Just because a camp site is empty, doesn't mean that it's available. If it has a green slip in the box pictured below, that site has been paid for and you can't camp there. You might notice that the sign already says that no sites are available because all the camp site numbers have a green slip of paper inside.
Knowing that many local people come for the weekend and leave on Sunday, we arrived on Sunday afternoon. But another unusual feature of this park is the check-out time--an unusually late 5:00 p.m. The other crazy unusual policy is that campers have until 5:00 p.m. to decide if they would like to renew their camp site rental for another night. So when we arrived at 4:00, we weren't allowed to park our rig in a camp site until after 5:00.
Another unusual aspect of this rule is that the narrow road into the park doesn't allow for a turn around--especially a 35-foot motor home towing a car. So we were granted permission to roll into the park to sit and wait. Denisa doesn't sit and wait well, so she toured the campground on foot, finding our favorite spot from last year was empty. She even visited with the neighbors to verify that their friends had definitely left that site, and they knew for sure they wouldn't be renewing the rental. Armed with this valuable information, she approached the gate keeper with an unusual amount of charm so we could go ahead and move into that space.
But no, following their unusual policy to the letter of the law, we still had to wait until 5:00 p.m. when the gatekeeper would drive around the park to verify which spots had been vacated. How unusual! So we finally got permission to settle into our site after 5:00 so we could take a walk and see some of the views we've already posted on this blog.
This trip we learned another unusual part of this campground registration process. In order to make sure they have a spot for the weekend, locals can start paying for their favorite site days (and even weeks) in advance. It's not unusual for the best sites to sit empty for two weeks before a holiday weekend. The city doesn't mind, because they are getting the income for the site. But it seems very unusual to us to see a good site wasted and so many RVs turned away. By the end of the week heading into the Memorial Day weekend, almost half of the sites were empty--but paid for. How unusual!
We are staying at Scissortail campground, but we drove to the other three sections of the park, and the other campgrounds, as well. That gave us opportunities to get some exercise at this unusual park. We found another unusual aspect of Lake Arcadia. If you look at this area on google maps, the lake shows up red on the satellite view. Kayaking in the middle, we were surrounded by that unusually red water.
That red water is a direct result of the unusual red clay bluffs that surround Lake Arcadia.
From our vantage point on the water, we found that this lake also has an unusually large amount of trash lining the banks. In fact, we decided that it was the trashiest lake we have ever been on. We noticed the out-dated flyers at the park advertising the volunteer day to clean the park. We're guessing the free tshirt and hot dogs bring out quite a crowd to clean this area. We're also guessing that the April clean-up day was cancelled, just like everything else during this season of pandemic.
We finished our unusual check-in day with a nice evening walk around the campground. Denisa only had her cell phone, so the low-light picture isn't great. But we found several deer and a possum as we walked. That's an unusual--in a nice kind of way--ending to our unusual move-in day at Lake Arcadia.
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