McKinney Campground – 15

3.23.18-3.25.18

Attention! McKinney Campground has changed some rules. Some of these will not affect the majority, however a couple will. For more details on the campground, view the blog post on our first visit to McKinney Campground.

First, the most important rule to my family, what kept us from going to McKinney all last summer – the maximum dog limit is now three (before being two)!!! Why the maximum at all? I don’t know, doesn’t make sense to me either.

Second, the previous walk-up only sites, 31-40, are now reservable like the rest of the park. No longer will anyone be rushing over to the park at 8 a.m. on Friday morning to get the site for the weekend. Third, McKinney has also changed the reservation process to allow you to reserve just a day ahead instead of requiring the online reservation to happen at least three days before.

Apparently the company that was being used for the reservations was switched to another back in November. I only recently found about about these changes because a student’s grandpa works at the attendant station at McKinney. Maybe he put in a good word about changing the limit on dogs. Ha!

Being that it’s March, we were behind in booking trips for the summer. McKinney is booked up for the most part. I was able to get a long weekend in June and a weekend at the end of the summer. Next time we will be online six months out (earliest booking date) to choose the best sites for the summer.

This weekend we were in site 15. It had a huge pad and a view of Glade Marina. The site did have water access, down a steep path. As the weekend went on we discussed that we would be happy in this site again, and might choose it again over [Site 37]. The water is not busy (like other parts of the campground) therefore a great place to put in our kayaks. The pad was plenty big enough if you have someone that wants to put up a tent. I really like the wood railing,  it creates even more seating and an easy place to tie up the dogs on a lead.

Quite a few people must have canceled because of the chance of rain. The park did not seem as full as when I had booked online. Luckily it held off ’till about 9 p.m. Saturday night. We put everything away so that it would not be soaked in the morning.

McKinney Campground does not have a black water flush port at the dump. We try to get our system as clean as possible so I dumped two buckets of water down the toilet as we were emptying the tanks. Hopefully they will upgrade to that soon! Have patience at the dump, a line easily backs up as everyone is looking to leave at the same time.

Places to Eat, Drink, Have Fun

We do not usually go out to eat while camping on Lake Allatoona because we are so close to home. However, I did want to put together a list of our favorite restaurants, breweries, vineyards, and fun things to do in close proximity.

Things we learned:

1. Find a better place for the Corelle plates. Upon arriving at the campground and unloading, we opened the door of the camper to a thousand pieces of shattered plates. Thank goodness my in-laws were staying across the campground and we were able to borrow their vacuum.

2. I probably need to make lists before packing the camper and have Heather, the cook, double check them. I drove back to the house Saturday morning (just ten minutes away) to get some of the ingredients Heather wanted for dinner.

3. Summit has an attention problem. We work hard to train the dogs, however her behavior just isn’t improving. She is whining or barking when we aren’t giving her attention or for what other reason I don’t know. Anyone have any advice for a dog that is too vocal?