HIDDEN VALLEY CAREFREE RESORT – MAY 2016
CAMPSITE #17
Hidden Valley was a trip that almost didn’t happen. The weekend before we’d been at Milton Heights Campground and suffered some truck issues which forced us to leave our fifth wheel there in storage. We honestly weren’t sure whether the truck would be ready for this trip or not. As it turned out, we got the truck back Friday and were able to head back up to Milton Heights to pick up our fifth wheel Friday night. It was already almost dark when we got there after work, so we knew we wouldn’t have time to tow down to Hidden Valley. Instead, I just left our reservation for Saturday night in place.
This campground is in a valley which is very hidden! The road to get to it is a little windy and runs through “Spooky Hollow”! That’s the way our GPS took us, but upon driving out of the park, I realized the better way is Turkey Point Rd.
Upon arrival, the nice park manager told us to take any site in the overnight area if we didn’t like #M20. It was a very good thing he told us this as there was no way we would ever have fit our fifth wheel on M20. I did call the park and ask when booking as I’m still pretty nervous finding sites to accommodate us and was told M20 was one of the biggest. Well, it’s not. There are very few sites in the overnight serviced area that would fit our 36′ fifth wheel. Here are a couple photos of our site:
The overnight area we were in was pretty much empty, so privacy wasn’t a concern, but I’ll bet in the summer it’s a zoo with no privacy. The campground was very clean and the grass nicely cut. The campsites weren’t very level and the longer the unit of course the worse it was. Our row backed onto a hill with a fence behind us and below the hill the seasonal area. The row on the other side of the campground row would be very pretty as it backed onto the woods. There were absolutely no sites on this side we would fit onto. Our site had 30 amp electric and a water hookup but for some reason the water pressure was terrible! We ended up filling our tank and using our own pump. This was the first weekend the park opened and I suspect that had much to do with it. Here are some photos of the overnight campground area:
The highlight of our weekend away was our zip lining/tree top canopy tour that I booked at Long Point Eco Adventures. Neither one of us had zip lined before, so we weren’t sure what to expect. Dave was the apprehensive one and I was the one looking forward to the adventure, that is until they put our gear on and we got to the first line. Then the tables turned! By about the third line I was ok, but still found it a little unnerving! Here are some photos of Long Point Eco Adventures:
And here we zip lining!
Zip lining was exciting and a lot of fun. Our guides were excellent and very patient with us newbies. There were eight different lines with the longest being 800 feet! You couldn’t even see the end of that one when you took off. The only part that terrified me was the rappel at the end. You finished at the top of a tree on a platform and of course that was the only way down. To me it was the equivalent of “free fall” as there was no rock face to rappel down. I kind of like something like land under my feet lol. I survived it and would do it all over again. Just as we were finishing our eighth line the forecast rain moved in. We made it back, bought our photos and headed back to camp. We sat under the awning and read while it rained itself out. I covered our firepit in hope of a fire later and that’s exactly what we did!
The park was very quiet despite it being full of campers returning to their seasonal sites and lots of kids! Our area smelled of damp woods and pine trees. It was very pretty! We both slept very well on Saturday night after the exercise we got during the day!
Sunday morning we woke and had a nice bacon and egg breakfast and slowly packed up camp. We hooked up the fifth wheel and had the same issue happen again that plagued us the weekend before – the engine light came on and the transmission went into “limp mode”. There was no way we were towing home again. We walked to the office and the park staff person we spoke to – Sharon – let us park the fiver in a nice, well trimmed grassy field until we could tow it home. We offered to pay her and she refused to take our money to store it. Before I give my review of the park, I want to share more photos:
So for my review! The campground was very clean and very well maintained. Park staff were always riding around checking things out and patrolling, even in our sparsely populated area! The grass was nicely cut everywhere and there were no long hanging tree branches on any roads. The comfort station was clean as well. The quality of our campsite was OK. It would be a better for a smaller RV as the sites aren’t overly deep before they start to run downhill. The nicely groomed grass on the site was nice. No worry about ticks!
We had no issues with the 30 amp service, but as I mentioned the water pressure was pretty bad on our site. No big deal, we just used the outlet to fill our tank and ran our own pump which is really decent. As mentioned, although the park was busy in the seasonal area and there were lots of kids, it was quiet. I can’t say enough about how friendly and helpful the park staff were. We appreciated them helping us out in our time of need when the truck broke down. Our fifth wheel is still up there, but coming home this Saturday!
This would not be a park we would visit in the summer. It would be hard to maneuver out fifth wheel down the overnight campground road and back it in if every site had vehicles on them. As well, there are really only two sites we could fit on – #17 and I believe it was #22. We did enjoy our stay here and would come back in the off season. There are plenty of things to do in the area such as golfing at Turkey Point Golf Course and many different things to do at Long Point Eco Adventures. For us it’s only about 1 hr and 45 min from home. So here are some links:
http://www.carefreecommunities.com/rv-parks/ontario/hidden-valley/
http://www.turkeypoint.ca/whattodo.asp
And to my Picasa album:
HAPPY CAMPING!
Sue and Daves RV Adventures 