Cooper's Lake Campground

Well, now that we've tried Cooper's Lake Campground, I can say that we're never going back. Maybe it was just us, but it didn't help that the weekend started off badly. Luckily, it ended on a good note....

Friday I got out of work at 4:00 in anticipation of Ross already being home from work, and having the car packed and ready to go by the time I got home. Well, didn't we jinx ourselves. Not only did Ross not get home until I did, but it also started to pour as soon as we were getting ready to pack the car. It was raining pretty badly all day, but it seemed like it would rain for 10 min.'s, then stop, then start again, etc. So I decided we should just try to wait it out again rather than packing the car in the rainstorm and rushing to get to the campground only to sit in the rain some more. Surely it would stop. WRONG! 5:00 rolls by, still pouring (and I remind you, this was not just a drizzle). 6:00 rolls by, Ross falls asleep on the couch, and I finally turn the tv on since staring out the window doesn't seem to be doing any good. Finally, 7:00 rolls by and I wake Ross up. We need to make a decision - either we go now, or don't go at all, b/c by the time we pack and get up there, we're going to be setting up in the dark. We decide to finally pack up the car, in the rain, and get on the road (after changing into dry clothes!). I was checking the weather religously and it looked like the storm would be stopping soon up north, so hopefully it'll be done raining by the time we get there.

Luckily, the campground was only 30 min.'s north of Cranberry, so it was a short drive. We stopped at Burger King for dinner so we wouldn't have to worry about making a fire if it was still raining. We got to the campground around 8:15 pm, with the rain having finally stopped, which, only minutes prior, I was freaking out b/c I thought I rememberd hearing that the office closed at 8:00 pm, and since they didn't take reservations, we would have no way of checking-in. Well, lo and behold, they were open til 9:00 pm, *relief*, so we checked in. We wanted to drive around first to check out the campground, but the lady assured me there were plenty of spots, and to just drive around until we find an area we liked, and camp there, so I went ahead and paid. Well, we drove around. And drove. And drove. One area was complete mud from the rain. No thanks. We drove to another area, but were confused b/c we couldn't tell where the sites were (since they weren't marked). We'd find, what we thought would be a site, but would be missing a picnic table. Then we'd find another nice site, but it's missing a fire ring. Again, and again. What's the deal?! So after driving around the entire campground twice, we had to make the call. Stay or leave? Well, I said, let's drive around one more time. Surely, there has to be *somewhere!* that has a nice spot with both a fire ring AND a picnic table! And I felt bad that I already made the decision to pay and probably couldn't get our money back. So by this point, we just wanted to find a spot, ANY spot. Finally, in the very back of the campground, we found a site. Now it was 8:48 pm and getting dark, especially since we're camping in the woods. AND, we still have to buy firewood if we wanted to build a fire that night, before the store closed at 9:00! So we unloaded the trunk at our site, literally throwing things on the picnic table, trusting it to be safe while we ran to the store (it was, but you can imagine me freaking out the whole time, b/c really, what else could go wrong). We got to the store at 8:58 pm, and luckily, were just in time to buy wood.

So Friday night was definitely not what we had in mind. Camping is supposed to be relaxing, not stressful, and not fun when setting up in the dark. At least on Saturday we had the perfect weather! We had some great food, I got to enjoy some time reading and we just relaxed. We brought Dakota along, which drove us crazy. Normally, I like having her around (unlike Ross, who could do without a dog for a weekend), but this time, she just barked at people, ALL DAY, since people were constantly going by our site. I need to get a handle on her, and why she can't just "give up." So besides her, it was a nice weekend. We won't be going back though, b/c the chances of finding the one spot we mildly liked, is slim, since they don't take reservations. We're moving on.

Maybe next weekend we can drive around to a few campgrounds and check them out, now that we have some suggestions from people. Or at the very least, we have Scarlett Knob as our back-up until we find somewhere better :)