2011 Camper Comments

I doubt that we will return, however. The absence of cellular service is not good for either of us. I had an emergency this weekend involving the death of a lawman back home and had to ride to town in order to get cell service. That, and the slow internet service is a turnoff. I understand your concern about bandwidth use but I really think that locking out Facebook is overkill. All in all we had a very nice time. Your location is excellent for the rides we want to take. (21′ Travel Trailer 07/20 – 07/23)

First, we are in the mountains in the middle of the Pisgah National Forest. There is no cell phone service here and likely never will be. Not much we can do about it. The nearest place to get cell phone reception is at the bottom of the mountain (about 5 miles away). There is a phone in the park for campers to use (long distance calls require a phone card) and the park office phone is always available for emergency incoming or outgoing calls.

Second, the free Wi-Fi access that we provide comes in by satellite. There are usage limits with the satellite link, but this is the only means of internet access up here – DSL, cable or T1 lines are simply not available. We have the most generous bandwidth plan that Hughesnet offers to business customers. This is sufficient to provide internet connections for 30 – 50 users at average usage levels. Even on weekends when we are full, we don’t have more than 20 – 25 Wi-Fi users, so there is plenty of capacity. Even so, we still experience occasional system shutdowns (this is what happens when we exceed our usage limit). When this happens, no one (including the office) has internet access for 24 hours. This year these shutdowns were occurring more and more frequently. We were able to determine that most of the excessive usage was caused by people using Facebook. We had no choice but to block access to Facebook – and since we blocked it, there have been no more shutdowns.

We work very hard to provide folks with a clean, quiet, attractive place to come and relax. But we also try to provide whatever amenities we can like 50 amp service, Wi-Fi, and cable TV (we actually had to become a small cable company to do this). But there are some things we just have no control over. Those folks who just can’t live without cell service or Facebook for a few days probably should look for a campground that’s not in the mountains.

This weekend the park was full and we had 32 users on the Wi-Fi system. Average use for 31 of these users over the 3-day weekend was 24 – 28 Mb per user per day. This represents about 70% of our allowed usage. When the 32nd user uses another 20% of our allowance in a very short period of time, we must take appropriate action.

We truly regret any inconvenience this caused them, but Hughesnet limits the amount of bandwidth we can use and if that limit is exceeded, they shut us down for 24 hours. We simply can’t allow a situation where one user causes everyone to lose their internet access.

A secondary reason for the policy is the fact that dog urine (especially from females) kills the grass. It leaves a dead spot that does not come back and must be reseeded. The same goes for male dogs that pee on the plants and shrubbery. Before we instituted this policy, the grassy areas on the sites had more dead spots than grass and the grassy area in the center was very unsightly. We spend a lot of time and money reseeding and fertilizing each year. A number of times, the gassy area on a site would be entirely destroyed in a single weekend when campers allowed their dogs (usually tied up with nowhere else to go) to pee in the grass. This did not lead to many comments about how beautiful and well-kept the campground was.

Now, having said that, we are making arrangements for a fenced, off-leash area for dogs. This will be at the west end of the center grassy area. We expect to have everything completed by mid-June.