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jayco304
Explorer
Jun 11, 2018

Assateague Island: Generator Use your experience

I have read the Assateague rules about generator use. My question is for those that have visited during the summer months. What has been your experience in terms of how long are people running their generators during the allowable hours? Are people just running to charge batteries and small things like that or are people running all day to run air conditioners?

Any feedback is welcomed.

Thanks

7 Replies

  • Of the 5 loops in the fed side only one is no gens. It is the middle one on the bay side.
    In the state park only one loop (H?) has electric. Those sites are highly coveted as you may imagine. The advantage to the state side is that they have very nice bath houses in each loop with hot water.
    The fed side is cold only showers, they even tore down the old bath houses by the park entrance that had hot water.
    The big loop at the south end of the state side sounds like a buzz saw test facility when it gets to be the dog days of summer.
  • I was in the state park in mid August 2 years ago, and I would say 1/3 of sited had a generator running. Mostly quiet ones, and the noise wasn’t at all bothersome. We just ran a fan in one of our windows all nite and was peaceful
  • We were there in Sept in an oceanside loop, wasn't warm enough during the day to have to run the A/C but did run the genny for about an hour each day to top off battery. Didn't have any issues, and not many people ran their generators for long.
  • We ran ours on the oceanside loop for a couple of hours during the daytime to top off batteries. Just have to be careful that the horses do not trip over wires from gennie to camper. A neighbor had his running all day long into the evening with his A/C on, never saw them leave the camper.

    David
  • We were at the national park about two weeks ago. It was fairly warm, low 80s and sunny. We were camped up north at the Indian River Inlet, but did several trips south to ride our bikes in the park. We rode all of the campground roads a few times. I was surprised by several things. First, there was very little generator use, or anybody at their campsites, mid-day. Second there is a no generator loop. Third, there was a real mix of rigs with a lot of huge TTs, fifths, and class As, mixed in with the folks who were in tents. Finally, the sites on the ocean side were quite loud from the surf, and the sites were far apart. Unless some moron was on the next site with a 5500 open frame genny, and it was dead quiet, It would be tough to really suffer from somebody else's genny noise, or at least as bad as it gets in some other no-hookup situations.
  • We were at the national park last year in May. The camp host for the loop we were in ran the genny all day. I was testing out a new battery/solar setup so I was minimizing my generator use. I ran it 3 times in 4 days for about 1.5 hours each time.

    I didn't hear any genny noise at all, but the temps were such that A/C usage wasn't high. I expect that would be different in the dead of summer. Most of the campers in the loop were tents or small trailers. My Sahara looked like the elephant in the room. I believe the motor homes all go to the state park side for the hook ups. The draw of the NP was proximity of the sites to the beach. Now that the ocean side sites have been moved across the access road (not sure if this has happened yet), I think the state park would be better.