October 9th, 2007

We lucked out with the weather and had a lovely time camping out at DAR State Forest for Columbus Day weekend. Lucky enough to take extra time off worked out well. To get there on a Friday early afternoon and set up to sit and relax weas great. The rain came in Saturday night after dinner and was done by the time we got up Sunday Morning. The next bout of rain came during the night and it was really just a drizzle off the trees while we were packing it up Monday morning so, all in all, very nice. To have some hot sunny times in there just made it a perfect weekend to get away from it all.

My thoughts on teh location - DAR is pretty nice as far as State Forests go.

http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/western/darf.htm

Rt 112, Goshen, MA

The sites were really well spaced and pretty thickly treed. It didn't help with the riotous young folk on Saturday - even with the pouring rain it was pretty loud but, it could have been a lot worse. The gentle slopes between the camping areas gave a bit of a sound buffer between each other and we were lucky enough to be away from the louder ones.

Since there were no hook ups and this was our second time out - more testing going on with the camper. We ended up with no refridgerator or hot water heater and the batteries lasted almost 3 days so, we have to keep in mind a few of those things when going to places without hook ups. It did give us a chance to try out the bathhouse and I must say it was clean, hot and had lots of pressure. I also liked the fact that the 2 shower rooms were off the side of the bath house so, it was not gender specific. The sites themselves came with both a barbeque pit and a fire pit - lovely stuff!

The facilities and roads seemed very well kept and updated. Some of the roads needed some levelling as some of the cars going through were leaving scuff marks. Grapevine says that next year they are adding year round cabins so, that'll be nice to have another place with cabin options.

The really odd thing that I will remember from now on is that they didnt have a ranger on duty at the check in station (after Labor Day it's off season). They were around and about, just not sitting there to check you in. You had to check yourself in and did I have the reservation information - ummm, no. I also went crazy trying to get in touch with Reserve America - no 411, no 800-directory...argh. Anyway, eventually got them and they were very helpful so, that was great. Will make sure I bring reservation information from now on dangit.

Also, the dump station wasn't there at the camp area. What? Um, yeah. Funny really. The forest headquarters was on the other end of the place and that's where the dump station was.

Wildlife. Lacking. Although the web says it's be Bear Aware and all that - no bears we saw or saw trace of even. We saw something the first night - it was the glowing eyes about to enter our site until the Advanced Black Bear Yelping system (Abby) chased it off. It was like small coon size. No idea what it was. Heck - could have been someone's house cat for all I know. Abby (Jim Royer's dog) did find newts on the site (so did the kids in the next site) they were all over - busting out like crazy. Very cool colored guys. 

There are pictures and as soon as I get aminute to scan them, I certainly will share. Until then, that's the summary and all is well.