Nellie540
For Mcmahons Mill Rec Area: Let me start by saying may family has been through biking the 184 mile C & O Canal Towpath. We come for the weekend, tow all our camping gear and food, spend the night on the towpath, and bike as far as we can each trip. Let me explain that my family is not afraid to "rough it". Up until this trip, we have always camped at the hiker-biker campsites right along the towpath. Filtering our own water and using the provided port-o-potties. We do this with a teenage daughter, preteen daughter, and a toddler and we like it and have a wonderful time.
The weekend we stayed at McMahon's Mill Campground we first tried to stay at 2 of these primitive campsites on the C & O Canal Towpath, but were unable to for various reasons, so we decided to do something we'd never done. We biked off the towpath up to a campground, McMahon's Mill Campground.
It was scary from the moment we hit the property. The buildings were dilapidated, deserted, overgrown with weeds, you could see insulation inside abandoned trailers and rvs falling from the ceiling and vines growing inside them, the dirt & grime covered the "museum" windows making seeing inside unachievable. Mangy cats roaming all over the grounds fighting with each other and peeing on everything. It was straight out of a horror movie! We felt we had no other choice, but suck it up and camp there. We could call a taxi and have 5 people, 2 trailers, 4 bikes, and all our camping gear, biking gear, and food taken to a hotel, but that was hardly an affordable option. So we continued on.
After passing a number of these empty (meaning no people, yet they were full of junk & trash), deserted, buildings, outbuildings, trailers, and rvs we make it to the rv of the lady running the campground and we also were able to see the actual campground.
Realize this is now Friday night of 4th of July weekend... PRIME camping season. There was 1 family tent camping and 1 rv in the campground. The rest of the grounds... empty. It was eerie. It was only because of the tent camping family who were also on bikes that we stayed. Someone to endure the misery with, I guess. So that night, we paid $40 to tent camp. Yep, you read that right $40 to TENT camp. The same as a rv hooking into electricity and ac. $40!
The other biker-campers were in the same boat as us. Exhausted from a long day of biking and unable to make it to the next primitive campsite on the towpath. They actually tried to get a hotel room, but the nearest hotel was booked.
We found a campsite to pitch our tent, but even that was hard due to the majority of sites not having been mowed in at least a month. The provided tables on each site were so overgrown with weeds that you couldn't put your legs underneath them, so we had to stand to cook our dinner. There were remnants of moved trailers and rvs all over the campsites, old rotten wood, electrical wires, trash, etc.
Then there were the showers. First you had to go see the lady living in the rv, running the grounds, to get a key. You then entered a building and were met with an odor of cat urine that is unexplainable. Then you use your key to open a door within that building that takes you to a long, dark, cold, cinder block basement hallway straight out of a scary movie. You have to find the lights to this hallway and the showers, then head to the showers. To call them dirty, nasty, filthy, is an understatement. How these facilities have not been condemned is baffling to me. Mildew, mold covered ceilings caving in and dripping water... bugs... oh the bugs... I can't even explain how gross it was.
Note, I haven't even mentioned the restroom/toilets. That's because after we saw the shower facilities, none of us were willing to even look into the toilet facilities.
By morning, my family broke our camp down in record breaking time, loaded it onto our bikes and trailers, and peddled away as fast as possible, so that we might get back onto the towpath and use a PORT-O-POTTY. Surely that helps you see just how bad it was, that we chose a well used portable bathroom over what was provided at the campground.
We then sat down next to the port-o-potty and pulled out our camp stove and made our breakfast. Happily!
Posted Jul 09, 2013 by Nellie540 from Virginia. This is the subjective opinion of a traveler and not of AllStays LLC.
