Timberlane Campground
117 Timberlane Road
Clarksboro, NJ 08020
After leaving Liberty Harbor, it wouldn't have taken much of a RV park to improve on our last stop. We were only making a 3 day stop to visit an old neighbor that used to live across the street from us in Ca. We didn't have a lot of choices as we were trying to stay within a certain area to be close enough for our visit. We were a little sketchy about this campground because some of the reviews it got were pretty rough. In fact one reviewer called it a ?dump?.
But we figured even if it was a bit run down, we were not going to be there that long. So we rolled in expecting the worst. What we found was not that bad. The worst part about the park was that the sites were pretty close together. As for the condition, it looked pretty well taken care of. The grass was cut, and the facilities were freshly painted. The pool and spa were clean and in good order.
The restrooms were clean and handicapped accessible, although a little dated. There is wifi offered, but our Verizon air card worked acceptably. There is a front and a back loop, and the back loop sites are a bit bigger than the front. However, the back is also heavily treed, and we preferred a more open site. We paid $44 a night for a FHU with a gravel pad. The electric was a little weak, but this time it was on Line 2, so we never did have too much of an issue with it. We just metered our use of the rear AC and the washer/dryer, and didn't run them both at the same time. Not a great park, but fortunately not as bad as other reviews had stated.
Cherry Hill Park
9800 Cherry Hill Road
College Park, MD 20740
Our next stop was really highly rated, and we were anxious to check it out. And this was going to be our base camp to check out many different sites in DC. Maybe our expectations were too high for this park, because we were not that impressed with it. The park itself was huge, and this was one place where an escort to the site would have been nice. The roads were paved, but all the sites are gravel. We paid $70 a night for a premium site. The other site that were not ?premium? looked almost identical to ours. The difference was a small brick patio on our site was a $10 a night bump. We had a FHU 50 amp site, and all utilities worked well. The bath house was clean and handicapped accessible. However, we saw no handicapped accessible camping sites. All the sites were loose grave and would have been tough to get around on with a wheel chair or walker.
The pool and ?splash pond? for the kids looked nice, but with all the trips into DC we never got the chance to use them. The maintenance around the park was a bit lax, and the grass was long and weedy. One of the regular complaints about the park was that the employees seemed a bit aloof. That was especially true for the office staff. I had to go into the office several times during the stay to pick up packages. We always got the feeling that we were bothering them. There is a small on site gym that we used one day. However the AC never came on, and the temps and humidity was a killer. It was a one time experience.
Our Verizon air card worked amazingly well here, but a cell tower was located right next to the park. One downside to the park was that it is pretty noisy. There are freeways all around the park, and there must have been some construction going on nearby as well. Several times during the night we were awoken by a low rumbling noise that was similar to a low bass speaker. It would continue for an hour at a time, stop and then restart randomly. We never did locate the source of the noise. The park itself is also not located in the best of neighborhoods, so for casual dinning or grocery stores you needed to travel a ways.
To get into DC we drove to College Park Metro station about 4 miles away. We bought a Metro Card that you flashed at the turnstiles to gain admittance to the trains. The system was pretty easy to figure out, and it cost us between $3 and $4.50 one way to get to the Metro station that was closest to the ?Mall? area. From there we walked to Lincoln's Memorial, Washington's Memorial, and the American History Museum. The crowds were not bad, and getting around the city was a breeze compared to NYC. On another day we drove the Jeep to the Pentagon Memorial, and Arlington National Cemetery. All the sites are remarkable, and some quite moving. DC is one place I could come back to again as even staying a week we just scratched the surface of the things to see and do. Our next trip to visit DC we will search out a different place to stay.
One thing I did get accomplished while here was I changed out the hydraulic pump motor on the rig. After much searching to try to get my motor rebuilt, I soon learned that getting replacement brushes for a 12 volt, high amp motor is like finding hens teeth. And I spent one whole day calling around the country talking to various rebuilder shops. The copper triangle shaped brushes used in this motor make it an anomaly. I finally found a distributor in Texas that stocked the motor. Best part was that I purchased it for less than half of what Camping World wanted to sell me for. I had it shipped to the RV park for just over $200. Camping World wanted $480 to have one drop shipped to me. It's installed and all is happy in RV land again.
Diane has just updated her blog, and has lots more details and pics.