J & J RV Park

Stayed one week and, unfortunately, we were sick much of the time so it ended up being a nice quiet place to rest. Very short drive to town and would be even better when other seasonal things are open. A couple of days were pretty cold for exploring.

We look forward to returning another time.

Cell signal, Verizon, was fine. WiFi was spotty.

Stopped here after attempting to visit Hot Springs NP on an overly crowded day. We decided to stay the night and try again in the morning. The site we were in had plenty of room and was level, but the water came out thick and orange. I ran it until it cleared but even through the filter kept a rusty smell. When I turned the water back on in the morning, I was greeted with another murky spew before the water ran clear.

Traveling west on 70, our 2019 F350’s GPS was worthless finding this park. JJ lead us to a level pull thru site, quickly acknowledging that we knew what we were doing & left us to fine tune our site placement. The actual campsite area is aesthetically lacking, but the view from said campsites is nice. Even watched a couple trying to feed catfish at one of the ponds. Internet was inconsistent. Streamed for about 3 hours straight the first night, then it refused to connect. Worthless the second night. Wouldn’t stay logged on the second morning when I was trying to check the day’s weather. While this was probably the least visual inspiring park we’ve stayed out most of this trip, it did have what I really need. A good, level site in a safe, quiet environment with easy hookups.

This was fairly close to HSNP maybe a 10-15 min drive. We had a back in space next to creek. Didn’t use any facilities. Owner was nice but we didn’t tempt asking if we could leave rig out of the way while we did sight seeing after check out. He seemed a bit strict. Wish we would have though because parking a MH near visitors center is not easy. Price was higher than we expected but everyone was pretty full. Everything worked.

The park is located just off of and below business 70 east of Hot Springs, so there is a little road noise but it’s barely noticeable. The “storage” in the name refers to a few short rows of storage garages located near the front of the property, away from the camping area. We only saw a few people access those storage units during our stay (mostly long-term residents of the campground), so their presence didn’t impact our month-long stay.

Have your checkbook handy when you stop at the office to check in, as there is an extra fee for paying via credit card. Once you’ve checked in, the owner will guide you to your spot and help you position your rig. The campground has back-in sites that back up to the creek that flows along the east side of the campground; the rest of the spots are pull-though. There’s no dedicated path to the creek (you can only access it via an empty back-in site), but there are also two accessible ponds on the property. Most sites are big rig-friendly in terms of length, but they are also narrow: one neighbor to our left was able to deploy their awning without touching our slide, but not by much. All of the sites have level gravel surfaces, full hookups, and cable TV (about 20 or so channels via DirectTV).

In addition to the office, there is a second building that houses the bathrooms, the laundry room, a small library room, and a social room. Between the buildings is a grass field about 40 yards long and 15 yards wide which is a great place to walk dogs. You can also walk pets along and up the steep grassy hill on the west side of the campground. We had several packages delivered during our stay: Amazon vans drove up right to our site, while other packages were delivered to us by the owner.

In terms of cell service, the best speeds I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna during our stay were about 15Mbps down and 2Mbps up, but the bandwidth would vary. There were many occasions when the Verizon connection would be unusable (sometimes during the day, but most often in the evening); other times it was good enough to do video streaming, though with significants pauses and pixelation. We tried using the campground WiFi on occasion for web surfing, but sometimes that would get bogged down as well. In contrast, the bandwidth provided by the AT&T hotspot on my smartphone was always strong, so that served as my backup connection while working. The one speed test I performed on my AT&T phone showed 17Mbps down and 16Mbps up.

Despite the narrow sites and our bandwidth woes, we did enjoy our stay. Everyone at the campground was friendly, and the location was perfect for visiting Hot Springs and other local attractions. We would camp here again.

They were really busy, probably with everybody who didn't get into Gulpha Gorge but they had 1 spot left for our late arrival. The owner was extremely nice and helped us back into our tight spot. The only negative and it's kind of a big one was the bus that was parked next to us. It smelled terrible due to the amount of cats living in it. Thankfully, it didn't follow into our trailer.