Milton Heights Campground – April 2016
Campsite #D6
We stayed at Milton Heights Campground the last weekend of April. It was a bonus weekend and we needed some place close to home to camp. Not much is open at this time of the year, especially one close to home and also a park that we haven’t already visited. We were interested in Milton Heights because it’s open 12 months of the year which gives us somewhere to go in December while we wait for our winter program to open at Valens Conservation Area. We weren’t expecting a lot in terms of privacy at Milton Heights and we were pretty much right. Nice, level pull thrus but zero privacy and not many trees. The three way service was a nice bonus, especially since we’d recently ended our winter program and our tanks needed the extra flushing.
Our trip to Milton Heights turned out to be quite the adventure, but for all the wrong reasons unfortunately. We left home Friday early evening after work. The route I’d chosen was using Google Maps and since I hadn’t been to this park before and had used Google Maps for most trips, I trusted it. We don’t often use the navigation system in our truck as it’s a 2006 and we haven’t bothered to pay the $600 to update it. Especially since we knew a new truck was in the future. So, having said that, the fault ultimately lies with us, that we missed the “No trucks or buses allowed” signs at the intersection of Derry Road and Appleby Line. Once we started up the hill towards Rattlesnake Point, it was too late to turn around. Halfway up the hill the engine light and transmission light came on. We were heating up the transmission pretty good. A few miles past the top on even ground, everything cooled down and the warning lights went out. We continued on to the park. Once there, we begun to unhitch the fifth wheel and found some significant damage to our truck where the fifth wheel had bounced on the truck box.
We finished unhooking and promptly joined our friends camping next to us for a few stiff drinks. What a night. The truck was all ready to be traded in once our new one was received but now we’d need to have the transmission checked and flushed and the body work fixed on the truck.
Saturday morning we went for a walk around the park. It was very clean and well kept with a rec hall, washrooms, showers and a pool. Although there are no hiking trails or much to do at the park, there are plenty of awesome places close by like Kelso\Glen Eden Conservation Area, Rattlesnake Point Conservation Area and Hilton Falls to name a few!
All the campgrounds in the park were more or less the same in terms of privacy. However, the pads in our area were nicer. They were level and paved, not gravel. If you do visit later in the year, the water is heated at this park, so yes, even in December you can have water, provided you can keep your own length of hose from freezing. Here are some park photos:
Saturday was spent relaxing and spending time with our camping friends Derek and Tatjana. They wanted to drive out to Rattlesnake Hill to see the hill we towed the fifth wheel up. We obliged and were shocked to see the signs we had missed prohibiting trucks and buses. Had we noticed them, a quick detour left on Derry Road to Guelph Line would have saved much aggravation. Here are some photos:
We spent both Friday and Saturday enjoying campfires and great company! We had a wonderful dinner together Saturday night with the best steak I’ve ever tasted – done over the campfire!
Sunday we flushed the tanks and packed up to leave. We pulled out of the park and found that the truck wasn’t going to tow the fiver home. The engine light was on and the transmission was in “limp mode”. We left the fiver in storage at Milton Heights and drove the truck home. Not towing, it ran fine. We cleared the engine code and were able to get it home and to the transmission shop without issue. That was not the end of our truck troubles by far and I won’t even comment any further on this page.
So, for a review of Milton Heights Campground! It seems to be a busy place for stopovers and people living in their RVs. It’s funny how the park works for seasonals. You can spend either a winter season or a summer season here, but you can’t stay both. The campsites are kept not too badly, nor are the campground roads. I would have to give it a poor score on privacy. As well, you can hear the 401 highway as it’s very close. The park is also on different flight paths to Pearson Airport, however I didn’t notice any noise from planes overhead and it was kind of neat to watch them making their approaches. The park staff we met seemed nice and friendly and their facilities seemed clean as well.
As I mentioned earlier, although there is not much to do at this park, there are a lot of cool places nearby. Many, many places to hike including the Bruce Trail and numerous side trails. We would stay here again in December when not much else is open, but during the other months, I think we’ll keep visiting new parks. The park and the staff are nice but it’s just not the type of park we’d spend a lot of time at due to the lack of privacy and green space between sites. Here’s a link to the park:
http://www.miltonhgtscampgrd.com/
And if you’re in the area you’ll want to get your outdoor fix at these places!
One thing I must add – Dave and I visit a lot of new parks every year. In fact, the majority of parks are new every year. We might find a few that are not exactly ones that will become favorites, but we love camping and we firmly believe that ANY time camping is better than none. So, when we run into a situation where a park is not what we had hoped, we make the best of it and find things to do in the area and have an awesome time. As my hubby says – “It’s all about the experience!”
Sue and Daves RV Adventures 