Weekend Local Camping Trip To Lehman’s RV Resort

We decided to take a risk and go to an RV Park in Marengo, IL called Lehman’s Lakeside RV Resort. I say take a risk because some of the reviews of this park were pretty negative. Also, they are expensive to the tune of $43.00 a night making this the most expensive place we have been to.

Campground office, bathrooms and showers, very clean and well taken care of.

I think this was the original office, I forgot to ask.

The gaming room, we didn’t go in.

We took a ride to the park before bringing the RV there to see how it looks. The park has a section near a small lake near I-90 for the yearly residents. The “B” section is where people stay monthly and like many parks open yearly some of the people who stay permanently or monthly don’t take care of their lot(s) very well, which some of the reviews complained about. This shouldn’t ruin your stay in my view if the place is clean overall and quiet.

 

While verifying our reservation the owner offered to take us around the park in her golf cart. My observation of the park while being shown it is it’s not worth $43.00 a night but we wanted to check the place out so we left after talking to the owner for a little while longer. She was very nice by the way and I could tell she cared about the place.

One of my concerns about the place was the roads and pull through sites. We thought we were in the “B” section in site 1B but we were in the pull through section in site 18A.  There are a lot of pot holes and the exit from the sites has an incline that would cause our rig to drag the rear end and I told the owner this. In fact I could see that other rigs had dragged as well because of the gouges left behind. I should have taken pictures of some of the things I had issues with but what mattered to us was clean power, water, sewer and cable.

Here you can see the incline that 90% of newer rigs would have no issue with, but older rigs that sit low will have an issue.

Here is our site, # 18A. The grass is cut, not mulched so the pad was covered with grass clippings as was the grass around the rig. A small complaint but considering the cost I was expecting better maintained sites.

The sewer opening was nearly 30ft away from the back of the rig making dumping the tanks an up hill battle since the site was on an incline. This also made leveling the rig very interesting.

Some of the permanent rigs had home made rooms built onto the rig, not very well maintained but it is what it is, the people are quiet and friendly and that’s what is important. If we stay here again, we are going to ask to be put under these trees since the shade is so nice. They told us 36ft wouldn’t fit but we looked at a few of the sites and our rig would easily fit.

The main complaints from other people who camped here are, too expensive, smelly water, poor cable reception and poorly maintained lake and lots.

Here are my thoughts, yes the water has that well water smell, people who have had well water for their homes or have been to RV parks with well water know this smell and it’s no big deal. I am a picky SOB and the water was fine. Poor cable reception, this is true, the cable reception is bad, in fact we chose to use our antenna even though we could barely get any stations in. The lake looked fine to me, in fact you could see straight to the bottom. The lake and ponds were all very clear however there is an abundance of seaweed on them but this is normal. They also aerate the lake to keep the oxygen up.

I do agree that for what's offered the price is too high. If I’m going to ask $43.00 per night I’d make sure the park “looked” better, get the permanent residents to pick up more, trim the grass around the campers and also paint the wood they surround their 5th wheels and travel trailers with to protect the pipes from weather. It doesn’t take much to make the curb appeal look better. I’d also make sure the cable connection doesn’t work like a bad antenna and I would make sure there is more channels than people can get off of their antenna’s.

Overall we liked the park, the owner is nice, the people working there are friendly and it’s large enough to get good exercise walking. I just don’t think we can justify spending that much per night. Sugar Shores is about the same distance away but is much nicer and it’s $12.00 per night cheaper. The price difference for one day pays for the firewood for 2 nights!

Ok, time to discuss the RV! I last saw the RV when we picked it up from Collier 3 weeks earlier. I left the mouse traps there but they hadn’t been touched all winter so I planned on taking them out when we picked up the rig. So imagine my surprise when we picked up the rig and all 4 traps had a mouse in it!?!? What are the odds??

I got the rig ready, turned on the power, fired up the genny and started the engine and everything did what it was supposed to do. How cool is that?   I am amazed at how new tires can change the way a vehicle drives but these new tires are so smooth and QUIET. I had to say that in caps because the difference is that drastic!

I drove to the RV Park and got the rig hooked up and after getting the rig leveled on the incline I put the slide out, mistake on my part as it rewarded me with a few clunks. I should have put the slide out first then leveled the coach. Once hooked up I turned on the water and found the fancy schmancy water regulator is no longer regulating water so I turned down the water at the outside faucet and everything is fine. I also found out our internal cable connection is bad, I had to run the cable connection direct through a window to find out it wasn’t worth the effort but it was good to find this out for future reference.

We had 2 days of no issues with the RV aside from the regulator and cable TV and considering how things started last year, we are happy!

While we were there I met a guy who has a mobile RV detailing business, how cool is that?? He also does RV upgrades and worked at Holiday Rambler for 7 years. So he is going to give me a quote for the carpet and some other things we need to get done.

Sorry for the long winded post! Have a great week everybody!