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I have been parking at the Upper Tonto Creek Campground and pay the fee to camp but before I set up camp I hike Horton Creek. I noted the camp host acts like an East German Border guard and prevents hikers from entering the campground to use the rest room or fill up water bottles/canteens.

Is your post a cheer or a jeer?

If I paid to use the campground, I would be happy if the campground host prevented non-campers from using the facilities that I had paid to use, as well as keep traffic through the camp to a minimum.

The host is there to collect fees on behalf of the concessionaire and prevent those who haven't paid from using the facilities, as well as enforce fire restrictions, night-time noise rules, etc. within the campground. Sounds like he's doing his job.

All though I have never met an East German Border guard I am familiar with campground hosts. I think to become one they first have to serve as Presidents of Homeowner Associations or be Vice Principles of High Schools in charge of discipline.

@SuperstitionGuy

My parents were campground hosts last summer up on Mt Lemmon. Think you are spot on for previous job experience. It wasn't a fun house to grow up in.

Yes, I've run into this problem of very grouchy campground hosts. It takes a certain type of person to want to put up with the type of crap you have to put up with to be a campground host, just to get a free place to park all summer.

A number of people have asked me if, now that I live in a motorhome, will I be considering some of those types of jobs? It never fails to astonish me that anyone would think being a campground host would be fun. So, do you like being awakened at 1 a.m. by an irate camper because the people next door to him are loud and drunk and throwing beer bottles into his camp? You want to be the one to stop some gangbanger from carving his initials on the picnic table? You want to be the one awakened at midnight because some 80-year old man thinks his wife is lost when actually she just went to the bathroom? You want to be the one who is expected to pick up the condoms in the campsites? You want to be the one who has to find the parents of wandering loud teenagers? You want to be the one who chases after small children who have plugged up all the commodes with TP while their parents are getting drunk?

I'm sayin' it takes a Gestapo mentality to run a campground. I ain't that type. Since East Germany has a high unemployment rate, I suggest we bring some of them over here to work in our campgrounds.

azbackpackr wrote:I'm sayin' it takes a Gestapo mentality to run a campground. I ain't that type. Since East Germany has a high unemployment rate, I suggest we bring some of them over here to work in our campgrounds.

Forget where I was (it was on a big lake, so either Idaho or Minnesota), but visiting someplace up north at a resort and all of their summer staff were from Poland and other eastern European countries. Talked to one of the people that ran the resort and they said the jobs that American college kids used to do they don't want anymore. So he flies them in for the summer.

azbackpackr wrote:Since East Germany has a high unemployment rate

East Germany is a thing?

@chumley
They put the wall back up. Where have you been?

I hear similar things about the host at Canyon Vista Campground just south of Flagstaff, although the ladies poached a potty break there on the way in to hike AZT Passage 31 a few weeks ago. There were reports that he was warming up the golf cart to come put an end to such high crime as we heading down the trail.

This is one reason the Tonto NF received such negative input regarding concessionaires on the Tonto during their planning input efforts. There's something about restricting where you can take a leak that just sets bad with people.

don't you have to walk through the campground to get to the Derrick Trail, though?

@Nighthiker
His name is Scotty and his wife is Dawn and they have a parrot for a pet in their camper. He is of Scottish heritage actually. I camped there in April and got to know them a little bit, just asking routine questions really. This is their first season as hosts. In recent years I have caught some stocker trout in Tonto creek and given them to the last host (I think her name was Mary Ann, maybe?). I think one time I got a double portion of firewood because of it. These new hosts are really nice folks and getting used to the job as it is their first season. He also has to clean up all of the trash and mess others leave behind each week, which might cause me to act like a border guard... As far as parking goes, why not park on the main road just above the bridge for free and walk the extra half mile back up to the trail head?

Nighthiker wrote:...prevents hikers from entering the campground to use the rest room or fill up water bottles/canteens.

Nothing says "I despise you" like a freshly pinched loaf on a door step.

Isn't against AZ law to deny water to someone who asks for it?