I usually do not give bad reviews unless the experience was such that was way beyond normal. This was one of those situations.
We stayed at Suwanee River Hideaway last year for two weeks and loved it. Before we left the parking lot to come home, we had made a month-long reservation for the following year. We planned on doing the same thing again. Unfortunately, we did not know the campground would be under new ownership, the owners might be on site a few days a month and the rest of the time worked full time at another campground several hours away.
There are only two positives I will point out are the location and the excellent, professional work performed by the Camp Hosts. If it were not for them the campground would be receiving a much lower score, my wife and I would definitely have left the campground and lost a months' site rental cost.
Thanks Josh and Crystal Wright, Val and Pete Butterfield, Jason and Debbie Parson, Jerrod and Andrea Parson and Gina Meyer. You all are awesome. As for the new owners of the campground, I hope this year was just growing pains because I am sure we are not only ones not returning to SRHC.
All campgrounds have rules they request their guests to follow. These rules are put in place to protect the guests that are staying at that campground, make sure the guests are aware of the consequences of not following the rules and to protect the facility from some liability if something were to occur. Rules are usually not difficult to follow and actually are common sense, such as speed limits in the campground, loud noises, parental supervision of children, loud and obnoxious noises, quiet hours, no aggressive animals, no dogs barking constantly and the list goes on. This is all well and good if the owners/managers actually enforce those rules, give their help the authority to enforce them when away and follow through. This was not the case when we were there.
On our first day when driving to our site were met with a deluge of people and their children. The children were totally out of control, riding their bikes in the roadways in front of vehicles, kids running into the roadway in front of vehicles, especially ours. The parents just sat there and there was NO parental supervision at all. The Coupe de Gras was when we drove by the mob one of the 8-10 year olds picked up a piece of wood, pretended it was a rifle, aimed it at my wife who was in our rig, pretended to shoot her several times and laughed about it.
We settled into our site about 200 feet away and throughout the evening the crowd was extremely loud, kids were riding and running through our site, and kids were riding their bikes all over the campground aiming at guests, actually pulling intentionally in front of me, (even when it was pitch black- I was driving 5 mph the speed limit in the campground) nearly striking my vehicle. The children had electric scooters and bikes that were traveling between 15- 20 mph throughout the campground at all hours, again with no parental supervision.
This continued throughout the evening. On the second day I went to the owner of the campground to complain, expressed my concerns, pointed out the liabilities, told her of my observations and was told by her she would speak to the parents. That night the conduct and noise were even worse. The following day I spoke to the owner again, found out she had been at the campground the prior night, had not spoken to the parents and offered again to speak to the parents. I advised her to not do so, only because I felt she would not do it anyway.
The day the group left I was driving about 3-4 mph past the area the noisy campers had been in, all had left except one. A child about 2- 3 years old ran out in front of my car. I was able to stop in time to prevent hitting the child. The father, I assumed it was the father, was about 30 feet away, laying down outside, looking at his cellphone not paying attention to the child. This just fit with the rest of the behavior of this particular group, young children playing with axes, large group of children sitting around a very large fire with no parental supervision, etc.
We could have let all this slide but throughout of stay we had other issues, dogs charging at my wife, dogs constantly barking, and the list goes on.
As I said earlier, the camp hosts were fantastic but can only work with what is allowed by the owners/mangers of the property.
Will we go back, definitely not. Will we recommend this campground to anyone else. Only if it is a biker gang and they are looking for a place to hang out without consequences.
Sorry guys, I hope you do improve. It is a beautiful property and it was a restful place the year before. read more
