The month of October is a busy one in RV parks across North America.
By Mike Wendland, F426141
October 2016
Up until the past few years, October was a month of dwindling days for RVers as the season came to a close across the cold-weather states. That’s all changed now. These days, it’s almost impossible to find a camping spot on many weekends in October unless you have booked it well in advance.
October has become one of the busiest camping months of the year, because RVers by the tens of thousands flock to their favorite campgrounds every weekend during the month to celebrate Halloween by decorating their vehicles, dressing up in costumes, and turning trick-or-treating into weekend-long festivals.
It’s like that all across North America. One campground that is always busy in October is at the Kentucky Horse Park near Lexington, Kentucky. The place sells out every weekend in October, and to acquire a spot, many campers have to book their sites a year in advance.
Did you catch that? A year in advance!
On a typical October weekend, close to 1,500 people will camp there, and for two weekends during the month, Halloween-themed festivities and activities run from Friday night to Sunday afternoon. This year’s Halloween events take place during the weekends of October 15 and October 22.
Jennifer and I visited the park on a Wednesday and Thursday in October last year and found the place already half full of early birds — Halloween campers who have so much fun that they stay for weeks at a time.
At night, their motorhomes, fifth-wheels, truck campers, and travel trailers are strung with lights and spooky decorations. There are papier-mache spiders, witches, werewolves, skeletons, headless horsemen, and elaborately carved pumpkins. Cobwebs are strung between trees, tombstones sprout from the ground, ghostly sheets wave in the breeze. The park provides inflatables that can be borrowed as well. Activities include costume parades and contests, wagon rides, a haunted trail, music, barbecue, and campfire socializing.
“You should see it when the kids start trick-or-treating,” said Charley Brown (yes, that’s his real name), who with his wife, Debra, and her brother and sister-in-law, Rick and Kim Jordan, were sharing two spots the night we arrived. Their campsites were strewn with lights and thousands of little starbursts that were laser-projected onto the Browns’ fifth-wheel RV.
“There must be at least 1,000 kids coming by for candy, going up and down from campsite to campsite,” Charley said.
The Browns are from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The Jordans are from Waverly, Ohio. “The Kentucky Horse Park is exactly three hours from each of us,” Rick said. “It’s the perfect spot to meet.”
This will be the sixth year the two couples have gathered at the park for one of the weekends leading up to Halloween.
“It is an absolute ball,” Debra added.
Jennifer and I met the couples as we were strolling around taking photos. Turns out Debra is a regular reader of the Roadtreking.com blog and a podcast listener. She made us feel like celebrities when she took our photo! The next morning, she gave us a bag of fresh apples and some of their trick-or-treat candy.
In the daytime, we explored more of the sprawling campground, which boasts 260 sites with hookups plus primitive sites with electric or dry camping only. Many campers build booths using canvas and tenting material and stage them like little houses of horror.
We met two women from Lexington who brought their RVs out to the park. They had spent hours decorating their two sites for the trick-or-treaters. When we found them, they were having a great time positioning a giant papier-mache spider.
What happens at the Kentucky Horse Park every year is being played out at campgrounds everywhere during October.
Many campgrounds in the northern states close down for the season right after Halloween. So, if you are looking for one more outing in your RV before the winter, this is the time. Just be prepared to be greeted by ghosts and goblins! Boo!