garykrell

Martin Dies is a beautiful East Texas park with all new asphalt pads and approach roads. No chip-seal yet applied, so made for smoooth bike riding. Numerous hiking trails (my fav: Wildlife Trail, because of the variety of large mature specimen trees - insect repellent is required.) Don't miss the nightly star show in the dark, dark sky. We made reservations for our stay about a week in advance, by phone. There were no sites for Friday & Saturday night, no surprise, but we were happy to book Site #215 for Sunday through Thursday in the Hen House Ridge unit of the park. Staff informed me that #215 is THE most popular site in the unit. Believe it. It's on a quiet cul de sac (with 216-220) and backs up right on the water. Our business forced us to extend our stay through the week-end. We were able to grab Walk-in site #218 on Friday morning and so extend our stay on a day-by-day basis. Fortunate because on Fri/Sat the park is full. (There are a number of tent camp walk-in sites, but as far as I could determine, #218 is the only such RV site in the Hen House Ridge unit.)

Easy in-and-out to this Cefco dump station located on US-259. At the rear (East side) of the truck fueling stations it is clearly marked. Drain is locked, so it is necessary to go into the store to pay the $10 charge. Flush water is available (Warning: very high pressure!) but bring your own hose.

No playground, no store, no bathhouse. No office! Only the bare essentials here. A chipped stone lot enclosed by chain link fencing, wide gates at either end, both open 24/7. Check-in is simple: call the phone number for the park (it's on the sign at the Center St. fencing) and you'll be advised to pick a spot, then text your site number, and that a payment envelope will appear at your door by morning. You'll be instructed to deposit your payment in the "lockbox on the fence by the dumpster". This process worked flawlessly for us. We had our pick of the 20+ FHU sites since less than half were occupied. Sites are large and well spaced making backing in very easy.

The park is located in an industrial area, so there is constant noisy truck traffic during the day. Night is pretty quiet. There is a Kroger store nearby, and if you have business in Wheeling, as we did, a 15 minute drive will get you there.

I failed to take pictures, but the park website has some, and gives a good description of the facility. (Except that it says Wifi is offered but we found none.)

We were met at the entrance by a park staff member who jumped on her 4-wheeler and led us to our pull through site. The pad is a chipped rock surface, very level with a concrete pad for the picnic table. Nicely spaced from adjoining pad and with FHU. The park is located between the Chattahoochee River and Ft. Moore on S. Lumpkin Rd, a dead-end street with virtually no traffic, so there is no road noise. Across Lumpkin is the south extension of the Columbus River Trail, with the nearest entrance about 1/4 mile N of the park, across Lumpkin from the National Infantry Museum. I biked there and then continued up the paved trail about 6 miles to visit the National Civil War Naval Museum. From there a short ride will get you to downtown Columbus. The Wifi connection was good and the Verizon signal was sizzling!

Others have said all the good things about this overnight stop, and I agree. We called the store, got there on a Tues at about 2:00 and were the 2nd unit into the 5 available spaces on the North side of the store. By nightfall all 5 were filled. About the dump station: It appears to be permanently out of service, with a sign posted that gave me that impression. The water (non-potable) is shut off. (Sorry I did not take a pic of the posted notice.)

We stayed 5 days here, visiting Chaco Canyon, Salmon and Aztec ruins, and downtown Farmington. A good quiet park with easy pull-through parking. Showers are well done with curtains and "dry" areas with rubber floor mats. Restroom may have some plumbing problems (signs demanding "Not too much paper") but that's not our problem, right? So some guests just flush and forget. (Could you plunge please?) But the next person in, not so fine. A mile or so to convenience store; nearest Walmart is in Farmington, best gas prices are there.

For those of us on Campendium, this is an over-night stop. And a good one IMHO. For most of the other tenants, this is one of the few good places to stay while working in the area. If you are transiting through the area, you have only a few choices for a quick overnight stop. If East bound, stay in Abq, if you cant make Amarillo, where there are many good options. If West bound, as we have often been, here are your over night choices: Stop in Santa Rosa (not recommended); the Anton Chico rest area at MM 251; Cline's Corner for $25; the Rattlesnake Draw rest area at MM 207; push on to Moriarty (not recommended) or Abq, another hour or so. Here are the downsides of Clines Corner: 1) No reservations, spaces are allocated first-come. 2) When you call I am not sure you get any accurate info about the spaces available. All this aside, I could not be more pleased with the reception we got when arriving there late on 05/03/2021. A guy ran out in the pouring rain to see if a site was available for us. There was. The morning cleared into a beautiful New Mexico day before we departed. Life is good!

Used this dump station on 6/25/2021. Nice facility. Present your Good Sam's ID card at service desk and fee is $7.50.

We arrived here Monday 8/28/2023, the day before hurricane Idalia was due to make landfall on the Florida gulf coast. The first thing I did was check out the bathhouse/laundry building to see if it would serve as a tornado shelter. It's concrete block construction, metal roof. Way better than a travel trailer. (But it's small, so in a storm warning, get there early!) It started to rain Tuesday morning and continued until 1:00 AM Thursday. By then, our site was surrounded by an inch or two of water, with the patio pad being the highest and driest point. But by sunup the water was gone and the skies were clear. (A couple of inches of gravel would do a lot to improve the site quality.) The flea market was open on Saturday, but doesn't seem to have any effect on the campground. Only 15-20 min. or so from downtown Columbia. Regular nightly rate is $50 but we booked a week for $200+tax and only intended to stay for 5 days, then stayed for 6. Wifi was pretty good in the mornings, but essentially unusable in the evenings.

Yeah, what Donna and USA guy said about this place: all good. $20 cash for short stays. Eric is a layed-back guy who doesn't have his voicemail box set up, so if he doesn't answer, don't worry, he will probably call you right back. Met him at the entrance, where he apologized for the wait because he was busy digging up and replacing a broken water hydrant. He led me over a bumpy approach road to a very level pull-through concrete pad with full hookups. No gate security and there are 4 entrances into the park from a city street. The 5ers on each side of me appeared to be longer term tenants. Three nights there on a weekend: very quiet.