Caring for our Campgrounds

This past summer we pulled our RV into a Minnesota campground and saw the rakes hanging on a stand – rakes that you can borrow to rake your campsite. The only campgrounds we have noticed rakes available to clean your site is at Core of Engineer campgrounds. My grandfather ALWAYS raked his campsite after he pulled into his site.  As a 10-year old kid, I knew he brought his own rake and he would comment about how he had to clean up the previous campers’ mess.  Now, I often find myself fondly remembering his ambition and desire to keep campgrounds clean. The sometimes descriptive words he used to describe messy campers also proved to be entertaining to a 10-year old.

In September, we arrived at our campsite and it was nicely mowed but we immediately saw something bright green in color right along the tree line behind our RV.

This very first thing that caught our eye – was a green dart! We picked it up and then we saw a plastic cup. We ended up picking up all of the items in and behind the campsite (most of the items were tossed into the trees that bordered the site). Darts, plastic cups, wadded-up aluminum foil, a cork, plastic covers from bottles – all in the trees and visible as we stood in our campsite. Guess what was on the site, not in the trees?  Metal tabs from cans, and DOG POOP!! LOTS OF IT!! We did not have a rake but we did have plastic gloves to help with the poop collection and luckily all of the other items were not very dirty.

We thought of our grandfather and realized he cleaned because he liked things neat, but that wasn’t the only reason – he also cared about campgrounds. He LOVED camping!! Let’s all work together to keep campgrounds clean!!

Fun fact: We have seen many items left behind at a campsite but this was the first dart we found in our 35 years of camping!