RV Show and Camping

We took our trailer up to the new Lakeside 370 RV Park in St. Peters Missouri for the weekend. The park is just a few miles from the St. Louis Mills mall where the fall outdoor RV show was being hosted Friday thru Sunday.

We went to the show on Friday to beat the weekend crowd. Unfortunately it rained lightly off and on all day. There were no Wildcats at the show. For the most part it was the same ol’ same ol’. I was surprised to see that two of the dealers had brought a few used units to the show. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. One of the used units was a 2006 Alfa that was at least 39 to 40 feet long that had been lived in HARD. They were asking $40,000 for it, personally I wouldn’t have given 10 grand for it.

We did see a 2012 Sabre model that we both liked but, at 35 feet, it was longer and heavier than we wanted. It seems as though most models with a bedroom slideout are 34 feet long or longer. I guess we will be keeping our Wildcat for at least another year.

Other thoughts: Carri-lite by Carriage is a misnomer with their hitch weights over 3000 pounds and dry weights over 14,000 pounds. Lite? I don’t think so. Chaparral by Coachman, who designed the propane access door? It was the same length as the propane bottle, you would bust some knuckles getting a full bottle into the opening. With the fifth wheels getting longer and having more slide outs, shouldn’t 50 amp service with two air conditioners be standard? The reality is that a 15k A/C won’t cut it in a unit that is 34 feet long, with three slide outs, and high ceilings when the temperature is 95 degrees.

Despite the rain we did have a good camping trip. We managed to get two campfires in and we had a spectacular sunset one of the evenings.

Here are a couple of pics of the sunset.

Awsome....

Beautiful pics! Thanks for posting.

Wonderful pics!! That sunset is spectacular.

Tater

Awesome pics. Thanks.

Talking about bunk units getting longer; you are right. Everything is 34'. We are always wanting to trade for the Sabre bunk unit, but there is no storage. And what I feel for is a new RV'r, they will not know to look for things like storage room. And what is really bad is that the A/C unit is always on one end or other. Talk about cooling issues. Wow. I think we are going to hold on to our Cat for a while longer.

Richard: How about a report on the Lakeside 370 RV Park? My Daughter and Family live in Manchester and we are always looking for places to Park our Rig when visiting St Louis. Thanks Jim

Here’s a link to what I said about the park when we stayed at it over Memorial Day weekend which was just a week after the official opening of the park.
Click Here

Since our last stay they have added a paved walking/biking trail and completed the primitive (tents) camping area. Keep in mind that along with being a campground, it is also a city park, so a number of non-campers drive through the campground checking it out. Surprisingly this park doesn’t have a children’s playground.

The new park is still working out some bugs and kinks. The WiFi still doesn’t work at the campsites and early Saturday morning the park lost water service when a water pipe broke. It took them a while to figure out where the break was and water service wasn’t restored until 1:00 PM.