RE: Waste of time/effort destinations?

[jackgoesthepopup]

 AustinBoston
I remimber going to the diamond mine when i was a kid with my family. We had a great time.  Granted we didn t find any diamonds but we found a whole jar full of differnt kids of crysates .I think the kids are old enough now the might enjoy it. But they may not there is no nintindo game to go along with it.

[Tsip]

 AustinBoston
A couple of years ago I made the mistake of staying at a private campground in Eagles Lake, New Mexico.  The place had absolutley no trees and the surrounding area wasn t much better.  To compound matters, there apparently is some sort of youth detention facility close by and all I can remember were the signs posted along the highway warning drivers not to pick up hitchhikers.  We were so disappointed in the place that we decided to cut four days off of our vaction and come home.
 
 Tsip

[TheWallRocks]

 AustinBoston
4th of July 2002.  I packed up 3 kids for a 4 hour drive to the Leelanau State Park in Northern Michigan.  My significant other was coming up the next day with junior #4.  It was 97-degrees out when we reached the park, and not 2 seconds after I parked at the site the 3 year old lost his cookies all over the back seat.  We had great expectations of a wonderful beach, swimming, etc.  Once we stepped out of the car we were attacked by 8-million black flies, and quickly realized that there was no way to swim.... there was 100 yards of rocks, weeds and deep-thick mud between us and the lake.  Wondering what we were going to do, one of the park rangers drove up and chewed me out for driving too fast..... making a bad situation even worse.  After 20 minutes of being eaten alive by the flies and accepting the fact that a beach was no where in site, we hopped back in the car and drove up to my folks in Petoskey.... never having set up camp.  Being the 4th of July holiday week I didn t think we would find another campsite (with a beach nearby), I called the State Park reservations number the next morning and explained our dilema.  There was one site available at the Muskegon State Park (Lake Michigan North), and we jumped on it.  4 hours later we made it to the new campground...... 20 minutes away from our home in Grand Haven where the trip began the day before.  Leelanau is a beautiful place, but when you are beach dwellers like we are, it is not a place to be!
 
 I have always learned things the hard way!
 

[cam]

 AustinBoston
We once reserved a site at a cg at Rocky Mountain House Alberta we found in camping magazine. Located in the foothills of the Rockies, the ad descibed it as having a river flowing beside it, great scenery etc. When we arrived it was located beside the intersection of 2 highways...the river ran on the other side of the highway and the cg itself was about a 15 acre site they removed every tree from and gave you an 8 foot wide " stall"  (just can t call it a camp site) to park your PU in.  We pulled in drove around (in shock), stopped by the office and told them to keep our deposit (one nights camping fees ) and left.  We only went about 8 miles down the road and found a beautiful spot with a lake and the huge pine trees we thought we were getting at the first place!