Historic Hat Creek Ranch

Let me begin with the positives; the view is fabulous. The restaurant is open from 9-5 (odd hours) daily, which was not expected.

This is going to be a rant, but bear with me. I called and left a message requesting a reservation for a partial hook-up three days before we arrived. Two days before we arrived, I sent an email requesting a reservation, since I had not received a call-back on my phone message. The day before we arrived, I called again and happened to get someone who said, yes, she had seen my email, but there had been connections issues (not Fort Nelson fire related), and my email had disappeared. However, she took my reservation for dry camping, explaining that their partial-hook-ups were full and quoting me a price of $30 for dry camping. I should have known better.

When we arrived, someone else was checking in and there seemed to be a lot of confusion. When it came our turn, I understood why. The lady remembered talking to me but could not find that she had written my reservation down. However, we could dry camp in the area set-aside, we just needed to be toward the highway because they had some dry campers who were coming in who wanted to set up all together. They were new management (apparently BC Parks puts this out for bids every year).)She turned me over to the clerk who told me my charge would be $40 plus fees because the other lady didn't know what she was talking about. I paid the fee. I should have known better.

We wound up in a hay field with no fire pit or picnic table and no road or path to it. There were no marked dry camping spaces, kind of rowed up. Did we have to level? Yes, all directions. Although we were near Highway 99, we were grateful the traffic was not too heavy during the night.

I don't want to sound unkind, but if we hadn't been so tired, we would have gone further. They've been here since May 1st, and I'm here in mid-May. Give them another month or two to figure it out.