Campground Trade-Offs

Since sending Adler home Bud and I spent a night at a KOA campground in Helena, MT, three nights at Montana’s Lewis and Clark Caverns State Park, and are now back at Great Falls RV Park. Each of these places has been very different, and each has had good and bad things.

Besides being close to a good airport, Jim and Mary’s RV Park in Missoula was very well kept and had trees and flowers everywhere. It had full hook-ups (water, sewer and electric) and we had a good cell signal. As a private campground it was more expensive than public campgrounds, but it wasn’t exorbitant. The downsides? The trees blocked our satellite dish and although they did provide cable TV, it only had about three watchable channels. You may scoff at needing TV in a campsite, but remember, this is our home, so going long without TV is annoying at best. And it was on a busy highway isolated from any other streets or trails, so the only option for walking Matey was to circle the campground, over and over.

The Helena stop was because I couldn’t get in to the state park until Thursday and I couldn’t add another day to our Missoula stay. I chose a KOA, they are reliably easy, flat sites, so we were able to pull in and with a minimum of adjustment, leave the trailer hooked to the truck. We had TV and cell (so also wifi) and didn’t bother to hook up, although we could. There was a walking trail advertised, but when I asked at the office on check in the young woman said, “No…there’s just the sidewalk across the street or you can walk around the campground.” Her description was accurate. There was just a wide, paved sidewalk that went straight along the side of the highway with no trees or turns or any destination that I could see. Oh well, it was just for a night.

The state park looked promising. For a non-resident it wasn’t cheap, but it was less than the KOA. The sites were large and level and the setting was beautiful. There was a scattering of trees, happily they didn’t interfere with the satellite TV, unhappily, they didn’t shade the trailer.

We’re back in the heat, so Matey and I took morning and evening walks. That was OKAY. But the only hookup here was electricity. We were only staying three nights, added to our night at Helena that made four nights using our tank water and not draining our holding tanks. We made it, just. Worse, there was no cell service at all. I had to go up to the visitor center to make a phone call and internet was not possible. We went into towns both days we were here, so I did my downloads then.

All that would have been fair trade for nice walks, but, this is almost as far as Matey and I made it on our one and only trail walk. You can see the trail is narrow. For Matey it was a tunnel through the grass. And the grass was Hespirostipa comata, needle-and-thread grass.

This is the needle-and-thread; and those things stuck all over Matey, including his face and feet. After several stops to clean them off him he simply refused to go forward. I couldn’t blame him, the promising trails were a bust.

We did get to take the cave tour, which was nice.

But our tour was only one room.

It really couldn’t compete with Kartchner Caverns, Sonora Caverns, Natural Bridge Caverns or Carlsbad Caverns. Perhaps we’re jaded.

It is the first cave we’ve visited on the top of a mountain, and that was interesting.

So now we’re back at a commercial campground in Great Falls, mainly to get Matey a haircut at PetsMart. Since this is a return visit, the young woman at the office helped me reserve a site that has shade and TV. In the city there’s great cell coverage and a so-so section of the river trail for Matey’s walks. We’ll take it.