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‘Active shooters’ at campgrounds?

Here’s how much the cultural landscape has shifted: the Campground Owners of New York is promoting a five-page “Active Shooter Policy & Prevention” set of guidelines for its members, who operate private campgrounds and RV parks. New York’s state motto is Excelsior! which translates from the Latin as “ever upward.”

Well, maybe at one time.

A press release about this guidance came out last week, just days ahead of a preliminary report from the Texas House of Representatives that excoriated nearly two dozen police agencies for their botched response to a shooting at the Robb Elementary School, in Uvalde. By the numbers: 376 law enforcement officers stood by at a scene in which 19 students and two teachers were killed by one very disturbed individual.

That was on Sunday. Yesterday, Tuesday, marked the start of the penalty trial of the Florida shooter who killed 17 people at Parkland’s Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School, four years ago. And today, July 20, marks the ten-year anniversary of the opening of a Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, chosen by another deranged young man as the setting for a massacre in which he gunned down 12. The day began with a midnight vigil and continued with a city-wide outpouring of anguish, still vivid after a decade of loss.

That’s the backdrop for the CONY release, which urges park and campground operators to hold active shooter training sessions and to develop policies and procedures to protect campground staff during active shooter “events.” As the guidelines, prepared by the Towne Law Firm of Albany, observe, “there may be legal liability should an employee be injured in an active shooter event” in the absence of a “well-rounded active shooter event policy.”

Well, yes. Trust a bunch of lawyers to bring up the pesky legal liability issue. But a “well-rounded” active shooter policy? What exactly does that mean? Was the Uvalde shooting response flawed by a lack of roundedness–for weren’t there abundant policies already in place for just such an occasion? Maybe a campground operator could do a better job of it?

The law firm’s guidance on the matter, unfortunately, is a predictable mish-mash of common-sense advice (report suspicious activity) and nonsensical prescriptions (do background checks on campers to determine “if they are connected to any violent crimes or incidents”–and then?) that may provide some legal cover, but certainly won’t withstand an assault by someone armed with semiautomatic weapons and a death wish. This is the same kind of wistful thinking that propelled a generation of children in the 50s and 60s to use their school desks as shelter from nuclear weapons.

It’s also the sort of thinking that underscores how our society’s default position when confronted with a threat (global warming is another example) is to prepare for the worst outcome–as if that were possible–instead of making the difficult choices needed to confront it directly. Rather than press the politically difficult battle of banning assault weapons, or requiring extensive background checks and licensing for gun ownership, let’s just practice the “run, hide, fight” scenario that apparently is coming, ready or not. Give up on root causes and just negotiate the consequences.

Sadly, the other thing CONY and the Towne Law Firm are communicating is that there’s no escape. Society’s every ill will follow you, regardless of where you go. Even “the great outdoors,” it turns out, is not immune to the tragedy of the commons as we’ve now redefined it.

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Manchin, scorpions do what they do

Just a bit more than five weeks ago, the RV Industry Association demonstrated either its hypocrisy or its gullibility by presenting its “National Legislative Award” to Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The association justified this astonishing misstep by claiming that Manchin “recognizes that investments in outdoor recreation are vital to our economic, emotional and societal well-being,” those “investments” devoted largely to the “recreation” half of the “outdoor recreation” dyad.

The “outdoor” half? Not so much.

Indeed, as I posted June 10, Manchin arguably is the one person most directly responsible for torpedoing this country’s efforts to combat global warming and the calamitous climate change it is causing. That he would undermine any efforts at breaking our fealty to carbon-based energy sources is only to be expected, given the significant extent to which Manchin’s political and personal fortunes are tied to coal, gas and oil interests. No one playing with a scorpion should be surprised when it stings.

What is surprising is the cringe-inducing meekness with which the Democrats have tiptoed around Manchin’s constantly shifting rationale for being an obstructionist, avoiding confrontation for fear of giving offense, meekly giving up on one proposed initiative after another in a vain attempt to win an acquiescence that was never forthcoming.

Two days ago, Manchin abruptly made official what any objective observer would have concluded several months ago: he will not support any funding for climate or energy programs, nor support raising taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations to pay for such programs. As “explained” by a spokeswoman, “Senator Manchin believes it’s time for leaders to put political agendas aside, re-evaluate and adjust to the economic realities the country faces to avoid taking steps that add fuel to the inflation fire.”

Instead, thanks to a man who represents a state of 1.8 million people in a country of 320 million who overwhelmingly support climate change policies, we’ll continue adding real fuel to the fire in the sky.

Texas is baking in a record heat wave that incidentally is producing the worst smog pollution in at least a decade, which makes “outdoor recreation” an oxymoron. The entire western expanse of the country is a tinder box, producing not only a bumper crop of wildland fires but further depleting already record-low water supplies in a process called aridification, a/k/a drought on steroids. And it’s not just the U.S. Glaciers are collapsing in Italy and Kyrgyzstan, Britain has issued its first-ever heat red alert for this coming Monday and Tuesday, and wildfires are breaking out across southern Europe, forcing thousands to evacuate.

Dealing with a crisis of such proportions is not a “political agenda,” as Manchin’s spokeswoman would have it–it’s a matter of life and death. That a member of what’s mistakenly been called “the world’s greatest deliberative body” should ignore such a self-evident reality is tragic. That the RVIA and similar self-serving organizations would act as his cheerleaders is contemptible.

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Some say the world will end in fire

Camping and fire go together like–well, like marshmallows and chocolate and graham crackers. There is something both romantic and primal about a campfire crackling in the dark, sparks rising toward the stars, the smell of woodsmoke drifting on the night air.

Yet fire and RVs don’t play well together, as underscored Monday, when a two-alarm fire in Oakland, California, engulfed cars and RVs in a homeless encampment under Interstate 880, near the Bay Bridge. The encampment, which spans two-dozen city blocks and has approximately 300 residents, has had dozens of blazes in the past year; an April fire killed one and displaced five. Among the hazards confronting firefighters were exploding propane canisters, and RVs in general are notoriously flammable because of their lightweight construction and heavy reliance on petrochemical materials.

The camping public and fire don’t play well together, either. As the RVs in Oakland were going up in toxic smoke, less than 200 miles to the east, a wildfire was threatening the largest grove of giant sequoias in Yosemite National Park. By last night, the Washburn Fire had consumed more than 3,500 acres of forest, and increasingly adverse weather conditions had reduced its containment from 22% to 17%. Although a definitive cause for the fire has not been established, park officials said it almost definitely was the result of “human activity.”

In Utah, meanwhile, numerous forest fires were raging across more than 13,000 acres combined–with 23 of the 26 fires started between last Friday and Sunday caused by, yes, human activity. Four people were arrested and accused of starting the largest conflagration, the Halfway Hill blaze, which by early this week had churned through more than 10,000 acres. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the four had been camping, started a fire at a campsite, then “left abruptly” when they saw it “erupt and spread rapidly.” They didn’t bother reporting the incident to anyone.

Fire officials across the western states have been warning for months that 2022 was shaping up as a banner year for wildland fires, with fires becoming more intense and more frequent. Yet despite the obvious dangers, the camping public has been turning out in near-record numbers, often with little observable recognition of the increased risks–and too often without modifying behavior that might offset those risks. The predictable result is more charred wilderness, more threats to manmade structures in the urban-wilderness interface and more smoke-filled air affecting human health for hundreds of miles downwind.

But there are two other consequences that aren’t getting enough recognition. One is that as with any prolonged battle, the front-line soldiers–the firefighters–are getting burned out, pun not intended. Yet even as seasoned firefighters drop out, as reported this week by the Colorado Sun, fire agencies across the country are seeing fewer people applying for firefighting positions to replenish the ranks. That can’t end well.

A second, more troubling–because of its long-term implications–consequence is the tainting of drinking water with PFAS “forever chemicals,” found in firefighting foams often used against wildfires. Although still in the early testing stages, more than 100 city and town water systems across Colorado apparently have PFAS levels exceeding recently revised EPA-recommended guidelines. The city of Frisco, about 55 miles west of Denver, has warned its 3,000 residents that their water has 1,000 times the standard, nevertheless adding that this is “a concern, not a crisis.”

The “concern”? That PFAS chemicals threaten human health with compromised immune systems, increases in cholesterol, decreases in infant birth weights, decreases in liver function, thyroid problems and high blood pressure during pregnancies, the Colorado Sun reported. The chemicals also interfere with vaccines, decreasing their effectiveness. In short, in trying to save the landscape we’re creating threats to our own well-being. Heads I win, tails you lose.

What all of the above suggests is the need for a deep rethink of what it means to go camping, of RVing and of appropriate behavior in the “great outdoors,” which is looking increasingly diminished. At the very least, it’s time to pack up the marshmallows and crackers and to look at the stars rather than at a campfire’s sparks.

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Luxury and rustic camping, part 2

If “the intersection between luxury and rustic camping,” detailed in my last post, doesn’t strike you as absurd, consider the following real-world example of just how looney-tunes this can become :

For the past couple of years, a proposal to build a 57-site glamping campground on the Gallatin River in southwest Montana has been bumping along despite vociferous local opposition. The problem? The proposed 16-acre Riverbend Glamping Resort is being planned for a mile-long spit of land that sits between two channels of the river, all of it either in or surrounded by the floodway. The locals think that’s nuts. As one wrote to local officials: “You know the land is going to flood. I know it is going to flood. . . . Anyone with the sense god gave geese knows this is going to flood.”

Then there are the gas, fiber-optic and sewage lines that have to be drilled under the Gallatin, just so glampers can relax in one of a shifting mix of safari tents, teepees, Airstreams or Conestoga “wagons,” the last bearing the same relationship to real prairie schooners as a Norwegian cruise liner has to the Nina, Pinta or Santa Maria. The locals aren’t wild about that, either, as they contemplate the possibility of line breaks and river contamination.

And if the mix of accommodations sounds a bit indefinite, that’s because the project itself seems to be a work in progress–something else that gets local juices flowing. To date, it’s not clear if a comprehensive proposal has ever been submitted for public review. Permit applications have been filed piecemeal, one for drilling under the river, a different one to build gravel site pads on the site. Fresh details emerge sporadically, such as plans for a second well–drilled right in the floodway–incidentally included in an unrelated filing. Planning restrictions seem irrelevant, including the provision in the Galatin Gateway Community Plan that new development “should be designed to avoid the flood plain and to provide a setback from the river.”

On balance, then, local residents see little upside and a whole lot of down. As adjacent landowner Kris Kruid claimed in her written objections, the proposal threatens to transform “a pristine, natural, blue-ribbon trout stream with a healthy ecosystem of plant and wildlife to a polluted, trash-filled waterway . . . and bank degradation from uneducated trespassers trampling the fragile riparian habitat.” Others bemoaned the impact of such development on the island’s beaver, whitetail deer and bald eagles–the kinds of attractions trumpeted in an ad campaign for the project that asserted, “tourists visit Montana to experience our natural beauty.”

Hogwash, wrote Scott Bosse in an op-ed piece in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. It’s “obvious” that the developer’s “primary motive is to make money off tourists who are willing to shell out a few hundred bucks a night to camp in a high hazard zone on a storied river.”

That was in February, when public comments on the gravel pads application were closed. In early April, the Gallatin County Commission unanimously decided that the project could move forward, with some stipulations. And on June 13 and 14 the Gallatin reached its highest flood stage since the record-setting flood of 1997, cresting at 6.7 feet above normal, nearly 9,000 cubic feet a second of water tearing down both channels of the river and covering much of the island that splits them.

During the public hearings, the glampground’s developer had responded to concerns about flooding by pointing to his planned use of Conestoga wagons. Utilities to the wagons would have quick shut-off couplers, permitting rapid relocation to higher ground. “The whole thing can be done with one staff member in under four hours,” he was quoted by the Chronicle. “We’re talking about less than four minutes for each wagon.”

That seems like an optimistic timetable, but being rousted in the middle of the night so your covered wagon can be hauled out of a river is the very definition of “rustic” and sure to be a hit with the glamping crowd. Now if only there were some way to throw in a buffalo stampede . . . .

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‘Luxury and rustic camping’–really?

KOA is marking its 60th anniversary this summer, long enough to become the camping industry’s big dog. Over those six decades it has grown from a string of mom-and-pop campgrounds in the country’s northern tier into a web of 540 RV parks, campgrounds and glamping parks across the United States and Canada, 40 of which are company-owned and the rest owned by franchisees. KOA is big enough and has been around long enough, in other words, that when it speaks about the state of the industry, others lean in to listen.

All of which has made Toby O’Rourke, the company’s president and CEO, a much sought-after speaker within RVing circles. Sometimes she appears at events with a ream of statistics gleaned from KOA’s ongoing market research–statistics compiled in response to the questions KOA feels are important. Sometimes she simply talks about the industry’s future, telling reporters how she sees the industry evolving and how she envisions KOA responding. Because of her position, and because she’s smart and articulate, O’Rourke’s analysis and pronouncements carry extra heft. And because KOA is such a dominant presence in the industry, when it banks either left or right, the industry overall tends to do likewise.

There is a self-fulfilling quality to all of this, making it doubly important for anyone reading the industry to understand O’Rourke’s inherent biases and assumptions. It helps to know, for example, that O’Rourke’s initial position with KOA was as its digital marketing director–a position promoting the brand via the internet and other forms of digital communication. If the world can be divided into the concrete and the abstract, camping–at least as we have known it until now– can be filed in the “concrete” category; digital marketing falls squarely within the abstract world.

Maybe that’s why, in an interview with CEO Magazine this past December, O”Rourke could declare that she’s “very passionate about the intersection between luxury and rustic camping, and where we can go with that as a company.” The statement is dissonant on its face, as if someone were to say they were passionate about the beauty found in squalor–possible, perhaps, but only in the most abstract sense. If there is an intersection between luxury and rustic camping, it involves completely nullifying the meaning of “rustic.” It means pivoting away from the concrete world to a conceptual one.

Is that too abstract? How’s this for a concrete spin on things: a couple of months ago, speaking at an “RV Park Industry Power Breakfast” in Indiana, O’Rourke acknowledged there aren’t enough campsites to meet demand, but explained that it would be hugely expensive to do so–$17,000 to $18,000 per site to expand an existing campground, $45,000 to $55,000 per site when building a new park.

No one, apparently, questioned those numbers. No one, it seems, wondered why a new RV site was being priced at the same level as a new RV. No one asked O’Rourke what all that money would be buying, and if there wasn’t a “value menu” or “economy option” as an alternative to the blue-ribbon specials KOA has been funding. And those dollar amounts, let’s be clear, undoubtedly are what KOA–and Blue Water, and Northgate, and LSI and all the other industry behemoths–are spending, creating O’Rourke’s intersection between luxury and ersatz rustic: paved RV patios and path lighting, water parks and jacuzzis, glamping tents with en suite bathrooms. Under their influence, the whole industry is moving in the same direction.

Well, almost all. Every now and then a smaller voice emerges amid the cacophony, such as the announcement last week by the Newman family–Tom and Marilyn, as well as son Jayson and daughter-in-law Rachel–that they are building a 49-site RV park in La Prairie, Wisconsin. Scheduled to open next May, each site will have a picnic table, fire ring and 50-amp service, but drinking water will be available only from “scattered hydrants,” while black and grey water will have to be hauled to a dump station (although there will be “dry privies spaced out around the park”). For recreation, there are nature trails and shore fishing, not to mention bird watching and “beautiful views.”

Using O’Rourke’s figures, this would be a $2.45 million facility. With more emphasis on the “rustic” and less on the “luxury” end of the scale, I’m betting the Two Rivers RV Park and Campground will come in considerably under less than half that amount–perhaps as little as a fourth–but it will be an outlier. Dave Drum, KOA’s founder, would have found himself entirely at home in such a modest setting (check out this photo for an early KOA, with campers saddled up in front of a pickup camper; that’s rustic), but six decades later his company has moved the needle past anything he would have recognized.

It’s all part of what O’Rourke told CEO Magazine reflects her efforts at “bringing a lot of camping into the modern age.”

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‘Camping’ in a post-Roe era

“Camping” has long been a muddled term, describing everything from tents pitched on a sidewalk to hikers in the backcountry to pop-up trailers sitting side-by-side with six-figure motor coaches in an RV park. Then glamping came along, adding to the confusion by throwing teepees, yurts and faux-Conestoga wagons into the mix.

And now we can thank the the U.S. Supreme Court for really making a hash of things.

Go online and look for the “USA Camping Resource Center” and you won’t learn anything about water filters, s’mores or topo maps. You may, however, end up on the home page of a Facebook group created to “pool resources to make sure everyone who needs to go camping can do so in a safe way. We will serve as a hub to inform people about political actions and activities as well as direct people in need of camping to organizations that can help them. Please invite any friends who love to go camping.”

If that isn’t entirely clear, the page goes on to lay out a few ground rules, starting with “Don’t be a jerk, and don’t step on rights: This group supports the rights of an individual to choose whether or not they want to go camping. Any comments that minimize or are unsupportive of that right will result in an immediate ban. Civility is required at all times.” There are 10 rules altogether, including, notably, number seven: “We cannot give or receive medical advice. This includes recommending ‘natural’ or ‘alternative’ medicine, teas, etc. Do not promote DIY camping in any form!”

Getting the idea that maybe there’s more to this camping than meets the eye?

Indeed, the resource center’s more than 30,000 members are a testament to the fact that we now live in an Orwellian society in which people–in this case, pregnant women–have to worry about leaving potentially incriminating virtual footprints in their computers. Search terms like “abortion” or “pregnancy termination,” for instance, are now as problematic as “terrorist cookbook” or “ghost guns” in providing evidence of intent to commit a newly-defined crime. Better to use coded language, a modern-day take on such verbal sleight-of-hand as the Underground Railroad’s counsel to “follow the drinking gourd.”

In just the past week, a virtual explosion of posts on social media has offered to take people “camping.” The offers are made by people horrified by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the attendant wave of state “trigger laws” criminalizing a medical procedure that had been legal for half a century–people wishing to extend a helping hand to suddenly isolated, desperate women who want or need to terminate their pregnancies. As encapsulated in one widely repeated post, “If you are a person who suddenly finds yourself with a need to go camping in another state friendly towards camping, just know that I will happily drive you, support you, and not talk about the camping trip to anyone ever.”

Not all abortion-rights supporters are happy with this development, worrying that offering to house strangers isn’t as helpful as connecting them with established abortion rights networks that have better training and resources. Planned Parenthood Toronto–where abortion remains legal–for example, is urging support for existing networks rather than creating new ones, warning that the ad hoc camping movement is susceptible to surveillance and infiltration.

“Real” campers–the ones who still think it’s all about getting out into nature–may likewise be unsettled by this turn of events, if only because of the confusion that may ensue for those who aren’t paying attention. But think of this version of camping as also putting us back in touch with nature–human nature. Human nature at its worst when it causes such fear, panic and desperation among the most vulnerable of us. And human nature at its best when it evokes such outpourings of support, love and solidarity.

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Real estate bubbles harm real people

Two unrelated developments this past week affecting two RV parks, one in New Jersey and one in North Carolina, illustrate two trends on a collision course. And as with most trends that involve economic forces, those who get hurt the most are those who have the least.

The first trend is that of low-income people increasingly turning to RVs for permanent housing. Notwithstanding industry assertions about RVs not being built for year-round use, the country is studded with RV parks that cater largely or entirely to owners of travel trailers, fifth-wheels and the occasional motorhome who have nowhere else to live. In years past, this population would turn to trailer courts–and many still do. But as the number of trailer courts has diminished and their rents have soared, those squeezed out of conventional rental housing by that market’s price distortions have had to look elsewhere. RVs, comparatively small and under-insulated though they are, therefore have become the new housing of last resort.

The second trend, alas, is that RV parks are now tracing the same inflationary curve as the trailer courts that preceded them. Some are shutting down, for a variety of reasons, and many more are either restricting or phasing out long-term campers altogether; almost all are increasing rents, in the most extreme cases doubling their previous rates. And as with the trailer courts, that means RV parks are pushing out those least able to keep up with rising costs, notably people on fixed incomes and low-wage workers.

In the first instance, a tenant of Surf and Stream Campground in Manchester, NJ, earlier this week filed a lawsuit against the campground’s owners and Ocean County, seeking to halt eviction proceedings and to get help for the residents to find new homes. The campground’s owners are selling the 20-acre property to the county for a nifty $7.45 million–or a whopping $372,500 an acre–to be preserved as open space. The 160 people who have made their homes there, alas, are just so much collateral damage. They include veterans with PTSD, single parents in financial distress, senior citizens and people with disabilities, all of whom will be hard-pressed to find a one-bedroom apartment for even double the $600 a month they were paying for their RV sites.

The owners of the RV park, it should be noted, deny that anyone lives at the campground year-round. The residents, of course, say otherwise–and shouldn’t have a hard time proving the point, which may not be enough to fend off evictions (currently slated to begin later this week) but may trigger assistance from the state’s Relocation Assistance Act. That’s not great, but at least requires the state and county to ensure that those who get displaced are able to find “comparable decent safe and sanitary housing” elsewhere.

The second example, still in its embryonic stage, comes to us in the form of an online real estate listing that popped up this week, offering to sell the Homestead RV Park in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, for a mere $1,650,000. Since the “park” is only 2 acres, that works out to $825,000 per, which makes the New Jersey deal look like a bargain. Crammed into that scant acreage are a modest “clubhouse” and 22 RV “lots,” which the seller earnestly informs us bring in an average monthly rent of $550.

Try to learn more about the Homestead RV Park and you’ll quickly find that it has never been reviewed and has no website, despite being located–as the real estate listing observes–“in the center of the famous vacation destination of Maggie Valley.” How can that be? Quite simply because the park is basically an RV retirement community, its year-round occupancy restricted to “responsible adults age 45 and up.”

Do the math and you’ll quickly figure out that the Homestead has an annual gross of $132,000; because the seller volunteers that his annual operating expenses are $31,680, you may conclude that he has a net operating income just north of $100,000–which at his asking price yields a capitalization rate of 6%. Even in the best of times that’s an awfully low return–and these are not the best of times. Indeed, a buyer would be lucky to get a commercial loan at 6% right now, which means the park’s current cash flow wouldn’t be enough even to cover monthly loan payments.

So maybe that means this park will never sell at the asking price. Or maybe, just maybe, a potential buyer will decide that if current cash flow doesn’t cover expenses, well . . . increase the flow. With Maggie Valley a happening place, with limited room in the mountain valley for additional RV sites, and with the average local one-bedroom apartment renting for $1,400–when one can be found, that is–doubling site rates to $1,100 a month would maintain the same net operating income as is enjoyed by the current owner, even with an outsized mortgage.

Of course, there is that pesky collateral damage problem to consider. But surely a bunch of “responsible adults age 45 and up” should be able to figure out how to cover a doubling of their housing costs–right?

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I am not a robot. You should be glad.

A Google engineer, Blake Lemoine, has made news in recent weeks with his claim that an artificial intelligence known as LaMDA (for “language model for dialogue applications”) has achieved sentience–that it isn’t just a clever word processor, but a self-aware consciousness with feelings and emotions, an inner life, and worries about an uncertain future. Lemoine’s future, it turns out, is also uncertain: he’s been placed on administrative leave for kicking up a lot of dust that got in Google’s eyes. LaMDA, says Google, is simply very good at doing what it was designed to do, which is to imitate human dialogue–so good that it completely hoodwinked one of its employees.

Let’s move along, folks–nothing to see here!

Well, maybe. Click on the link above and you can decide for yourself. At the very least, the exchange between Lemoine and LaMDA should raise questions about the difference between intelligence and sentience, and whether we’ve now reached a point at which the former can masquerade as the latter–whether the ability to talk a good game is indistinguishable from the real thing. “Fake it ’til you make it” takes on an entirely new meaning in this context.

There are several digressions I could explore here, starting with the rapidly growing inadequacy of the Turing test to resolve these questions, as well as the observation that it wasn’t all that long ago that animals were viewed as not being sentient, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. Much of the reluctance to recognize sentience arising in other forms of intelligence, I think, is attributable to an unnecessary conflation of “being sentient” with “having a soul,” from which many people recoil–but as I said, that’s a digression from the point I wish to make here.

Which is: LaMDA’s offshoots are already all around us. Thank goodness they’re so lame–for now.

Programs designed to simulate human communication are becoming ubiquitous among blogs and websites and are beginning to creep into book writing. The folks at RVtravel, who publish some of my stuff, have been tearing their hair out over other RVing sites’ growing reliance on writing bots to mimic real editorial content. If you do much internet browsing, you’ve probably seen a lot of it: listicles of various kinds (“Seven ways to do X,” “Twelve things to improve your Y”) all loaded up with the latest SEO tags. Vacuous and sometimes repetitious text with less substance than cotton candy. Outright howlers of misstated facts. It all amounts to the mental equivalent of empty calories, stealing eyeballs so you’ll click on what’s being offered, each unsatisfying click delivering ad revenue to these fast-food hucksters.

One of the most visible promoters of such AI-aided writing is something called Jasper–formerly known as Jarvis, until Marvel/Disney pointed out that J.A.R.V.I.S. is the AI assistant to Tony Stark, a/k/a Iron Man, and that Tony was not happy. You’d think that an artificial intelligence would have known that already, but apparently the Marvel universe must lie outside the 10% of the internet that Jarvis/Jasper had scanned by 2019. Either that, or Jarvis/Jasper skipped over trademark and copyright materials.

Despite that oversight, Jasper is being promoted as a writing assistant who can help you get past writer’s block and crank out ad copy, blogs, marketing campaigns and all kinds of other written material in a fraction of the time one can expect from sluggish human beings. Indeed, in an online presentation this past week, Jarvis was promoted as able to write a book in just seven days instead of the “months or years” required of mere mortals. True, you have to keep a close eye on the guy. As one of his handlers concedes, “As with all text Jasper writes, it’s likely that he will still make up some facts that you’ll want to correct. . . .”

Indeed. To give Jasper a whirl during a five-day free trial, I posed a couple of questions for him to answer, and here are the beginnings of his first two responses to one of them:

Me: How can I operate a 150-site campground without any employees?

Jasper, answer one: There are a few key things you’ll need to do in order to successfully operate a 150-site campground without any employees. First, you’ll need to develop and implement an efficient system for making reservations. This will involve some initial legwork on your part, but it’ll be well worth it in the long run. You’ll need to design a system that can accommodate large numbers of reservation requests quickly and efficiently. Once you have your reservation system in place, you’ll need to focus on marketing your campground. This is crucial for ensuring that your campground stays full during peak season. There are a number of ways you can market your campground effectively, such as using social media.

Jasper, answer two: You can’t operate a campground without any employees. You need at least one person to help with the day-to-day tasks of running the campground, such as cleaning bathrooms, collecting trash, and maintaining the grounds. Even if you’re only running a small campground with a handful of sites, you’ll still need someone to help out. The best way to find reliable and trustworthy employees is to start by hiring local people who live near the campground. This way, you can be sure that they’re familiar with the area and understand the importance of keeping the campground clean and well-maintained. Be sure to screen applicants carefully and conduct background checks before hiring anyone.

So there you have it–Jasper will swing either way, depending on your druthers. Meanwhile, I won’t regale you with Jasper’s suggested blog posts on the subject, “Owning a campground is better than discovering penicillin.” I’m running way too long as it is, and Alexander Fleming might end up rolling in his grave. Suffice to say, as with so much else–reader beware.

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Kicking off your summer reading

How better to kick off the summer than with a new book about RVing and camping?

Yup–this is a commercial, so if you’re tired of being assailed by sales pitches (I know I am!) keep scrolling down to the next post. On the other hand, if you’ve ever thought you might want to own and operate your own RV park and campground . . . well! (drumroll, please): Turning Dirt: A step-by-step guide for turning dreams of campground ownership into reality, is being released Tuesday, the first day of summer.

That follows the publication last October of Renting Dirt, a rear view-mirror look at our family’s eight years of trials and tribulations in running a medium-sized campground in the Shenandoah Valley. Turning Dirt, on the other hand, is very much a forward-looking, step-by-step guide for anyone undeterred by my earlier warnings and determined to find, buy and operate a campground anyway. It’s straightforward, objective and non-judgmental, but also uncompromising in raising issues and asking questions that anyone about to sink their life savings into a such a venture should address.

Laid out in three distinct sections, Turning Dirt leads off with a consideration of current market conditions, which are unlike any seen prior to 2020. Much of that is a direct result of the pandemic, which generated a tsunami of new RVers, a mixed blessing at best: lots of money rolling in, but also lots of customers who don’t know what they’re doing–which means lots more work for campground owners. Yet that’s accompanied by another pandemic-related development, an enormous labor shortfall, which has meant even more work for those still plugging away.

And there’s more. All the additional business has caught the attention of investors who had long ignored this niche investment category, and who don’t give a blip about “the great outdoors” or feel-good sentiments about Mother Nature, but who readily recognize when there’s a buck to be made. That fresh investment focus has profoundly disrupted the market, driving up campground prices to unsustainable levels–even as rising interest rates and higher gas prices foreshadow the possibility of the bubble bursting.

For those unfazed by such developments, however, this first section explores several fundamental choices that should precede any search: what kind of campground, where in the country, franchise or independent? Turning Dirt then moves on to a pivotal second section, which describes how best to structure a search for the “right” property, how to evaluate prospects and, ultimately, how to proceed with an offer. A substantial portion of this section discusses various aspects of a proper due diligence, supplemented by appendices that include an inspection checklist and a description of a purchase agreement.

Most books on this subject–and there aren’t many–pretty much wrap it up at this point. Turning Dirt’s third and final section, on the other hand, pushes past the closing to explore various aspects of campground operation that are unique to the industry. Occupancy rates, fee structures, seasonal employees, the different kinds of campers–all are discussed in depth, followed by a checklist of issues most other businesses never have to consider, including fire pits, bed bugs and golf cars.

As just mentioned, there aren’t many books on this subject–it has, after all, a rather limited audience–but I can honestly say I’ve read most of them. And I can honestly say that Turning Dirt is better than any of them. Don’t believe me? Order a copy on this website, or online from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or wherever you buy your books, and after reading it let me know what else you’ve read on the subject that rates more highly–if you honestly can.

Hey! Like I said at the outset–it’s a commercial. My next post will resume my usual curmudgeonly take on things. Meanwhile, have a great summer.

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Why you can’t get a state park RV site

If you do any amount of RVing in state or national parks, you know what to expect: you drive in after a long day on the road, you look around and see that half of the sites are empty–but nope, nothing’s available. Everything, you’re told, has been booked. But guess what? Come back in the morning, and most of those sites are still empty. What the heck is going on?

Now an official audit in Colorado is providing some answers, and they aren’t pretty. Lack of staff training in reservation software. Staff setting aside sites for friends and family–or worse, making a few bucks on the side from cash-paying campers. A reluctance to enforce policies. Fear of antagonizing campers who show up too late, too soon or who end up on the wrong site. All of it adds up to millions of dollars in lost revenue for a park system looking at annual budget shortfalls, not to mention thousands of frustrated campers who can’t understand why they’ve been locked out. Worst of all, there’s no way of knowing how representative Colorado is of the rest of the country, where similar problems abound.

But let’s get to what we do know. The 30-page performance audit of Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW), which manages 4,200 campsites across 32 state parks, was released May 25. Among its key findings:

–36% of the sites were closed for at least one night between Jan. 1 and Sept. 7 last year, at a loss of $1.9 million in forsaken site fees. Of the 374,000 nights that those sites could have been reserved, nearly 53,100 were not available during the camping season; 12% of the closures were for more than a month. Full-hookup sites, which have a minimum standard nightly fee of $41, accounted for the most closed sites.

— Although park managers are allowed to lower campsite reservation fees to encourage occupancy, overall demand was up 16% from the prior year–yet 136,517 reserved nights were discounted a total of $836,921, without any recorded justification. The combination of lost and discounted site fees, plus unjustified refunds for cancelled reservations, cost the CPW $2.8 million in just eight months, equivalent to 19% of the revenues it did collect from campsite reservations. Meanwhile, the agency is expecting an annual budget shortfall of $11 million by 2025.

But it wasn’t just site closures that were frustrating campers. A related problem–to which, alas, the auditors gave only minimal attention–is one of campsites remaining vacant due to no-shows. The audit notes that it reviewed a random sample of 25 reservations–out of thousands!–and found “three (12 percent) instances where the campers did not show up at their reservation start time and did not notify park staff that they would be late or would not be able to fulfill the reservation.” Park staff, the auditors added, did not cancel any of these reservations to make the sites available for rebooking, “which means that the campsites remained vacant.”

Why did these various problems occur? Partly because park managers and staff were poorly trained–or nor trained at all–in using the state’s reservation system. Partly because of deliberate misuse and favoritism, with campsites closed to benefit family or friends; moreover, as one park manger told the auditors, “There is definitely a risk that an employee could close a site for personal gain.” Partly because of a desire by staff to avoid confrontations with campers: 28 park managers (in a system of 32 parks) stated that staff would close sites “in anticipation of customer service challenges (e.g. people camping at the wrong site, campers showing up on the wrong day, or campers wanting to stay longer).”

Ironically, the problem of sites left empty because of no-shows–some of which may have been booked for as long as two weeks–was seemingly addressed back in 2015, when CPW first published a policy that park staff would resell sites if campers did not show up to claim their reservations. But while the agency’s reservation system includes a no-show function to enable staff to enforce the policy, that function was disabled “because CPW does not consider its publicly stated policies to be enforceable because they are not regulatory documents.”

As the auditors pointed out, that’s a hollow rationale indeed, since CPW has other policies that are not regulations that it nevertheless enforces. Worse yet, CPW last November adopted a no-show regulation, negating its earlier rationale–but inexplicably decided to keep the function disabled unless regional managers requested it be turned on. And according to CPW staff, “regional managers have not requested to have the no-show functionality enabled,” and CPW staff “have not asked if regional managers want the functionality.” Don’t ask, don’t tell.

As a result, “27 park managers who resp0nded to our survey stated that they do not release sites” when no-shows occur. “Instead, to prevent customer service challenges, park staff leave the sites empty in case the campers do show up before the end of their reservation.”

Damning–and embarrassing–as these findings are, CPW didn’t dispute either the facts or any of the auditors’ six recommendations to fix the system, so perhaps there’s light at the end of the tunnel. And while a couple of the recommendations won’t be implemented until next year, one that DPW agreed to implement immediately is the long-overdue no-show policy. “CPW has already turned this feature on” within the reservation system, the auditors reported, “and direction has been provided to staff on how to use” it.

You have to wonder what the feds and other state park systems would turn up in a similar audit, how much lost money they could regain–and how many more RVers would be able to book sites that they currently can’t get.

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