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Published: June 11th 2013
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"This place is fucked up" ...
... were Ian's first words when we rode into the campground this afternoon. I have to agree with him. Let me explain.
Before we left for this trip, we had researched a few places that we wanted to see and stay, and the Steel Steeds Campground "geared for motorbikers" was on our list. It's just south of Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, on the Susquehanna River. Their website tagline reads "All you need is your toothbrush and jammies." In my mind, I had envisioned rolling into a large, clean site with tidy gravel roads leading to RVs along the riverbank, enveloped in trees for privacy, modern bathroom facilities, and in particular where we would get a chance to visit and talk with other bikers.
Reality check: we were the only bikers there.
Reality check: their website is GROSSLY misleading. Deja vu?
Oh where to begin. Do not read while eating, friends. They neglected to mention that we should use their facility AT OUR OWN RISK. And that, if you a normal everyday human being, to bring your own extra strength bleach, cleaning supplies, brooms, towels, pillows, bug spray, and as under no circumstances
should you sit on the toilet seat or remove your shoes, even after unit has been cleaned. We just dropped in without a reservation (!) at 4:30 pm as the website welcomes, however the owners were out on a ride, so the resident cleaner, Joyce, assigned us our unit, which actually hadn't yet been cleaned because they had had 140 punk rockers there the night before and she was too tired to clean today. Reality check.
We took a few pictures and sadly they don't portray the ridiculous conditions of the messy, unkempt campground and the 30-year old trailers provided as accommodation. For our boating friends' reference, it resembled the old Port Browning and the cabins that Lou used to rent out after a long weekend. We were given The Little Scamper, a smaller RV, for $65.00/night. Yes, we were stupid enough to pay it. Cash, no tax. Inside our little scampi, and I'll try to keep this short, there was no hot water, the bath was orange-brown from age, the toilet lid clearly hadn't been lifted for cleaning for several days (or weeks, who knows), bugs and more in all the vents, rust on the ceiling, dirty floors,
broken blinds, cobwebs and their ancient dead behind the blinds inside the windows, and unfortunately I looked inside the pillow case and found what maybe resembled a pillow 5 years ago, but was now yellowed and sweat-stained and consisted of 4 large lumps of I-don't-want-to-know-what, unsanitary blanket on top of brown silk-type sheets (eeuuuwwwww) on a bed that was 8" too short and 2 feet too narrow, yellow-browned splitting linoleum floors spotted with cigarette burns despite the laminated sign above the sink saying No Smoking in RV, drip stains from the A/C unit on the ceiling that was plugged into an extension cord that was fed through the can't-quite-see-through-because-of-the-dirt window to an outlet outside. Truly, I don't know how we were able to laugh about it at the time. Joyce was actually very nice, and sat with us after she finished cleaning for a beer and a smoke, and invited us over to her rig for more of the same. She subsequently drove to town to meet up with a friend for the evening. OMG. Met the owners just before Joyce left. See photo.
As for the surroundings, our trailer was 2 feet away from the next one, and
we were nowhere near the riverbank. We were provided plastic chairs for around the fire, so covered with dead spiders and daddy longlegs. I did not do well with this. We had absolutely NO privacy. The trailer moved when we moved around inside it. John and Les, if you are reading this, it makes Wolf Point look really nice.
Oh, and let's not forget to give the famous Mindy's Tavern honourable mention, also given top billing on their website, housed in an old small, square, one-level brick building with old windows and a front door on a spring. Thick blue smoke obscured the location of the bar. Waded through, breaths held, and found the bar, where several hard, Harley bikers were sitting on black fake leatherette bar stools, with all visible skin tattooed, snogging with hard girlfriends fluffing their pretend blonde hair with all visible skin tattooed, and all smoking, including the bartender, and all of whom (including the women) weighed no less than 250 lbs (each, in case that wasn't clear). The word motherf____r was thrown around alot. During the short time we were there, the most overweight, not very attractive in any way patron at the end
of the bar lifted her shirt and displayed her obesely large sagging sandbag breasts to the guy next to her at the bar. The guy next to her at the bar replied by undoing his jeans button, lowering his zipper, pulling his jeans down and showing her his underwear. No shit. We are not making this up. 4 more Harley guys showed up in a loud, rowdy style, all sporting long bug-filled beards, missing teeth, long pony-tailed greasy hair, muscle shirts underneath leather vests branded with their club (gang?) colours, a couple of whom decided to play pool for money right behind us. This could get ugly. I have never drank a bottle of Bud Lite so fast. All Ian could say was welcome to Pennsylvania - we may as well be in deepwoods hictown Alabama.
The ONLY reason we chose to stay rather than carrying on to another town was so we could blog about it. And to have a few laughs and memories. We did manage to make light of the situation and have our own fun - we lit a fire, used our own stove to boil water for dehydrated Chicken Alfredo camp food, drank more
Bud Lites, walked down to the river. Sorry Ian, but tonight the socks and undies are staying ON :-)
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Sharon
non-member comment
Tomorrow's another day!
Good thing you've both got a sense of humour, it keeps you from crying . . . .