Steven and Melanie Atha

The Lazy J Campground is located about 8 miles outside of Brevard, North Carolina on the North Fork of the French Broad River. It's an older campground with a number of full-time residents who have spots they use (mostly) during the summer months.

While the campground is heavily forested, it's also pretty junky in spots. The showers are not clean. Verizon cell service is almost non-existent.

The campground hostess was very pleasant and went out of her way to assist us in finding a spot for our 25' van. When I told her of the review below, she told me she didn't read reviews because they usually didn't give a balanced view of the place. Might I suggest that the reason is more likely because she isn't inclined to provide the type of place on which many travelers insist. Clean up the clutter, clean the restrooms and showers regularly.

I could not plug into the 30 amp service though I made do with the 15 amp service.

There's a resident rooster that crows in the morning, if you're into that sort of thing.

Arguably, High Plains is no great campground. Ascetically, it's nothing to look at, the individual sites are in need of work, the buildings need paint and I'm guessing the owners, a man and wife team are tired of running an RV park and dealing with travelers who somehow want more than they are willing to provide them. But maybe they're just north easterners who wonder how the hell they ended up in Oakley, Kansas. Seemed like a good idea at the time maybe.

Regardless, we had an okay time spending a night there. It was relatively quiet, considering its location near I-70. The wind was gusting at around 25 MPH, but the campground is surrounded by nice cedars making for a nice wind break. We slept well.

We ate on site at Captain Jack's Pub. Our drinks were good and inexpensive. The pub itself is just interesting enough and the food just good enough. The menu has separate pages with color copies of photos of the food. I don't know about that. They tout the restaurant as having the best food in northern Kansas. I don't know about that either. I can only say, if the food is the best in that part of Kansas, Kansas is in need of assistance.

Before we settled in, we visited the Buffalo Bill Visitor Center, a privately owned facility with a great piece of sculpture out front. Kirstin, the person who runs things at the center, is very personable and helpful. We also visited downtown Oakley which seemed like a pretty nice small town.

High Plains is one of those campgrounds you might frequent again, but only if nothing else is available or you've had a debilitating head injury causing faulty reasoning. And one other thing, instructions mention if you have a shower, you should use it and not theirs. We found this a novel approach, just a bit humorous and definitely just shy of not too smart for a place charging 40 dollars US for a night's stay.

We've stayed in some really nice parks over the past year and a half of full-time travel. I'm certain we've been in parks that were not as nice, but then we didn't pay $80.00 a night for the privilege.

I'm sure the price reflects access to the hot springs which during a pandemic seemed like rolling the dice to us.

The grass needs cutting and trimming. There are weeds growing in our site along the edge of the unswept concrete picnic area. The trash can near our site was overflowing and very smelly. We love children, just not those who ignore the fact they are playing in the back of our site while their parents look on. Few people are wearing masks that have been mandated in Montana.

The bathhouse was not $80.00 a night clean and the water pressure was barely adequate and smelled of sulfur.

And no alcohol, apparently not even at your own site. What the hell is that about?

If this place hadn't been the only game in town...

It rained for a few days while we were here, but they were nice enough to upgrade our site to a full-hook with a cement pad. Uber easily into Charleston. Convenient to groceries and other shopping opportunities.

We've been living in our van for just over 8 months. We've been full-time travelers for just over 6 months.

Our travel "style" have evolved over this time and includes a variety ways to stay the night. We use a place like Harbortown RV Resort for overnight stops that include laundry and emptying our tanks. We had good Verizon service and didn't use the campground Wi-Fi.

Harbortown is a large family-style park, well-kept and clean. There's a pool and nearby miniature golf and go-cart riding. They have a play ground for the kids.

Doing laundry is expensive compared to comparable places, but again, the facility is clean and I had no trouble procuring machines to do the laundry at the beginning of a week. They have two large commercial washing machines too.

Campground has some background highway noise, train tracks run in back of the park (no horns at the campsite). We slept well.

One could reasonably ride a bike around or walk for exercise, but the road accessing the park is busy. There's a Kroger Market a few miles from the park in Monroe.

I used the fire pit/grill. I had to get the bottles and cigarette butts and other trash out of it before I could use it.

This was our second time at Cahokia. The first time was during our "shake down" for our new van. Our dealer paid for us to stay at Cahokia for a couple of days while we became familiar with the workings of the RV. At that point, we had nothing with which we could compare.

The Mississippi River was well above flood stage not too long ago. It's been wet. The campground still has standing water, some of it was around our campsite. The gravel pad needed care. The grass needed mowing.

Now that we've been traveling for over 7 months we have a better understanding of the ends of the RV park continuum. Cahokia is fast moving in the wrong direction.

It has a few things going for it. Location to downtown St. Louis, clean showers and a barbecue restaurant on site. But make no mistake, our site was a s**thole. They're nice folks who can do much better.

Cahokia is the first RV park my wife and I stayed in after picking up our van in Saint Louis, Missouri. As such, it's also the first RV park either of us ever stayed in. Van City, St. Louis paid for our stay here so we could learn about our RV.

From a practical standpoint, the park provided us with everything we needed to test out our new vehicle/home. The park is clean and check in was easy. We didn't use, nor check out the laundry facilities. The pool was closed. The on-site barbeque restaurant provides good food.

The pad was gravel and flat. We had a full hook up site. Wi-Fi worked well enough to stream Netflix. Our neighbors were very nice and the park was relatively quiet for being so close to the city of Saint Louis.

There was an eclectic assortment of vehicles in the park and some long-term residents.

Driving into downtown Saint Louis was easy from here.

We've lived in Birmingham, Alabama for many years and are currently staying around town in our van while we wait to begin traveling full-time in January 2019. Tannehill is about a twenty minute drive on I-20-59 from Birmingham where my wife is employed until the end of the month. The park is conveniently located off the interstate.

The RV park itself is clean and this time of year there are only a few other units, some of a more permanent nature. Our nightly rate reflects the winter weekly rate starting December 1st ($150.00 a week for full hook up).

We've taken several nice walks around the park. I imagine during the warmer months there's much more activity. There's a small gauge railroad for children. If it weren't cold, riding our bikes would be a thing too.

This is a Confederate historical site. There was an Iron Works located here during the war. The drive in is on Confederate Parkway. Honestly, I've experienced so much obfuscation about the Civil War while living in Alabama, any history to be found here doesn't hold much interest for me, the war was such a BS endeavor. The restored log structures are, however, nice.

The bath house I'm using is a bit dated, but clean and the showers I've taken are hot. There's laundry facility located in the bathhouse I may avail myself of before we leave, but I can't say anything about it now. A small camp store sells some food and necessities and serves as the place to check in (first come, first served, no reservations). The folks taking care of things are personable and helpful.

Pettigrew State Park in Creswell, North Carolina has a small, primitive (no water, electric, dump and the RV sites are dirt) campground located on Lake Phelps.

While the sites sit among old growth forest, it was a warm and humid summer day when we camped here requiring us to run our generator for a bit until the sun got down after dinner. Because there's no electricity offered, I'd recommend camping in the park in cooler months, but there's hiking and swimming in beautiful Lake Phelps. The campground does offer restrooms with showers which are older, but relatively clean.

The park is in a remote farming area in eastern North Carolina. We used it as a way point on our way to the Salina on Cape Hatteras in the Outer Banks.

Isolated campground on the beautiful Alabama River. Check
Greeting party of six deer. Check
Easy access dump station. Check
Level concrete pad, nice picnic table, grill, fire pit. Check
Clean campsite with garbage can for each site. Check
Nice evening walk around the campground along the river and through the woods. Check
Nice place to ride a bicycle. Check
Local boys making a bit of noise repairing an RV. Check
Quiet, really quiet. Check
Corp of Engineers really has it going on. Check
Some Verizon service. Check
A few over the air TV channels. Check

Price reflects application of my senior pass. Four stars for access is only because some would find the isolated location a problem.