1994 Brave 29RQ RV: Sandy Beach Campground

How did I live this long and not know about this campground? It is a wonderful spot but I don't think RVs often make the road trip. There were some like ours there in the sub 30ft range and of the older vintage but not alot. Surprisingly at one site in another much more undeveloped campground called Cottonwood there was a huge newer 40fter parked in the grass that we questioned taking our older high clearance one in, so those folks were adventurous. They also had a big boat and a huge truck so my guess is they could use the truck to help them out if they got stuck.

We loved walking along the sand beach. The reservoir was flooded by using a dam in an area with sand dunes which is why the beach is so sandy.

The campground is true to its name, many sites back to the beach.

Strolling on the beach.

Sunshine enjoys exploring.

Could it get any prettier?

Sometimes the waves kicked up.

We go to check out a beach.

One of the beautiful sand beaches - completely empty.

Blossom goes for a swim.

We hated walking in the campground. We are spoiled by all the well behaved unleashed dogs in the national forest and the enforcement of leashing at national forest campgrounds. In this campground we had between 15 and 20 dogs, maybe more, come charging out of their site at us. One was a 100+ lb pit bull. We had everything from a snarling schnauzer, terriers, retriever puppy (the least scary because he was super cute), several cattle dogs, a bully bread of some sort and many more get caught by us before their owners came to get them. We put trash bags between them and us, had one of us run interference and tried to reroute to avoid them but there were so many there was no getting away from them. My little dog was so fearful he didn't want to go out at all. We intercepted them all except the pit bull who actually got to my dog. She got in a tussle with him, causing my heart to stop before he backed out of the fight. He then turned toward my smaller dog before his owner appeared around the camper to get him back. I think he was expecting a friendlier reaction but neither of my dogs appreciates a dog charging right at them. Thankfully he was a friendly pit but it could have been disastrous if he wasn't. The owner even inquired if he had started it and I said no my dog doesn't react well to being charged at and he backed out of the tussle first. The owner then apologized for the charge which was more than most people did. However to give them credit several other people also apologized for their dogs charging out. The snarling growling Schnauzer lady said her dog was friendly as the dog stood there bristling and growling. I had to ask her to hold on to him as she was just going to let us take our chances. One cattle dog came from two sites down and stood at our site barking at us and our dogs for 5 minutes while I tried to chase him back. Eventually a kid from his site yelled for him to get back and he went but still, really? The campground says leashes are required but clearly there wasn't an ounce of enforcement.

The other downside of this campground is that some sites seemed to be occupied by huge number of people. I didn't count the people but I would say it was between 15-40 people, mostly kids at some single sites. We were lucky in that our area only had regular camping groups and families. Where there seemed to be multiple family groups that knew each other they all had their own sites so it wasn't abnormal. And the sites were generally nicely spaced with trees so you didn't feel crowded. Here are pictures of our second site that we moved to Sat. morning.

Our beach front site

We selected the site next to this one at first because it was unoccupied but when we went to register for it we were told it was occupied. Except it wasn't. The entire time were were there it wasn't occupied. There were other sites like this through out the campground. As we explored I think I figured out why. When people showed up they registered for a site but then went off to the less developed campgrounds and found sites they preferred but never returned to release their site. As a result many prime sites at Sandy Beach were not occupied. I think the only way to solve this is to computerize the registration where they can check the license plate when they patrol the less developed campgrounds to see if they have registered for a site at the more developed ones and then free up the site when they find duplicates.

For this site we had hard packed sand and only had to level one wheel. I don't think you could use levelers you need the old style wood boards like we have because of the sand. The site next door that we originally selected was completely flat and required no leveling. The one next to that had a mini-Winnie in it but the sand was deep and loose. However those folks went in and out a number of times and did not get stuck.