Gem State RV Park

First, the people here seemed nice on the phone. We arrived late and retrieved the packet with our assigned spot (#5), but there was someone in an old beat up class C that was half in our spot.  The owners had left. I tried a spot nearby (#7)but the power was bad so I backed into our spot as far as I could and extended our power cord as far as it would go and we were able to reach the power which tested good. I was concerned we would have an issue with the owner of the class C. I called the RV park number, and they told me that the other person was just going to dump their tanks and leave. The soon after a two truck arrived. The owner showed up right after and apparently the rig had broken down and the owner asked the tow company to remove it. I felt bad for them.

Great. So now we can eat and get online. Well, maybe just eat. Getting online involved something called "Tengo Internet", Spanish for I have internet. We decided that it should be called "No Tengo Internet" as it takes fifteen minutes to give them all of your information and create an account and then I was able to get online with my MacBook. My wife was trying to use an iPad mini and we had to call their technical support. They were patient and helpful and after typing in a direct IP address we were able to get her iPad on. Success after only an hour!  But she was trying to watch Netflix. It took a minute and a half just to load this screen for this review. I was able to get some very low res YouTube to play with only a few halts while waiting for the buffer to load. I would upload photos, but I need to go elsewhere and I am sure it would take a day or so to get a photo uploaded from here.

On the plus side, my wife said the bathroom was clean. There is a playground for kids, each site has full hookups and a picnic table. Our site was level. We did not have problems with insects.

Nestled in the small town of Mountain Home, Idaho, it's a great park for overnight or longer.  There are a couple of drawbacks, but the amenities outweigh any.  First:  Being located in town, there is some traffic noise on weekday mornings as the neighborhoods surrounding the park heads out to work.  Our wood picnic table has seen plenty of use and should be updated to more modern models before too long.  There are some other questions in the back of my mind but I don't know the park that well yet to comment.  

Now for the amenities:  We pulled in on a Sunday and the office was closed.  There is a 'host' that met us as we arrived.  Robin greeted us, led us to our site and got our utilities ready for use.  He brought our paperwork to the site, pointed out the facilities, and was genuinely friendly and personable.  The office building has restrooms inside with shower facilities and is very clean.  There is a laundry room available.  The sites are hard-packed dirt or similar, and long (accomodating large RVs).  They're spacious and shaded.  Not good for solar, but not needed as shore power is available.  We were able to set up our small dog pen and still have plenty of room for outdoor lounging.  My RV is a 40' 5th Wheel.