My Built Environment: Good, Bad, and Really Ugly

This past weekend we went camping for our last trip of the season. We happen to have a tent trailer, which we love for camping. I don’t know how many of you go camping, but those of you that do know that all campgrounds have one way loops in them. That is fine, but in the vast majority of the sites we camp in, we have to back the trailer into them. Not a big deal, but invariably, the back in spaces are designed in the opposite direction of the one way loop…so you have to go around the loop in the wrong direction to have a prayers chance of getting into the camp site. I find this idiotic, but have resigned myself to it. Now this particular camping site took the cake…it was actually pretty easy to get into it, but after I backed in, I realized the whole campsite was totally backwards! RV’s are universally designed to have the doors on the right side (when you are facing to the front of the trailer) with hookups and such on the left side. This campsite was backwards. The picnic table area was on the left side of the trailer, with the hookups on the right! This was the first time I had run into this. Of course, I had to borrow an extension cord to hookup. Walking around the campground, I notice a considerable number of campsites that were backwards. I am ashamed to admit that it is largely people in my profession that design campgrounds…and obviously, the ones who design them, don’t camp! Guess I need to figure out how to get some of these projects.