If you visit Jamestown North Dakota, do this but not that

Thursday July 17, Friday July 18,  2014
Frontier Fort Campground (AKA Frontier Fort RV Dump)
Jamestown, North Dakota

 

  

THURSDAY

 

Boy how things have changed.

We leave wonderful Itasca on Thursday morning on the first leg of our 425 mile trip to Theodore Roosevelt National Park.

 

 

 

After 205 miles we stop in Jamestown North Dakota at a Passport America Park called Frontier Fort Campground.  I had looked this up on several review sites and while not glowing reviews they seemed fine.  The most recent from October of 2013 was 8/10.   To say we were shocked at what we found is a gross understatement.   We’re sure not in Itasca anymore.

 

First of all for a PPA park the rate was high.  PPA said $22 a night.  RV Park Reviews said paved roads, sites were a little tight but….OK.  When we get here none of that is true.  It is $25 a night for full hook ups  The girl behind the desk says Passport should have changed it.  I know for a fact that Passport sends out yearly update requests.  So I write to Passport about this and have since put up a “comment” on the PPA web page for this campground and on RV Park Reviews and Trip Advisor.   When you finish this post you’ll have an idea of how they read.

 

Pretty close quarters.

 

 

The entire campground is totally dirt not one piece of pavement in sight.  Well there are trash littered strips of grass between the sites which are close together but not so bad we can’t put out our slides thankfully. 

It may be FHU but the power voltage is low, seldom over 110  and often down to 85 which means with our progressive industries electric protection if we turn on only one of our two AC units, even on a 30 amp circuit, it won’t stay on long.  Progressive cuts it off over and over again until we give up and just open the windows dirt and all.  With temperatures in the upper 80’s this is not a good thing.  

 

The sewer is one of those above ground ones and it appears someone has had an accident here.   David thinks it is toilet paper.

The site ground is littered with trash and a layer of cigarette butts.

Of course the PPA sites are often the least desirable ones in the park, that’s why they are half off.   Certainly the full price “pull throughs”, in the front row of this nothing but dirt campground, are not worth $50 a night. 

And if you are unlucky enough not to have a FHU, the dump site has a lock on it and is in the dirt too of course.  Guess you have to pay extra for that.  

 

 

Shower Stall

We took one look at the bathrooms and showers and said, don’t think so.  Each shower stall has a plywood seat nailed in the corner that clearly gets wet all the time.  One seat has broken lose and the nails are hanging out of the wall in the shower. 

All stalls have a plywood wooden slatted floor but in one of them the boards had rotted through right about where you would want to stand and it appears to have been that way for some time.  You have to wonder what they are doing with all the money they are making here.  The park is actually mostly full primarily with permanent or temporary residents I suspect.  Perhaps the fracking employees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We’re not even sure about the water either since it seems the entire state of North Dakota is into fracking in a big way.  So to be safe we’re drinking bottled water.

We spend Thursday night dealing with our disgust.   This is absolutely the worst campground we have been in during our over 4 years of full timing.   If you come to Jamestown be very careful where you stay.

 

FRIDAY

 

Our closest neighbor.

 

So, I know you are asking, why in the world are we staying there more than one night?  Well the National Park has no hook ups although they do have a dump station at the northern campground 78 miles away from the southern one.   They also have no showers.

If you want to see both sections of the park for more than a drive through, it is best to stay in each section.  So that’s what we hope to do.  No reservations either, another reason we are not going in on a Friday or Saturday. 

In addition,  we’ve been warned that it is 40 miles to the nearest grocery store and that’s more than we want to drive during  our 10 days stay.   Therefore it’s stock up time here. 

 

 

 

Trash on our site when we arrive

 

So we are here in Jamestown with full hook ups, such as they are, in order to change Ruby’s Oil, get the clouding off of her headlights and off of the windows of my bike gear shift levers so I can see what gear I’m in.  Stock up on groceries, do the laundry, give the RV a thorough “vacuum and wipe down everything” cleaning and a number of other things are also on the agenda. 

Theoretically this seemed like a good time to do some of that catch up and stretch out this drive to make it more our style.  But boy was this a bad choice of place.  Site unseen takes on a new meaning. 

I’m amazed at the reviews of this place.  In RV Park reviews the most recent review in October of 2013 gave it an 8/10.  The review had the wrong PPA price and said the roads were paved.  This entire places is one dirt dustbowl there is not a piece of pavement in sight. 

So I’ve learned not to totally trust RV Park Reviews anymore.   The most recent review, as of this afternoon or as soon as they approve it, gives it 1/10.

 

No wonder we are having power problems.  Four of us are  hooked to the same pole.

 

 

Today dawns WINDY and I do mean windy.   Weather.com says 25 mph with gusts 31 but from the way Winnona is swaying I’d say they have seriously underestimated.  And of course in a dirt campground you know what that means.  What a mess.   It also meant that David was not getting down on the ground to change the oil.  Hopefully tomorrow.

 

 

Views of the neighborhood

 

Out our front window

 

But we do get a few things done.  We find a very nice Rainbow Laundry in Jamestown where I do 3 loads of laundry at $2.50 each to wash and $1.00 for 28 minutes of dryer time.   This takes me about 2 hours and it takes David longer than that to walk around the corner of the building into the Coborn’s grocery store and buy 3 bags of groceries.   How is that possible?

We have the same AC problem this afternoon as yesterday until the rains start and then everything seems to be OK.  Just hope the rains will settle the dirt and not turn it into mud.  I’m counting the hours until Sunday morning.

We catch up with some financial and medical record keeping, with emails and future plans for how to get from one National Park to another and stop by to see my dad and brother near Denver in between.

By now we are pretty tired and decide to do the major cleaning tomorrow morning.  I’m even more tired after putting this post together so I’m afraid you will have to wait until tomorrow for what you might very well want to do in Jamestown, North Dakota.