We went down to the W. Kerr Scott Dam And Reservoir park last July for a family reunion in the hills of Western North Carolina. It was hot and humid, and it rained a little each day. This is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers park and the private company doing the reservations got it all wrong: no three way hookups (a real inconvenience for our van), no cable (we read lots of books that week), and man, no bathhouse at the campground (just a couple of his and hers outhouses) with the bathhouse a full half mile down the hot and humid road.
Well, we’re not into roughing it, especially when it comes to the bathroom, so we ended up moving every other day to dump, and that was a problem because the one closest to our campground (there are like three or four campgrounds spread around this huge federal park) was buried or mis-marked on the map.
It got a little noisy at night, and even though this is Bible-belt country (by which I mean, the Park has a no alcohol policy), we clearly weren’t the only ones with those orange and red plastic cups in the evening. We’d have a couple and make dinner, but there was some real partying happening around us, and once the management had to come and chase off the three extra vehicles on one nearby camper’s site and tell them all to tone it down.
Oh, very spotty cell phone reception, too. The Park is beautiful! I found a new running route for the two foolish spaniels and me every morning. We even got a little confused one morning and had to stop and think for a few minutes. It’s a big, quiet place. The swimming is a little funky–freshwater, of course, but kind of muddy beaches with too many kids in a way-too-small swimming area. So we just used the hose to douse ourselves when it got hot–and it got HOT last July! It’s out of the way… say an hour from I-77, and down I-77 about an hour from I-81. The lack of a dump connection means we’d not go back. Big rigs beware: there are mostly back-ins.
