Whitewater Memorial State Park — Attraction in Liberty

I took my three year old for a pony ride yesterday. They did not ask if I was comfortable leading the pony by myself and being left alone in the pen with the animal and my son. I have a previous ankle injury and I have trouble walking on rough terrain, which is sometimes just grass. We had already been paddle boating and playing on the playground in that cut-up tire, so my ankle was very overworked already. When I walked into the pen with Austin, my son, I sat him up on the saddle and proceeded to stand beside him and hold onto him, which I thought was going to be my role. The saddle barn employee, Mark, held the lead out to me as if I was supposed to hold it. Ok, now I was confused. I took ahold of the lead (I have very little experience with horses and ponies) and tried to continue standing next to my son. This pony was not hooked up to anything that was keeping it from running off across the pen except the strength of me holding onto this rope. He immediately started to back up and swing his head around and move around. Mark said that Austin would be fine on the saddle without me holding him and I should stand up closer to the horse's head because he would act better with my hand up close to his head. As I looked at the horse's face it looked like the part of the strap that goes across his face was too loose and it was rubbing him on the eye. Well, that would explain why he kept swinging his head at me so I tried to adjust how I held onto him to avoid that problem. Now my head is in multiple different directions trying to watch the pony's eye, my son on the saddle and where I'm going, including not getting stepped on. I started walking but the pony was trying to put it's head down to eat and Mark kept telling me not to let it eat. So now I was pulling his head up, 2 feet away from Austin, telling him not to lean from one side or another. My arm was getting tired. After awhile I tried to ask one of the other adults in my group if he wanted to lead the pony with no response, same thing with my husband when he heard Austin say "No mommy, I want you to do it. The employees were nowhere to be seen. I had no idea how to get to a stopping point so that I could take Austin off of this pony. I started to slow down because my ankle and leg were bothering me (parts of this pen had dips and the pony didn't really stay on the worn down path so I ended up stepping on and off the path a lot which was hard on my walking).I saw a large group of people walking toward us who had kids and were making noise. The slower I walked the more the pony seemed to get irritated and swing his head. So I asked Austin if he was ok for me to speed up a little bit and he said "Yeah." I got up to a speed that the pony seemed ok with, still very well within the realms of "walking" speed. There's no way I could have run or jogged at that point. We got a quarter of the way around the pen at that speed. I saw out of the corner of my eye the pony kicked both it's back legs up off the ground and threw Austin off the saddle. He flew up in the air and off to the left and landed on the ground sideways about four feet away from the pony.I screamed. I backed the pony up to get over to Austin. He stood up and came over to me and I got the pony over to my husband who had entered the pen and took the lead and tied the pony up. I guess Mark heard me scream because he came over to see if Austin was ok and what happened. I told him the pony bucked my son and threw him on the ground. I went into the office to tell the lady. I said I started to pick up speed a little, so she looked at Mark and said, "We need to tell people that it's a walking ride only. They're not supposed to go fast." and told me the pony has never done that before. This was not my fault. That pony made a completely unpredictable mood and I don't appreciate her acting like it was because I was trying to go too fast. I was just trying to get the pony to stop acting irritated with me. They allowed another child on that pony, in the pen without other supervision except the mom, before I even...

We've visited a few times the last couple of years. This year has caused me never to return. Raccoons are absolutely TERRIBLE!! The park is totally infested with them. We had about 7 racoons (at least) raid our bonfire. We were outside and they didn't care. While trying to scare them off and run our food inside (s'more Ingredients and a couple of snacks- that's it) the raccoons ripped open a bag of marshmallows and our 4 yr old twins started eating them while we were panicking getting stuff inside. They were surrounding us coming from all areas. Tops of trees, from the bushes behind trucks, running past us- not getting scared of us. ..we were freaked out and unfortunately didn't see the twins snag the bag the raccoons ate out of. It all happened so fast. My twins had to go through a series of rabies shots recommended by Dayton children's ER . The stress it has caused is extremely overwhelming. For weeks we've had to watch for symptoms and console two babies 1 who was terrified of getting the shot series. The park needs to control the population of the raccoons/rodents. While leaving the cabins we counted 15 racoons just on the roads we used to leave.

We will NOT be returning. Very disappointed, upset, emotional and mad that my family had to go through such a scary situation. Not to mention we were in the ER until 3 am.

The racoons are not afraid of people and that's a problem.

Also- the beach is trashy. This park has declined...

We stayed in a family cabin, and it was great! We were basically staying in a normal house right in the middle of the park, so we had a real bathroom, kitchen, furniture, and central AC, but we were surrounded by woods and could walk to the Veterans Vista Trail. I actually like tent camping, but this was a great way to stay in the park if you don't want to "rough it". Be forewarned that you probably won't get very good mobile phone reception, especially while indoors.

It was the middle of the week before a big holiday camping weekend, so there were very few people around. I'm sure that it'll be very different over Labor Day weekend, so I'd recommend thinking ahead about how many people you like to be around and when the popular camping times will be. The trade-off for us was that the boat rental wasn't open, which was a bit disappointing. The general store was open, though, so I was able to get a lighter there when mine broke, plus drinks and other cookout supplies.

We only had to pay the entrance fee once when we arrived, and not only did that cover all our re-entries throughout our stay, but it also included entrance to the nearby Quakertown and Mounds SRAs, which was a bargain!

The camp is very close to Liberty, so it was easy to go into town for restaurants and groceries. We enjoyed the Liberty Bell restaurant. We'll definitely plan to return with the rest...