Day # 59 - Goodland, KS

Unfortunately, it’s time to go home. I can’t believe how fast this trip has flown by! It seems like the planning and preparation took forever and now it’s over. What great memories we’ve made together. It’s weird to think that we’ll be home in just a few days.

Because we extended our trip, we needed to get Sarah’s medicine refilled. The problem is that because ADD medications are controlled substances you have to jump through a few hoops to get them filled. In our case, we had to have Alice pick up the actual scripts and Fed-Ex them to us in Colorado. Since we knew we were going to be waiting around until 10:30 for Fed-Ex to arrive, we were in no real hurry to get packed up and on our way. We made a quick bite for breakfast and got things squared away.

We were pretty glad to be leaving this particular campground. Woodall’s (the campground Bible so to speak) rated this campground a 5 diamond, its highest rating. I don’t know who was doing the reviewing or what their pay-off was, but this facility certainly was NOT a 5 diamond! The wi-fi was all but unusable, the cable was unwatchable and the landscaping left much to be desired. Throw in the highway noise and the train that rolled through at all hours of the day and night and you start to get the picture. Since we were only staying a few nights and once again using the camper as a hotel room, we decided just to make the best of it. The straw that broke the camel’s back so to speak though happened when Tony tried to get our propane tanks refilled this morning. Selling propane is a pretty standard service in most campgrounds. Most places even advertise it as one of their amenities. So when Tony went to the office around 8:30 a.m. to inquire about getting propane, he was surprised at the reaction he received. The woman in the office told him that there was no one else there that could help him. She said there wouldn’t be anyone else on until 11:30. Tony left dismayed and puzzled. He ran into another KOA worker cleaning the pool. Tony asked if he knew if someone could help him with propane. The man replied that he was finished cleaning the pool and he could probably do it. He told Tony to head over to the tank and that he would be right there. A few minutes later, the man arrived and informed Tony that the woman in the office told him that they were far too busy for him to sell propane and that Tony would have to wait until 11:30. Never mind that the man was standing right there. Never mind that a customer was asking you to provide one of the basic services you advertise. Never mind that you just told a customer that you were too busy doing busy work to actually help them. Talk about poor customer service! We will take great pleasure filling out the camper satisfaction survey and sending it off to corporate along with a letter to KOA corporate, Woodall’s directory, The Good Sam Club and anyone else we can think of that might be interested in the poor experience we had at the Colorado Springs KOA.

Once we had prescriptions in hand we headed for the nearest Walgreens and then we were on our way. It had gotten pretty late in the day and by the time 4:30 rolled around we were only to Goodland, Kansas. Because Kansas is an incredibly long and empty (read boring) state we knew if we didn’t stop in Goodland, we’d have to drive several more hours to make it to Salina and we didn’t really feel up to that. We stopped at a small but very nice KOA in town. Because we arrived at the campground earlier than normal, we had plenty of time to enjoy some of the campground’s amenities. The kids played on the playground while Tony and I set up. Abby had been begging us to play putt-putt and there was a small course in the campground. We played perhaps the longest round of 9 holes of putt-putt ever, but the kids had a good time. The owner even turned on the windmills to make it “more challenging.” I took the opportunity to get a little laundry done so that we won’t have so much to do when we get home. Tony fired up the oven and we had our famous camping pizza for dinner. We had a relaxing day even though we didn’t make much progress home.