. I kid you not he said gave the nicer one to the nurse. He then said oh your neighbor is parked in your spot (it was a spot) and he is across the pond fishing and proceeded to scream and gesture for him to move his truck. He did get back quickly (the good thing about this being a pond not a lake) and proceeded. To park his truck across the street directly in front of our site. He seemed upset consistent with my feeling we were barging in so rather than ask him to move it further down I tried to back in having to almost jackknife the trailer while backing up a steep grade into my spot. As accomplished as I am (in my mind at least) I couldnt swing the front of my truck around to straighten out the trailer once it was backing into our spot because his truck was in the way. Jo was great on the walk-in talkie helping but there was no room. I expected he would apologize or at least be friendly and realize he was not in my site but blocking me still and move to be by his site but he and a few hundred other onlookers in the water, on the beach and in golf carts watched as I tried to maneuver. Jo finally had to ask him to please move the truck which he grudgingly did to across from his site and I easily backed it up Kilimanjaro onto our site. Now to level the trailer whose front end was hanging out over a small cliff. The Brewster’s are here!!!!!!

After using everything we had to level and support the trailer on the most un level site to date we connected the water, power and sewer which worked and hunkered down trying to stay out of sight for a bit expecting at some point the owners of the campground would check with us when they got back from wherever. The nice man did say there was karaoke someplace at 7 and left.

The next AM we got up having survived some pretty bad karaoke until midnight. It kind of reminded me of when Jeff Dennett, Gary Byers and I had a band in middle school. While we weren’t awful what we lacked in talent we made up for in volume as if that would smooth out the rough spots. We actually went pro playing at a city of Franklin Rec Center dance where we got our pictures and write up in the Franklin Journal Transcript and made $5 EACH. I was on my way to Rock Stardom. The singers at the lake karaoke did the same thing and despite a fairly soundproof Airstream we were serenaded loudly and off key well into my usual sleep time. But they were definitely having fun.

On walking around the campground I saw site 2 which I had reserved (there was a disclaimer it could be changed as needed which I assumed was a broken RV or medical emergency…nope) which was still on the race track but away from the finish line at the beach. Once again there were a number of full timers wheels off, decks built large propane tanks in front of the hitch trailers. In this case it went from 50% to 95%. Again Jo and I feel that allowing a few travelers in allows them to call it a RV campground and skirt some costly regulations. We tried being friendly with a few of the neighbors but we were definitely going to be people from away until we left. Even Maddie wouldn’t walk with us which she always wanted to do and did before and after this site.

As for the title if you have camped before you know there is usually gravel, pea stone, small rocks or cement pads to park your RV on. In the case of gravel and pea stone we like most RVers have lave polypropylene carpets that allow water through but help keep dirt of the trailer particularly with dogs. This site was a messy mixture of dirt and ashes as the truck guy had thrown our fire ring into a neighboring site and by driving his truck back and forth scattered ash everywhere. Yup it wasn’t pretty. In all seriousness this was the one site so far where I didn’t feel safe. And no I didn’t hear banjos playing….or did I?

I was uncomfortable and I felt really badly as I had promised lakefront to Jo as a reward for a long drive to get there. Jo was a good wife and laughed with me and put up with it. It is only two days..it is only two days (There’s no place like home…there’s no place like home).

Time to pack up and get the heck out of Dodge.

PS The reviews, of which there were only six since 2017…red flag, were top notch. Lesson for Bill…require more than six reviews and more than one a year. “A hidden gem” was one review. Translation in retrospect “couldn’t find the place or my site easily” lol.