Massachusetts: The LEAST RV-Friendly State?! (Our Worst Travel Day Since Hitting the Road Full-Time)
Our time back home in Massachusetts was refreshing, thanks to our state park stay at Wompatuck. Our shaded, wooded site kept us out of the sweltering heat, we stayed busy visiting beloved people and places, and we made a big purchase that upped our level of fun on the road. We would have loved to stay longer, but Massachusetts state parks only allow a 2-week maximum stay per season, so it was time to move on. We had big plans ahead of us, though, because we were headed to a campground in Plymouth. We love summers in Plymouth; between the ocean and the history, there's always lots to do. We were looking forward to playing tourist in an area we know well. That's the beauty of being nomadic in our home state.
The campground we were staying, Pinewood Lodge Campground, was also full of activities. They were celebrating their 70th anniversary and had events going on the weekend we arrived. We expected a fun week enjoying everything the campground offered.
Trip-planning in Massachusetts is a bit difficult for an RVer. There aren't that many campgrounds compared to other states, the roads are often small and twisty, and forget trying to RV off-season, as most campgrounds are only open in the summer. We also noticed that campgrounds in Plymouth like to tack on fees. Booking online? Fee. Got pets? Fee. Plus the prices are extremely high. Pinewood's nightly rate was $53 before fees, only for 30 amp electric and water. These places know they're halfway between Boston and Cape Cod. Typically, these aren't places we'd give a second look, but we needed to be near home so we could visit people and book some doctor appointments while we were in the area. We figured it would just be an expensive week, offset by our budget-friendly stay at Wompatuck. And, hopefully all the campground amenities would help offset the cost as well.
Our lukewarm feelings towards Plymouth campgrounds persisted when we called the campground office to inform them that we'd likely be a little early to check-in. Since we were only coming from Hingham, our travel time was about an hour. Instead of just showing up to the campground early, we like to give a head's up so that the staff can do whatever maintenance they need to on the site before we arrive. We were only going to be about 50 minutes before check-in, and normally this isn't a problem. It's tough for RVers to get an exact ETA. While some campgrounds specifically state that they cannot accommodate early check-ins or late check-outs, most have the flexibility to allow this. We even had one park, Koreshan State Park in Florida, offer to call us when our site was ready! When we called Pinewood, we expected the staff to tell us it was fine to be a bit early, but instead, we got a long hesitation on the other end of the line, followed by a, "Well, there was someone in your site last night, and even though they're gone, we can't say we'll have it ready for you by then. You should probably just go grab lunch." Ok, we get that maybe there's a certain order they like to clean the sites, but we were arriving over an hour after their check-out time. Most campgrounds would just prioritize cleaning our site, and that would be it. The lunch comment also threw us off because we're in 56 combined feet of length. It was clear that the woman we spoke to is not an RVer. In Massachusetts, you can't just tow yourself into any old restaurant and chill out. We were left with no choice but to pull into one of the two parking areas (rest areas with no amenities) on the side of the highway and twiddle our thumbs for 50 minutes. Since we had packed up the pets and had only been on the road for 15 minutes, we didn't want to get them back out of the truck and inside the trailer, so instead we just sat in our air-conditioned truck, wasting our gas.
We got to the campground at 12:50pm, checked in, and headed to our site. It was a nice, spacious site with some tree shade, and we backed into it easily. That was the only easy part of our day. We went to check our electric connections before unhitching, and we realized there was a problem. The electric would come on, but then immediately shut back off. We tried the 30 amp plug and the 15 amp plug, and both did the same thing. We turned on our generator to make sure our electric was working in general, and that was fine. So we had to call the office and have someone come and check the pedestal. Now we were more frustrated that we couldn't get into the site early, because we could have discovered the electric issue an hour earlier. C'est la vie.
An employee came quickly to check on the pedestal, but he admitted that he didn't have much knowledge of electric. He tested our connectors and ran a voltage test, and on his end, everything seemed to be working. He was stumped, so he called one of the owners, Jeff, to come take a look. As soon as Jeff arrived, we knew we were in for a fight. He gave off an air of complete arrogance, constantly stating that the electric issue wasn't the campground's problem. He told us that our surge protector was a "waste of money," that hardly anyone uses them at his campground, and he tried to convince us to not use ours. We explained to him that we're full-time, this was our home, and we will not risk frying our whole electric system. The more he talked about the "garbage" surge protectors, the more we were convinced that there was an issue at the campground that caused surge protectors to block the electricity. We explained to Jeff that we were happy to test all our equipment to ensure that this wasn't our problem, but that we had just come from a campground two hours ago and everything worked fine. We asked him if he had an extra electric cord somewhere. He didn't seem too happy to go search for one, but he did. Meanwhile, Nicole went to the campground store to see if she could buy a 30-amp adaptor and surge protector, letting them know that she'd likely be returning them immediately. The store had 30-amp adaptors, but no surge protectors. Why would they sell those?
This set off a long afternoon in 90+ degree heat, running all over the campground trying to figure out our electric situation. No change in equipment made a difference, not the electric cord nor the adapter. After Jeff took his electric cord back, he shrugged off the problem, continuing to think it was our RV. At one point he even told us it was probably our inverter, to which Anthony replied, "You mean converter?" Which it was not, because we had already made sure of that. And also, if Jeff doesn't even know the terminology, we don't exactly feel like we should trust him with our RV. We got the sense he doesn't RV either, and according to their story on their website, we were right. Funny how sometimes you can just tell.
After getting immense attitude from Jeff and realizing how embarrassed we were to be spending money to stay at his campground, we took matters into our own hands. We began documenting every single thing we were doing to test the electric, in case we needed to make a credit card dispute. We also waited patiently for a couple of neighbors to come back to their sites, hoping we could test our electric with one of their pedestals. Nicole also checked with the office to see if they had any other vacant sites. They did not. Lots of campgrounds keep a couple of "overflow" or "emergency" sites for situations like this. Pinewood apparently never got that memo.
A neighbor across the street offered to help us figure out the issue, but he was too far away for us to want to drag our cord over to his pedestal, and he was using his 30-amp outlet, which meant he'd need to unplug his whole rig to let us test ours. Instead, we caught our neighbors at the site next to us, who were tent camping. As soon as they came back, Nicole asked if we could plug into their pedestal, and they were incredibly nice. We decided to plug in using our surge protector, on the chance it worked and we could prove that the surge protector wasn't the issue. We weren't sure it was going to work, because it sounded like the whole campground has issues with surge protectors, but we gave it a go. To our relief, the electric did connect! That was the final piece of proof we needed to show that, it was not our trailer, or our adapter, or our cord, or our surge protector. There was something going on with the electric that wasn't getting picked up by the voltmeter, but was happening somewhere between the pedestal and our RV. Our best guess is that there wasn't consistent current and the voltmeter was reading the average. This isn't something that would harm our rig, but as full-timers, we would never plug in without a surge protector, especially at an unfamiliar campground. For the owner to try and convince us to do so is horrific. For all the staff to repeatedly tell us that the issue was our problem, is even more horrific.
Our lovely tent neighbors, Jason and his family, offered to let us plug into their 30-amp, since they weren't using it. We thanked them, but at that point we were ready to fight for a refund and get back on the road. It was extremely hot, we were outside for hours, the poor pets were stuck inside the truck that we kept idling the whole time so they could get AC (bye, more gasoline!), and to add insult to injury, at one point during her run-around, Nicole had the brilliant idea to grab her ebike, since the truck wasn't unhitched. Not so brilliant? Nicole dropping her phone while on the ebike and it busting on the gravel below. So now we had no campsite, and Nicole had no phone. This was turning out to be a very expensive experience at Pinewood.
We gathered up all our video proof and went to the office to fight for a refund. Unfortunately by that point, it had gotten so late that the manager had left for the day, and that's who had the ability to give us a refund. The worker at the office told us to either call or come back tomorrow, advising us that coming back in-person would probably be best. She said, "I can't guarantee you'll get the refund, but you can try." Well, the electric issue wasn't us and we're not able to stay there, so we better be guaranteed a refund.
We had already made plans down in Plymouth for the next day, so we had to move those plans to the afternoon in order to catch the manager in the morning. That said, we figured we could make a day of it. Head down to Plymouth, fight with Pinewood, and then go to the waterfront. So we headed out of our zero-night stay at Pinewood and went back to our home base at Nicole's parents' house. If we're going to have a terrible campground experience, at least we had a place we could go.
We figured since we have our video proof and it gives a clear depiction of what happened, it would be worthwhile to share it here:
The whole experience was a huge headache - literally too, since the heat was beating down on us for over 3 hours. It's astounding that people can run a campground and not even give the customer the benefit of the doubt, especially when that customer is full-time and knows their equipment. We heard every excuse in the book, from "Is your trailer new?" implying that we didn't know how it worked, to "Well the people who stayed in your site last night didn't have an issue." But we also didn't have an issue until we got to your campground, sir. And something tells us that perhaps those previous campers didn't use a surge protector? Walking through the campground, it was like the twilight zone, seeing site after site with no surge protector. It's a huge debate, actually, on whether or not to use one. But full-timers use them. It's simply not worth the risk for us, because our RV is our home. If a campground owner can't understand that, he doesn't deserve our patronage.
We also noticed a lot more campground neighbors questioning how we live full-time, asking us questions like, "Well what do you do in the winter?" And us needing to explain that we don't just full-time in MA, we travel. We can be wherever we want to be in winter. There were a lot of people looking at us like we were aliens when we said we were full-time. It's not news to us that Massachusetts doesn't have a lot of RVers, especially full-timers, but being at a campground that's clearly for weekenders, we felt more out-of-place than ever.
We've heard stories from other RVers about campground owners being terrible, and how when that happens, the attitude just trickles down through the other employees and to the campers themselves. That's kind of how we saw this. Jeff was a jerk. There's no other way to put it. The other employees we dealt with were helpful enough, but they too were adamant that we were in the wrong, and they didn't seem to care that we were in 90-degree heat without AC all afternoon. As for our neighbors? A few of them let us know that they normally stay at the other popular Plymouth campground. Maybe after witnessing our story, they now remember why Pinewood isn't their first choice.
We would never stay at a campground that has poor reviews, and Pinewood's are overall quite good. Sometimes you just run into an issue that shows the worst sides of the people working there. If we didn't have the electrical issue, I think we could have had a decent time. The site was lovely, we liked our neighbors, and there was clearly a lot to keep us entertained. But all the amenities in the world can't make up for a bad attitude and disrespect toward your customers.
Why the owner couldn't be the one to issue us a refund, we'll never know, but we were done dealing with Jeff anyway. So we crossed our fingers that when we headed back the next morning, we'd leave with a good result.
To be continued...
Campground:
Site S28, 30 amp (if that), electric and water only, picnic table, firepit
**NOT RECOMMENDED**