Camp Tonkawa Springs RV Park and Campground — Hotel in Nacogdoches

This will be a long review, but I encourage you to read before you take yourself and your family to this place. I grew up less than 30 minutes from this camp. My family still lives in the surrounding area. I have stayed here often when we come to town to visit from where we now reside in Georgia. It's been probably 4 years since the last time we stayed there, but had always had good experiences so it has been my "go to" spot. We arrived on a Wednesday evening. I had thought for sure that I had made my reservation for Wednesday thru the following Tuesday when I called the week prior. Maybe I didn't? There was obviously some sort of mix up because come Monday morning (today), I was told that I needed to pay another $15 for the night by an employee. Which was absolutely no problem. We had no issues and nothing but pleasant exchanges since arriving. There was a second employee who stopped by our site again and said he was just giving a friendly reminder that I needed to pay the $15 at the office. Again, not a problem. I had planned on leaving shortly after lunch to visit with family and was going to stop on my way out to pay and make sure all was well. I was aware that there was a 5 day limit on the tent sites and I just thought they were being nice and letting me have an extra night because we were literally the only campers there. About 10 minutes before leaving, the owner, who I had not seen the entire time we were there and I did not catch his name came on the golf cart. I went to smile at him and say hello, when he immediately started to be loud and aggressive. Yelling and demanding that we get our things and get off his property. I was completely confused. I am still confused. I tried to ask what was wrong, but he would not stop yelling long enough for me to say anything. I just thought well okay... If it was this big of an issue, why was I told we were okay to stay? He said to get out so we started to pack up. I'm a single mother and had my two youngest daughters with me and we had been there for several days. I was not expecting to have to up and pack everything like that. But that is indeed what we started to do. The wind was blowing and making things difficult. A short while later, he comes again on his golf cart and once again starts being very loud and aggressive. In front of my 13 and 14 yr old daughters and screaming about how I'm trespassing and he was going to call the police and have me arrested. I'm just standing there thinking... This man cannot be serious right now. All I could manage to say is...can you not see that we're trying to do as you asked? We had a lot of things to pack back up. This man proceeds to get off his cart and start approaching me. Face red, shaking his hands at me just screaming and steadily walking towards me being very aggressive. Telling me I was going to listen to him and I needed to get my $?!& and get off his property before he had me arrested. My children and myself have severe PTSD as a result of many years of domestic violence. This man approaching me like this sent me into a complete panic and I started to cry, scream and cower begging him to please stop. Please stop. Please stop. To which he started to mock me when he realized I was genuinely frightened. My children started to cry at this point and telling him to stop. Stop, don't you see what you're doing? Stop! He then told my 14 yr old daughter to go to hell. I called the police myself. This man was aggressive and mean and was downright bullying me and my children for absolutely no reason other than a misunderstanding about a check out time which I thought had been taken care of. I'm not exaggerating. I felt the need to call the police because I didn't know where all the hostility was coming from and he frightened me. Truly frightened me. Had been nothing but a great time up until that point. All over something that could have, should have and I thought HAD been resolved without issue. I will not ever go back. Not that I can because he issued a no trespass...

We would have loved to enjoy the campground and enjoy the facilities on Oct. 11th, 2019 however the "angry old man on a golf cart" as I see he is referred to in other posts threw us out before we got set up within minutes of our arrival. So if getting thrown our of a campground is on your bucket list, this is the place for you!

My wife made our initial reservation after reading the website and calling their phone number. Francis wrote our name down and said we could pay when we came onsite. No hours of operation were mentioned on the phone and they do not exist on their site.

I tend to be careful with reservations and prefer to be sure when it comes to my family and have confirmation so I suggesting calling back and seeing about paying. My wife tried to do that but that was not something Francis could do over the phone.

We called a total of 4 times to try to firm up our reservations. In the end through a misunderstanding or miscommunication on their or our part we arrived just after 8pm after their allowed check in time of 7pm. We thought we had an understanding that we could pay in the morning but apparently we did not. We were given site numbers to use that night A2 or A3. Given we had never been there how would we know those numbers as those are indeed site numbers on premises?

At any rate "Mr. Golf cart" rolled up while my wife and I were standing outside of the vehicle inspecting the A2 site with flashlights to ensure we could pull in safely. My wife who was wearing her head-lamp turned to face the direction she heard noise coming. This had the affect of shining the light on him to which his initial greeting was a surly, and gruff yelling of "Get that light outa my eyes".

We were informed that we could not just come on their campground and pick any site we pleased and that there was no admittance after 7. No really knowing who we were talking do as he never identified himself, we tried to explain that we were not picking any site but using one of the two we were told to use and that we were under the understanding we could check in the next morning. We were told "no one told you that" and we were invited to leave and find some other place if we wanted to.

This sour, surly, angry, unhappy man proceeded to berate us repeatedly and at a minimum 6 times accused us of not telling the truth. I appreciate rules and why he had them as he explained them to us but as far as we were concerned we were doing what we were told we should do and never intended to violate the sanctity of his precious, all important rules.

After this verbal tongue lashing and looking at my wife's face as she bit her lip for the sake of our children I stayed fairly quite until he said "Let me know if you have heard this before..." and continued with the fact that we were not allowed to enter after 7pm. I told him that we had heard that initially but that we were operating under an understanding we thought we had with Francis to which he again abruptly cut me off informing me that "NO ONE TOLD YOU THAT".

After a few more words from him he settled down a bit and said he would "let us stay" and that he would have never placed us in the site we were in front of as he said he would have put us back by the bathroom given we had a popup camper. He said to follow him in his cart but he just couldn't leave it there. He gave us one final rebuke with "Now tell the truth, no one told you to come in here" and then repeated "just tell the truth".

I turned and said in a very calm, even tone "Sir, I think that is uncalled for. I don't appreciate your repeatedly accusing my wife of lying" and had I been allowed to continue to speak I would have said that at best this was a miscommunication or misunderstanding as we would never have intentionally broken their rules but I was cut off by him again this time telling us to "Get out and don't come back here again".. So we did but not before I pointed out that with manners and attitudes like they had "It's a wonder your campground...

I am so embarrassed. We chose this place to have a family gathering. When we arrived the managers at the gate had a bad attitude like they didn’t want to be there. We shrugged it off as probably a rough week. Soon after we setup camp a small group of us decided to go for a hike through the woods. The man came to us and started yelling at us about how we can’t do that. He was being very aggressive even turning red in the face. We kept apologizing trying to calm him down but he just kept getting angrier. He eventually went away and we went back to the camp. Two people then came to our campsite and proceeded to scald us for hiking. We were never in any forbidden areas. After the left we were all stressed and couldn’t understand why they were so hostile. The next day one of our group members was physically assaulted by the same man that was yelling at us in the woods. He came flying up to him on his golf cart, jumped off his cart a hit our group member in the chest. The young man he hit is a very educated professional so he chose not to defend himself. He just ran back to camp to get away from the man. The man showed up at the camp and started screaming at him again to get off his property which he was already packing to do so. My sister went to the office to complain about the Man’s behavior and the woman started yelling at my sister because “that was her husband”!? As we were packing our things I had to go to the restroom. As I was leaving the restroom someone else was entering. I started my way back and a woman from the office approached me asking me what I was doing in the restroom. I told her that was my private business and to get lost. I have never been to a camp that the management acted like this and we camp all over. Our family member that was assaulted is filing charges at the local sheriffs office. We obviously will not be returning while this management is...