Anyone get caught up in the Scotty's Campground "RVs & Pullbehinds versus tent campers" fiasco this weekend (BTW – this is an addendum to my reply on the Norwalk – Good and Bad post from last year as we are all long time National Trails veterans)? A very very long story short, we booked 3 campsites in Scotty's Campground online picking the exact same campsites we were in last year. We have a motorhome and one pullbehind trailer we camp in plus tents and popup trailers scattered about. We rolled in Thursday evening after that monster tstorm that hit and the summit worker at the entrance to all the camping & day parking said we can not get in as the field is flooded where the Scotty's campground is (we figured this was going to be the case as there was flooding every where). What we didn't expect is he said we had to leave and come back tomorrow morning! We weren't allowed to temporarily park overnight on any of the other areas that wasn't flooded next to the track (like the day parking, etc)! Leave, and go where (we paid $250 for the weekend to camp)? We drove aimlessly for a short distance and found a open gravel lot near the track which was actually Summit's property for maintenance it looked like (there is another massively long story involving this lot, but that’s for another thread sometime).
What this lead up to was we walked back over to the track Fri. morning and of course they weren't letting anyone in yet and to comeback around 11am after they put some gravel down over the mud. We did that and now this is where things get serious. The guy working Scotty's Campground entrance over heard us talking to another summit employee and he asked do you guys have a motorhome? Then he said "Oh you guys can't camp here at all." This is a tent and popup camper area only!!! Of course we're baffled at this point; he goes on to say that there is a new Ohio law now preventing Motorhomes & pullbehind trailers from camping right next to tents & popups. This is because that someone had died from carbon monoxide recently in a tent from a motorhome's generator and their no longer allowed to camp next to each other. Wow we all thought, we didn't know that this had happened.
We can understand that this a very serious issue, but we are extremely PO'd at Norwalk for allowing people like us to book these Scotty Campground campsites on their webpage months ago without a massively huge message on the very first page stating this!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The only message I saw was that for booking a campsite you must have a weekend pass first, NOTHING ABOUT NOT ALLOWING RVs in SCOTTY's! Remember we were booking campsites exactly we were where last year and when we all got our paper work in the mail we signed them and sent them back, but evidently buried on the small text them must have been something about this major important change! Friday morning there were about 25 motorhomes & RVs lined up on the left side of the main gravel road coming to all of the camping & day parking areas on the west side of the track, all of which were supposed to be in the Scotty’s Campground and had no where else to go. We did not try to force our way in there with them as we figured it would have been some kind of fire code violation to block a portion of that main road like that. Lastly a sheriff came up to our RVs on the gravel lot and said we had to move, since the actual motorhome campground was full, at that point we said the hell with it. I went back to the ticketing booth, they gave me a hand written receipt that they were going to credit my credit card the $250 (there was two other guys in line with me, one getting a $700 credit back, and the other over $2,000!). Half of us went home the other half (since we spent almost $200 frick’n dollars in gas to get there) went on up to Lake Erie and camped there going to Kelly’s Island and Cedar Point for the weekend. Needless to say this was the last straw, we’re never going back to Norwalk ever again, here we come Indy!
What this lead up to was we walked back over to the track Fri. morning and of course they weren't letting anyone in yet and to comeback around 11am after they put some gravel down over the mud. We did that and now this is where things get serious. The guy working Scotty's Campground entrance over heard us talking to another summit employee and he asked do you guys have a motorhome? Then he said "Oh you guys can't camp here at all." This is a tent and popup camper area only!!! Of course we're baffled at this point; he goes on to say that there is a new Ohio law now preventing Motorhomes & pullbehind trailers from camping right next to tents & popups. This is because that someone had died from carbon monoxide recently in a tent from a motorhome's generator and their no longer allowed to camp next to each other. Wow we all thought, we didn't know that this had happened.
We can understand that this a very serious issue, but we are extremely PO'd at Norwalk for allowing people like us to book these Scotty Campground campsites on their webpage months ago without a massively huge message on the very first page stating this!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The only message I saw was that for booking a campsite you must have a weekend pass first, NOTHING ABOUT NOT ALLOWING RVs in SCOTTY's! Remember we were booking campsites exactly we were where last year and when we all got our paper work in the mail we signed them and sent them back, but evidently buried on the small text them must have been something about this major important change! Friday morning there were about 25 motorhomes & RVs lined up on the left side of the main gravel road coming to all of the camping & day parking areas on the west side of the track, all of which were supposed to be in the Scotty’s Campground and had no where else to go. We did not try to force our way in there with them as we figured it would have been some kind of fire code violation to block a portion of that main road like that. Lastly a sheriff came up to our RVs on the gravel lot and said we had to move, since the actual motorhome campground was full, at that point we said the hell with it. I went back to the ticketing booth, they gave me a hand written receipt that they were going to credit my credit card the $250 (there was two other guys in line with me, one getting a $700 credit back, and the other over $2,000!). Half of us went home the other half (since we spent almost $200 frick’n dollars in gas to get there) went on up to Lake Erie and camped there going to Kelly’s Island and Cedar Point for the weekend. Needless to say this was the last straw, we’re never going back to Norwalk ever again, here we come Indy!
