Fort Boonsborough State Park, Kentucky:
click here.We stayed there from Sept 23 (Saturday) to Sept 27 (Wednesday AM).
I was forewarned, but really did not comprehend until getting there!
My wife and I had been talking about visiting this State Park and staying at the campground for over 2 years now. Opportunity come up for this week for a few extra days off work, so decided to jump on it! So we did.
Reading reviews, and even warning from folks on these forums, I thought, "Nah! I can't be that bad!" But ... boy was I wrong. Yes it was.
It's a great park! Really. It has all the amenities you'd expect from any State Park. Water and electric on each site, dump station readily available, asphalted camping sites, and relatively level spots. Nice trees, space between campsites adequate, campground staff helpful (but their park rangers seems to have attitude though, another story) ...Even the price of campsites was well within reason! What "could" have been a magnificent 5 day - 4 night experience turned out to be horribly disappointing?
Why?
Noise!
Oh....yea. We were warned. Wow! was everyone right!
I will NEVER again complain about kids screaming the next camp site over, loud diesel warm ups at 5:00 am, or loud music from the next campsite either!
We backed into the campsite, no problems. First thing I always do is plug in the electric. Wife goes inside. I plugged in the electric and switched on the pedestal breakers and waited to hear the air conditioner running from the roof of the camper. I couldn't hear it. I yelled at my wife through the trailer walls, "Do you have power?" No answer.
I opened the door of the trailer and yelled in, "Do you have power?" She yelled back at me, "Yes! Can't you hear the air conditioner running?" I yelled back and said, "He!! no! it's too noisy out here!"
I stepped inside the trailer and sure enough, the air conditioner was running!
Where's that noise coming from? Ha! The dang road that runs about 20 feet outside the campground that makes interstate traffic sound like a hospital zone. AND it never stopped! Constant rumbling of stone trucks, semi trucks, motorcycles rumbling, cars zooming. Constant noise, noise, noise!
Now, we've stayed at many, many KOA campgrounds that are located along or near various interstates. Imagine that noise magnified 100 times! And it NEVER stopped!
We couldn't sit outside because the traffic noise was deafening. We couldn't hear anyone else's air conditioners on their campers running or even our own because the road traffic drowned out the sound. We couldn't hear traffic INSIDE the park, even diesels idling because of all the rumbling, Burrrrrrrrr..... of exhaust breaks on semi's and stone dump trucks on the road. We stayed away most of the day and returned about dark each day.
Then came Monday morning! OMG! Was there train tracks somewhere near by. It sounded like a train rumbling by. But I don't remember any train tracks. At 6:00 am I finally stepped outside the camper and looked around and then I saw it! Don't know how I missed it! On the back side adjacent the campground is a STONE QUARRY and they turned on their conveners! By now, we were both about sick of the noise! We couldn't get away from it, unless we physically left the campground. And there was no place in the campground where it was any quieter!
BAD! BAD! BAD! location for a campground. NEVER again!
This is really too bad too, because the campground itself is REALLY great! You couldn't ask for anything nicer, except maybe sewer at the sites instead of a dump station. But the noise from outside the park just killed it!
We left Wednesday morning, and are now sitting at Taylorsville Lake State Park (South of Louisville, KY), and OMG! It's sooooooooooooooo quiet here! I mean, absolutely NO noise at all, expect birds and crickes! Ubelievable. It's so peaceful (and dark here at night) It's located in the middle of nowhere! AND nowhere is WONDERFUL! It's so peaceful, we are just enjoying sitting out under the awning and hiking the trails, which is what we did last night, and this morning. We have no desire to do anything, except sit around a camp fire and listen to the crickets here!
What a world of difference.
Advise: Boonsborough State Park campground is nice, but bring your ear plugs!
