Tuesday, October 2, 2012 - Horrible Encounter with Ranger, Moved to Silvermine

After a fitful night sleep, still trying to relax after yesterday’s debacle, we were in the middle of breakfast when a old ranger showed up. He proceed to walk around the vehicles, taking down information, before he finally managed to find our patio door, which I opened. He said in a miserable tone, good morning, and I responded, "not necessarily." The next words out of his mouth were, "Well, if you don’t like it here, you should just leave." Just like that. I guess he had had a conversation with the young man I had railed at last night, and he came loaded for bear. So I opened the patio door, and Hubby said, "What’s going on?" And I said, "We’re leaving." His jaw dropped, but he knew better than to question me when I use "that tone," so he just stood and listened awhile. The ranger then said, fine, that will be $24. I had Hubby get the cash while I just stood there shaking my head. Finally I said, "You know, if you were a private business and I walked in the door unhappy, the manager would do their best to find out what was wrong in order to help me. Obviously you’re not the least bit interested in trying to make your customers happy." I tried to explain about the misinformation, and he wasn’t interested. He claimed he didn’t know what I was talking about, but a minute later he said he had heard the several messages I had left on the answering machine the afternoon before (they closed at 4:00), so I knew he was lying. He kept asking me for my name so he could put it on the receipt, but I refused to give it to him. He didn’t deserve to know who we were, because he obviously didn’t give one whit about us, so to hell with him. We finally exchanged cash for receipt and he left, instructing us that "checkout time was at noon." We couldn’t get out of that placed fast enough. We packed up faster than I think we have ever done, and in about 45 minutes, we were rolling out the gate. Funny, we had noticed yesterday in our search for water that there was very little evidence that the campground had had any horses in it for a long time, and now we could certainly understand why. We’d had bad vibes since we got there, and they were confirmed every step of the way. What a waste! But, like so many things that happen to us, it all worked out for the best. We had clear skies, gradually getting more cloudy, as we traveled the hour to the next camp, the Lost Silvermine Horse Camp in Nautchaug State Forest. When we arrived at the ranger station there, we were warmly greeted by a ranger there (glad to know not everyone in CT is a jerk like the last guy), who let us top off our tanks with their easily accessible outside spigot, gave us a bunch of maps and directions to the horse camp, just a mile up an excellent gravel and dirt road. We arrived shortly thereafter, pulling into a completely wooded area, no landscaped grass, just lots of woods, with lots of privacy between sites, a CENTRAL water pump (which we already knew was a pump, so we came prepared), and just a gorgeous selection of sites. Hubby picked one nearest the pump, and, knowing we couldn’t get a satellite signal because of the woods, got set up fairly quickly, just in time before the rain hit. If we had left Frog Hollow any later, we would have really gotten caught in the rain, so, once again, everything worked out for the best. This is MUCH more to our liking, and the best part, it’s FREE!! We decided we’d stay here until next Monday, so I called the Post Office at home and arranged to have my mail forwarded to General Delivery at the nearest local branch. It then proceed to rain all day, and because it was going to get cold tonight, we bundled the horses in their winter blankets on a nice long highline, had an extra brandy (or two) to settle our jangled nerves, and proceeded to try to unwind from all the recent aggravation! Good news! I have a GREAT cell phone signal here, 2-3 bars, so all around, this is going to be a MUCH better place to stay!