KANSAS - CAMPGROUND REVIEWS

Bloomington East Campground - Clinton, Kansas -  RATING - 2.5/5

 WIFI - No

ATT - Yes, three bars, five bars with Weboost

VERIZON - Yes, one/two bars, three bars with Weboost but slow, slow, slow

SERVICES -  20/30 AMP, water on site, sewage dump, showers, bathrooms, laundry, paved and gravel sites, pull through and back in sites. picnic tables, fire pits, boat launch ramps, fishing dock and beach.

COST  - $20 for 30 amp sites $10 with pass, $22 for 50 amp site (limited availability) $11 with pass

DISCOUNTS - Access/Senior Pass

REVIEW -  This park has huge potential. But the current staff and volunteers made this park unattractive to us and here is why:

1. The  hosts and volunteer custodial staff  have bad customer service skills and the actual park host is rude and just seems not to give a damn. Kind of a take it, or leave it attitude. I tried to pay for our spot and he was closing the kiosk, he heard me at the counter, opened the window and asked "What do you want."  Not polite at all.  I told him I wanted to pay for our site and he said he "I shut the computer down and I'm not turning it back on because it takes too long to boot up."  Further he told me to "come back later.'  He could have taken the envelope and entered the data when his computer was on. I mean WTF?  It's not like he had a long commute or something. His fiver was maybe 30 steps away from the kiosk.

2. The guy in volunteer custodian position was asked by our friends to clean the disgusting showers because they had mold everywhere, soiled bandages on the floor, toilet paper laying next to the toilets, sinks were dirty, boogers wiped onto the walls in the men's restroom at the urinals.  His response was "why? it's just going to get dirty again" and didn't clean them! At the time of this writing we had been here 5 days. They still aren't clean.

3, Park amenities and infrastructure are not cared for. Paper, cardboard boxes, bottle caps, screws, nails and broken glass were present at our site (I picked them up). All of the fire pits are absolutely overflowing with ash. They probably haven't been cleaned out in a month.  There are only two sewage dumps for the Bloomington East campground. There were four double sided dumps (four for each direction of traffic) but six of them had been concreted over yet the non-potable water spigots were still there.  The site info states 302 camping sites. That's a lot of sewage and long waits on busy weekends .  

4.  We are avid disc golfers. The disc golf course has very long grass. 18"-20" tall grass, yes literally. The staff does make one pass with the lawnmower from tee to hole but there are very few who can place the disc in a 4' wide mowed area. You are constantly wandering off in the tall grass to retrieve discs and chiggers are rampant on the golf course. I received 18 chigger bites in one day. 

This is a world class challenging course and they just ignore it. I know most disc golf course have some long grass but this is like walking through a prairie. Maybe some people like it, I don't.

I need to also mention this because it really ticked me off.  A staffer came to our site in a four wheel maintenance UTV and sprayed around our campsite with a 50 gallon tank marked "pesticide."  

We weren't asked if he could spray. The wind was blowing and the spray went everywhere. I am guessing he was spraying the chiggers but I am only guessing. If I were allergic, I would be S.O.L.

In a word. This place "sucks." I hate to say that, but it's a shame because there is so much potential here.  I rarely criticize to this degree in public but these people deserve to raked through the coals for their lack of performance and attention to detail. 

Having said all this, there are some good things here:

1.  The sites are mostly level and are asphalt, not gravel.
2.  The lake is beautiful, and the birdwatching is great. We read that there are over 500 species of birds that have been sighted here.
3). There is a beach, a fishing dock, boat launches, and a museum here. The beach looks pretty nice, but we haven't taken advantage of it because it's ragweed season, and it's rampant here.

Our site was #30