Southern Oregon RV Park — Local services in Central Point

We stayed 6 days in a 32 foot travel trailer in space E1. I'm not sure how it gets so many good reviews. We travel a lot and are pretty easy-going. There's good and bad at most places, but this one has some big problems. The park is very new and looks nice. It's next to a waterway around it that is pretty. It's next to their fairgrounds, if that interests you. The wifi was VERY good...but, my spot was near the office, so I don't know if the whole park is good. Sprint and Verizon, excellent cell signals.The spaces are long, but not that wide. If you have slides on both sides you will encroach onto the grassy area which has a nasty bug problem (keep reading). This park is only a couple years old, so the trees they planted (all pretty) are young and do not provide any shade. In a few years, I'm sure that will remedy itself. There are two gas stations near this place so it was easy to gas the truck and then hook up and go. I personally liked that it was next to I-5. Yes, there is traffic noise due to the freeway being so close, but it didn't bother us. The sites are asphalt, but not level (despite being new) and the sewer connections are built up. It was a pain to set it all up to get proper flow. We walked around a lot and the other rigs had the same issue, so I'd say the whole park is probably like that. Not sure why they built them that way...maybe a code issue or something. So, here's the bad: There is a HUGE homeless problem, and a homeless camp at the river next to the rv park. It makes it feel very unsafe. I did a little reading and the homeless/crime problem in Jackson County is apparently pretty epic. On our second day a homeless guy came up from the river and was running around the park going rig to rig yelling and demanding the code to the showers (the bathrooms have no lock, but the showers do...which is kind of dumb because it encourages homeless people staying by the river to come up to the bathrooms). Campers redirected him to the office. He then ran to the camp hosts at the office, yelling. This poor little old lady had this guy in her face screaming about wanting the code to the shower for his girlfriend...she argued with him and he stormed off. The park staff (County employees) just sat in the office and watched him berate her. He didn't leave the park for about an hour, yelling and upset. No police ever came. One poor guy ran past him to the showers so he wouldn't have to engage with him. One lady who was traveling alone hooked up her rig and left.

I saw lots of campers head down to fish, so they weren't deterred. I never once saw a sheriff car driving through to check on things, even though this is a County park. There is NO security, no security gate, no cameras, no nothing that I saw. After staff left in the evening, people came in cars and parked, used the electric and water hookups and then left the following morning before they were spotted. The staff at the front desk (I engaged with them twice, once upon check in and then again with a question) were both rude. Also, they never called the police or did anything when homeless people came up from the river and wandered around the park, which happened daily. Park staff did landscaping early in the morning. Using a mower and leaf blower in my camp, around my camping chairs and blowing dirt/rocks on my truck and rig...I've never experienced that before, and I've stayed all over the country. Usually they do this stuff BETWEEN campers. Thus the window between checkout and checkin, but I digress. The County really should pay better attention...this place is a lawsuit waiting to happen.

And the grass patches are INFESTED with chiggers. Before I knew it, I was bitten hundreds of times all over and was only outside a little while. My daughter and dog were also bitten. C’mon Jackson County, you...

We chose this campground because we needed a big rig friendly campground with solid cell service within day trip range of Crater Lake. Given the park size and cell service I saw as we drove by other campgrounds closer to Crater Lake, I think we made the right choice despite the 90 minute drive between the campground and the national park entrance.

The campground is just off of I-5, so there is some road noise. It is technically a county park because it’s associated with the county expo, but it looks and feels like a private campground. As you enter the campground, you’ll pass two rows of sites (one back-in, one pull-through) before reaching the office on the left. There are long RV parking spaces to pull into on either side of the office while you check in. The office building contains a lounge area with a small library, a convenience store-style fridge of sodas, and a freezer with ice cream selections. Behind the office is a covered porch with picnic tables. There is a separate small laundry room within the building as well (2 or 3 washers and dryers).

Our site was in the section of sites beyond the office, site H5. With the exception of the five sites that back up to the dog park, all of the sites in the section are pull-throughs, with asphalt pads, grass lawns, and small concrete patios with picnic tables. The front corner of the patio furthest from the pad was cut away to serve as the fire “square”, which was not something I’d seen before. Rows of shrubs and flowers separate the sites, which was nice. In-ground sprinkler systems keep the plant life watered, but that means you might get wet if you’re outside your camper before 6am…as we discovered the hard way. Another thing that isn’t mentioned in the campground literature is that you can put trash bags outside the front of your site for pickup in the late morning: there are trash cans located throughout the park, and one receptacle for recycling plastic bottles and aluminum cans, but no dumpsters.

The park has three campground bathhouses (one in the front section, two in the back section), which seem to be individual stalls with bathrooms and showers secured by a door code (we didn’t use them). The dog park is a decent size, with a wedge shape and a dirt surface, but we weren’t fans of the multiple gates when one would have sufficed.

The main recreational features of the park are its proximity to the 27-mile Bear Creek Greenway paved trail and the fishing ponds along the edges of the park. The grassy areas adjacent to the ponds and the trails along and between the ponds gave us plenty of options for walking the dogs. Our hounds were also entertained by the flocks of Canadian geese that roamed the campground, and the several stray cats that hang out in the foliage around the ponds. Of course the negative with the geese was all of the geese dropping in the grass and on the streets, and warm evenings brought out the mosquitos around the ponds.

In terms of cell service, the best speed I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna was 66Mbps down and 27Mbps up, so we had no trouble streaming video during our stay. The best speed I got on my AT&T smartphone was 68Mbps down and 25 up. The night before we left, I tried to connect to the campground WiFi with my phone just to try it out, but while I could connect I couldn’t get any internet service.

We would stay here again if we were...

I called prior to coming to see if they had space available and no one would pick up the phone. When I arrived I went inside the office I was told that the computers don’t work and I would have to wait for the computers to work and would I please move my RV into a different area. I moved my RV to a different area came back and she was helping somebody else on the computer. She wanted my email address for registration I said I didn’t do email at which point she had to call somebody because what would reservations be without data mining. She finally figured out how to make a reservation without my email address.I asked for an end spot she gave me E9, I went there and the 30 amp plug-in was melted I tried calling the office and again no one answered the phone. When I went to the office she was sitting at her desk eating and threw the cover over her food with full on attitude and said “I’m just not gonna get a break“. She then called the maintenance guy who went to look at the spot came back in the office and said everything was fine no problems with the plug he turned it on. I said the problem wasn’t that it was turned off the problem was that the plug was melted he said he didn’t look at that. Decided to move to a different spot she said she had one that was ADA available I said OK I’m ADA she said she wanted to see the placard I went out to my rig got the placard brought it in she said oh no that spot is not available after all. I ended up in H10 I have no paperwork saying that this was approved but here I am. If incompetence was a sport this place would get a...