Campground Parking That Is Not Level

[benny@waskomtexas.com]

We have only had an RV for about three years, but we have been in a lot of RV campgrounds. I don't understand why they don't make the parking level.

Some RV parks are just gravel and they have a tractor with a box blade. I had a tractor until about a year ago and I have a level. It is very easy to level the gravel.

We have also been in parks with asphalt and concrete parking. It takes three yards of concrete to make a 10' x 25' pad 4 inches thick. At $100 a yard for concrete, it costs a lot of money to pour slabs for an RV park. A good level can be bought for less than $25. Can you tell me why they don't level the gravel?

Maybe I am to critical, because we have a Class B motorhome that does not have automatic levelers. What do you think ... am I too picky?

[Guest Wayne77590]

We have the same problems in the Class A, even with the auto-level feature. There is just so much leveling that you can do. And yes, I have been in some of those gravel, stone, pea-stone, crushed rock sites and all it takes is a little work and some intelligence to level out a site. When I had the 5er, I was in the same boat that you are in, but at least I had the truck bed to carry some boards with me. It was one of the reasons I got rid of the 5er and went to the MH - to physical for me to handle anymore.

[tbutler]

I've been in several campgrounds in Ohio recently and they are really marginal. Sites that are not level, narrow, poorly designed, trees dropping hickory nuts on our roof along with lots of leaves and twigs, marginal 30 amp electric, the list goes on and on. The economics of campgrounds must be terrible. The land costs are high and once the utilities are in, it becomes economically impossible to make significant improvements. Imagine the tangle of water, electric and sewer lines under the ground. If someone asked me to come into one of these campgrounds and replace any of the utilities, my bid for the work would be really high because I would have to anticipate hitting an unexpected electric, water or sewer line and spending lots of time repairing things.

There are some really nice campgrounds around but the prices are usually prohibitive. We did find a state park in London, Kentucky which had nice pull through sites with level concrete pads and good water/sewer/electric connections. The cost was $25 per night. The sites were wide with a nice gravel patio. Perhaps we'll see more modern campgrounds developed in coming years however the economy is really hurting many of today's campground owners. With increasing fuel prices, we may never see a recovery to the good ol' days!

[jmonroe]

Once we left behind our years of tent camping (some 25 - 30 years ago) this became an issue. What I don't understand, if you're advertising your business as an RV park, how can you not consider reasonably level sites as an equal priority to water, electric and sewer services?

We keep a three ring binder in the motor home. If we anticipate ever returning to a park, be it public or private, we'll spend a bit of time touring the park and marking sites we can get to, fit on, and are level -- on a map of the campground. That map then goes into the binder. If some sites are particularily scenic, or otherwise more desirable than others in that same park, we'll so note, and why. Over the years that binder can get quite thick and becomes an invaluable resource. Unfortunately we lost track of our original binder, with 20 years worth of campground data, when we stopped RV travel for a few years. Now we're starting over.