Our second week of vacation brought us from our campsite in NH down to the Bayview Campground in Cape Cod. We're big fans of Bourne Scenic Park and wanted to give another campground a try.
We arrived July 26th and stayed through August 2nd. We stayed on Site 169 and enjoyed some very nice views of the golf course and rolling hills to the south of us. The site was mostly chip-rock with a little grass here and there. Campfires were allowed and we had one on 4 seperate nights. We thought the campground was quite pretty, with a nice mix of seasonals and transient sites.
We found that Bayview seems to have a million rules that have to be followed. The entire back of their map (8x11 paper, in about 8 point font) is a list of rules. Everything from ''keep your driving to necessity'' to maximum leash lengths for your dogs. It was truly amazing just how many rules they had and how arbitrary they were in enforcing them.
Unfortunately, some of their staff was quite rude including one lady that was guarding the pool like it was Fort Knox. She made a huge scene out of my son's body suit for swimming. He's 2 and we have a full body suit for him to swim in with built in bouyancy in the chest to build his confidence in the water. Apparently this violates their rule about flotation devices needing to be Coast Guard approved. Its unfortunate, because the Coast Guard only reviews life saving equipment and not swimming instruction devices. After a calm discussion with the lady, she decided to start yelling at us and making a scene in front of about 30 pool-goers. We reported her attitude to the management, however they didn't bother to fix the situation at all.
Having said that, the rest of our stay there was pretty decent. Lots of activities for the kids. They have cable at the site but we didn't have a long enough cable to reach, so we put up the antenna and got more digital broadcast TV than they had cable channels. Their campstore was very pricy for even the basics.
A word of caution for families: Bayview allows 2 adults on your site and charges extra for ALL children over the age of 2. A camping family of 5 can expect to pay $49 a night for the parents, plus a additional fee PER child. It gets expensive real quick.
Also a word of caution on their hook-ups --- there is not a breaker at the campsite. If you draw too much power and need a breaker to be reset, you have to call maintenance and they can take between 20 min and 2 hours to get your power back. The 30 amp power is very sensitive. We couldn't run our A/C for most nights because of the low voltage. Their electrical system could definately use an overhaul.
In summary, we enjoyed the park itself, but we will not be returning to Bayview due to the actions and attitudes of several staff members. We found the campground rules to be much more smothering than the many camgrounds and prefer a camground that is a litle more relaxed.
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We stayed there once before without any of the problems that you had. DW liked that CG, but she also hasn't requested a return visit either. I'm glad you were able to make the best of it.
Good informative post.
That's too bad that you had a bad CG. We've run into those a lot. I think maybe some of them have gotten "burned", so that's why they have the "guards".
Did you at least enjoy the Cape? There are many great places to see and things to do. We always stay in the center of the Cape so we can travel easily in both directions.
Happy Camping.
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We love the Cape, which is why we continually go back. We typically stay at BSP for Memorial day every year. The reason we chose to try Bayview was to see what else was out there. We took a ride to look at CG's last year on Columbus Day and thought Bayview would be nice because of the location, pools, and activities for our son (Almost 3 yrs old now).
We did have a nice time and thought the CG was very nice, but the harassment by some of the staff was a little ridiculous. I think if you're going to police rules, then police them all. We noted many occasions of kids under 16 riding past security with no helmets on - which is in the rules - and no one said a word. I guess the long and the short of it is consistency. We had the poor kid in the pool for 3 or 4 days with his body suit on and no one complained. We got a new staff member on the last 3 days watching the pool and she was borderline Hitler-style-strict.
At any rate, we may try Peter's Pond next time. I also hear BSP is putting in a pool, so we may just keep going there. Thats long been my only complaint with BSP is that they have no pool and no water access on the canal for swimming (for obvious reasons!).
I attempted to make a reservation at Bay View for an upcoming weekend. They have a minimum stay of four nights in season which was stated rather abruptly. I was told that I could try calling back at the last minute and they would let me stay if they still had vacancy. So I guess my two nights is good enough if nothing better comes along. I understand that these places have to maximize there income during a season, but I guess it was the attitude that came with it. I won't be making an effort to stay there in the future.
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We also like Nickerson. Because it's a state park you don't have all the extras that you get with a private one. We (as most I suspect) stay at Nickerson because it's on the bike path which it a great path if you like biking. You could spend the day just making use of their internal paths.
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