Campground review

We have spent the past week at Central State Park, in Edmond, OK.  We picked this campground because it's a city- run camp ground.  Normally, the smaller the governing body that runs a campground, the better kept it is- county is better than state, which is better than national.  So city aught to be pretty good!  Plus, you have to pay to get in it, period.  Even if you are just coming in to jog the trail.  Which makes it pretty exclusive to campers or boaters, and should give the campground plenty of money to upkeep their stuff.  Plus good reviews, lots of trails, and nearly all the campsites are lakeside.

We chose to stay in the Cottonwood area, so that's what I'm reviewing.

The good:
The scenery is really great.  The sun rises AND sets over the lake, and every night the sun set has been fantastic... I haven't been up early enough to catch a sunrise.  People do actually observe the quiet time hours, you don't get anyone driving around shining headlights into your camper while you are sleeping.  The camp areas are pretty big- I feel like we have as much "yard" as we could possibly want, and I haven't had to worry about my kids wandering into someone else's territory.  And, this is a kid- friendly place.  At least, there are lots of kids here, even though it's early in the year.  If my kids were prone to running from me, I would worry about them running into the lake- we're very close to it, and it's just a jump off of a rock away. And you can't see 2 inches into the water, so I have NO idea how deep it is.  But if that was a problem, we could have camped farther away, or in a different area.  So easy access to the water is a plus for me.  Very relaxing.  Oh, and the older two think the park is super neat.  And they think everything else here is pretty neat too.

The bad:
This list is short, but a big deal for me.  The shower house.  We don't have full hook-up, so we use the showers at the shower house everywhere we go.  I've been to some shady ones.  I've been to some nice ones.  These were terrible.  Two showers is pretty standard, and that's what we have here.  On one side, there is a handle that adjusts the spray (I did appreciate that), something else that shot water out that I don't even know what it was for, and a button you push to turn the water on.  No temp control.  And it was slightly too hot for my girls.  It was gross enough in there that I put extra towels down for them to stand on while they showered.  And that's extreme for me, who never wears shoes in the summer... anywhere.  Then.. the water stayed on for about 30 seconds, maybe a minute, and I had to push the button for more water.  I had to soap up and shampoo two girls this way, while supervising a baby.  Then I had to shower while I hoped they wouldn't run away (normally they safely play in the neighbor shower stall while I shower and it works out great).  In my stall, there was an on button... and that's it.  This time the shower stayed on, for some reason.  i couldn't turn it off again.   It was really the weirdest thing.

Also, the tap water.  There are three or four spigots for the whole campground.  There is a Y connector on them, and everyone just hooks up to the same spigots.  There is a very long hose that runs through camp for outlying people to connect up to, if they didn't happen to bring a 2,000 foot hose with them.

This should be somewhat fine, although very, very strange.  but in practice, no one knows what they are doing.  Nick was going out there to fix someone's connection daily.  We had to constantly go out and fiddle with it because something got turned off or switched up and we'd run out of water.  When someone has their water across the street, and a car runs over the hose, the water for everyone attached to that spigot turns off.  Which is half the camp.  It's really very bizarre.

in the end, it's a wash out... I give it a solid "Meh".  The price on the weekend was somewhat steep, however for closeness to the city (and Target), we probably made that up by spending less in gas money going in for food and laundry.  The awesomeness of the lake and the rocks and playing in red dirt really equal the not awesomeness of the water situation.  There are people here who obviously live here, moving from one site to another, and have rather moved in.. it's pretty red- neck-y here.  But that means no one has a cow if I leave a blanket on the ground overnight, or leave the kids' toys laying around most of the day.  And really, what kind of price can you put on the ability to use the outdoors as your living room AND not have to have it show- ready all the time?  priceless.  (okay, $20 a night, really.)