Salmon Lake Park — Hotel in Crockett

Short version: although this huge camp is a little rough around the edges, it is charming, the managers are nice and the slide is fun.

Long version: below is the saga of one families interesting visit to Salmon Lake in the spring of 2024. Iif you aren't into the whole brevity thing enjoy. First though the good, the bad and the ugly.

The good: they let you pick your spot, have a cool slide and a swimming hole.

The bad: the slide is only open Fri, Sat and Sun for a few hours a day and even that is sporadic (it was closed Sun when we were there).

The ugly: the roads are pretty rough and some of their utility system is over stressed.

We often pick camps based on what amenities they offer and Salmon Lake Park looked pretty fun with a huge slide. So we drifted into camp without a reservation on a Saturday in June of 2024. The turns to get to the park we pretty easy to see and led us directly to the office for check in. The pleasant staff member provided a key for a golf cart and told us to cruise around camp to pick a spot out! Obviously the entire family was pretty stoked to get to ride in a golf cart to explore camp. It quickly became apparent why they did this though because the main road into the camp area was flooded. The area had been hit by several storms recently and we weren't surprised by the flooding, but it did make it so that some of the roads around camp were very rough. Now we are not shy about off roading with our trailer, but some of the roads were bad enough it had me planning my route in. I was very happy they had let me look around with the cart cause it let me make a plan for getting to the spot we picked. Since the camp was almost empty, we choose a wonderful spot under a few trees to weather the heat wave that was about to hit. The site was unlevel, about what you would expect from a West Virginia camp not a Texas camp! We have had to do major leveling having traveled to most corners of this beautiful country, so it didn't seem like a big deal. Unfortunately the ground was a little sandy and there was a hidden tree root right where we put our from jack block down and this caused the block to roll and the front jack to start to slide off!!! My wife acted fast and pushed as hard as she could against the 900 pounds the front hitch weighs and called out for help. I added my several hundred pounds to stop it and held the beast in place as the kids fished out a jack and some blocks. After several tense minutes we had the thing jacked up and stable again and we could breathe a sigh of relief!!! After that making camp was pretty normal and we went about our business. When it rained the next day, the power shorted out. We figured it was the entire camp and was caused by the storm. Unfortunately for me, I had dinner in the crockpot which doesn't work without power! I waited a little over an hour and called the office to inquire about the electricity. The office worker didn't know about the power failure and said someone would come by to figure it out for us. Looking over the electric system, I could see the thing was a hodgepodge setup that had been added to over the years. Some boxes didn't have covers and most didn't have breakers or panels. My guess was that some of the wiring was unshielded and the water shorted it. The gentleman that came by to fix it said the same thing and told me that since he would have to order parts, we would have to move. Now beyond the inconvenience of having to break camp again, hitch up and move, the part that didn't sit well was that we liked our shade and the roads further into the forest were even more rugged after the storm. But there was nothing to be done, so we begrudgingly hitched up and moved over. Now the man had recommended we move to the end of the sewer line where the electric system had a few actual panels and breakers. The new spot worked for a day then stopped. Turns out our surge protector was damaged at the first spot. So there was good and bad. The slide was fun, the utility issues not. There is more to the story, but that is all Google...

Camping/RV/cabins park. Very spacious, if not huge, and, how to say it, kinda underpopulated, if not deserted. I was mostly using tent camping sites, so I'll leave RV and cabins reviews to those who know it. Tent camping sites are mostly in pine-tree shaded areas. All have electricity, half has tables, no water on sites as far as I can tell. No bushes so not much privacy. Relatively affordable - tent site rate is $22 per night (October 2019). Whole territory is sparsed with randomly placed vintage/antique machines - trucks, tractors, pumps, etc. Some specimens are really interesting, despite lack of care. At the center there are also a lot of pseudo-antique buildings, posing as hotel, bank, saloon, etc.. No entering/climbing though, so your children might be disappointed a bit. There is small lake for swimming, and another even smaller one - for just looking, both are nice and pretty. No fishing though. There's working mini-railroad loop around the smaller lake, for kids. Not much service - you can get ice at self-service machine and that's about it. However with a city few miles away I consider this more like a plus, not a minus. In general I like this place. One star is taken away because water lines to tent sites are present but not working (April 2019,...

We drove from Houston on Saturday to attend the "Bluegrass Festival". We were hoping to see something like a family oriented show like Bluegrass on "A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor". If we were really lucky, we hoped to see a "Bluegrass Festival" as can be seen on the East Coast. If you ever get a chance to attend one on the East Coast, you will find lots of fun, dancing and family oriented things to do........Our hopes were dashed......Before the show started, a man was working his way through the small crowed handing out money to young women and attempting to strike up a conversation....definitely not family oriented. The amenities were marginal for adults, certainly not something children.------Then the "show" started. It was only Bluegrass at the extreme stretch of the definition of Bluegrass.....The show was more in the order of a revival found in the more extreme religious secs found in East Texas.....Given that most people are family oriented and more in the mainstream of religion, I strongly recommended this group be avoided, especially if you have young women or girls...