ScoutMonte Sano State Park Campground
Beautiful Park - 0 concern for safety
I’ll start with the good- BEAUTIFUL state park. Tons of trails. A hikers dream. Playground for kids and lots of trails throughout. The sites are well shaded, have good cell service, and are pretty spacious. The first row of sites when you come straight in and to the right side all back up towards a road that goes to a planetarium but I can count on both hands how many people and cars are want down it in the week we were there. I think the privacy of theses sites is the best and still a good distance to bathrooms. To get to the campground it can be difficult with how you are going uphill so be mindful. There is a camp store that sells pricy wood and essentials but it’s convenient. A single washer and dryer were in the bathrooms for $1.50 and $1 but the washer leaked badly the entire time even not in use. Bathrooms are probably some of the worst I’ve used. It smelled of rotten eggs to the point you couldn’t be in more than a few minutes without feeling sick and I never saw or noticed them cleaned in the week we were there. Dead bugs on the counter and they were on the Texas chainsaw inspired curtains on the showers too. Not unusable but a cleaning would be nice.
Now for the bad- during our stay we pretty much had no one in most of the sites around us besides a man that was in the site behind us for a few days and a family across from us. We saw him go through the site across from us and steal an armful of items while the family was gone from the site. He noticed us and said “you snooze you lose” and it was WEIRD. I’ve never once seen someone steal from another persons site before. We reported it to the camp office right away and they did not care. We told the family when they got back and they went to the office and got the same reaction. Even after the family was back at their site, the man moved his chair to just watch the family and their young children for what felt like hours. Maybe myself and the parents at the other site just always happened to see him staring but it was extremely weird and uncomfortable especially with small children around. The family reported it to the hosts and different workers in the office and to park rangers and had to call several more times voicing concerns before they went to the police directly the next day. It’s frustrating that the host, park office, or park rangers had no concern for this and not a single person even spoke to him about this. To allow someone to steal from another site and be okay with it is beyond disappointing. I’ve never seen this happen in all the years I’ve camped, but I would expect someone with the camp to do ANYTHING. We didn’t feel comfortable to leave our site again after that out of fear he would steal from us too and nothing would be done.
The park is beautiful but the safety concerns outweigh that. We should be able to enjoy the campground and not be worried that none of the staff will help if something goes wrong
