Well, winter is almost officially here. Today is 12/12/12,... close to 12/21/12 for the winter solstice and the cold weather is moving in with the morning lows regularly below freezing lately.
Today, I was walking our toddler Madison to school to pick up the twins and she asked if we were going camping tomorrow?! As much as I would have like to say "Yes", I explained to her that we will go camping again when the trees have green leaves on them. She then began to point out that all the trees around us didn't have any leaves,... "Except that one over there Daddy, that has leaves, but they aren't green"... as she pointed across the street to a tree with a few crinkled brown leaves remaining. Anyway, maybe this weekend I"ll go over and check the camper, make sure the tire pressures are still holding good and things look in good shape.
One item I said in an earlier post I would do is rank our camping trips and campsites. I have a Camping Log that I fill out with the campsite information, amenities, conditions, weather, surroundings, things to do, etc. After each trip I tally the miles for the trip on the sheet and also ask Becky to help rate the categories. I have a row of Smilies next to each category, 1-5 of them. We circle the total number we think suits, with 5 being the best. Here is a summary of those.
Places Camped:
5 Smilies --- Colonial Woods Campground, Upper Black Eddy, PA
5 Smilies --- Little Red Barn Campground, Quakertown, PA
4 Smilies --- Lake Glory Campground, Catawissa, PA
4 Smilies --- Warwick Woods Campground, St. Peter, PA
3 Smilies --- Quakerwoods Campground, Quakertown, PA
Bathroom Condition & Cleanliness: In Ranking Order (#1 being best)
- Little Red Barn
- Lake Glory
- Warwick Woods
- Colonial Woods
- Quakerwoods
All in all, every place had great services. Colonial Woods has small stalls and the showers are only at the main lodge bathrooms and not at the one close to the campsite. Little Red Barn has nice bathrooms, but a walk if you are on the back circle of camping spots, so you need time to get there, but overall, Becky and I were most impressed with those. Lake Glory Campground is setup to handle the high volume of campers as it is a campground affiliated with Knoebels Amusement park.
All places had solid electric service for us to use at 30 amp. I test each site pole for proper wiring, ground, and voltage before I hook up our camper. All were in the typical specs for voltage and we didn't have any issues when operating the AC unit this summer. Lake Glory and Quakerwoods each offered the 30Amp and the 15Amp outlets with individual breakers at the power box, which is nice to have the exterior lights for the canopy controlled separate from running thru/off the camper outlet.
Kids Activities and Kid Friendly Atmosphere:
- Colonial Woods
- Warwick Wood
- Little Red Barn
- Lake Glory
- Quakerwoods
Definitely the best place was Colonial Woods, we even went there twice this year! Nice planned activities, nicest playground, and fishing pond. The pool and scheduled events really kept the kids busy and tired them out! Worst,... Quakerwoods. No grass near the campsites, poor playground condition,..... not bad for a late season get away, but not someplace we will frequent for a long weekend.
Campsite Access, Levelness, Size:
- Colonial Woods
- Lake Glory
- Warwick Woods
- Quakerwoods
- Little Red Barn
Colonial woods has very nice sites and in general, all are really close to level where you will be parking your camper for the weekend. Condition of the sites is well maintained with little obstruction to get in or out. Lake Glory has lots of great sites for the big rigs all the way down to the tents, and now we have them marked on the map so we know which to look for next season. Warwick woods gave me the most trouble backing in for the site we had, and it took all the blocks I had to get us level in both directions. Other sites off the top of the hill looked better though, so this one ranks here as the site pad was the best prepared out of the last on the list. Quakerwoods sites are good in size and level, but have the sewer hookup in a bad spot for most uses. Little Red Barn has the smallest sites around, as apparently they were tent sites in the past. Water and Electric hookups, while new, were not thought out in advance for campers. Our particular site we had to jack the camper in diagonally so we could just reach the electric on one side of the site, and then the water on the other. I was fully extended with 25' leads in both directions to make it work. The people beside us had the same issue and had to use a 30Amp extension cord. Best sites here are the field sites that have the electric hookup, get a few friends together and it would be a lot of fun.
