Friday October 4, 2024 - A tale of two state parks - Connecticut and West Virginia

West Virginia. and Connecticut...  One is known for high incomes and higher education, the other for rednecks and coal.  But who has the better state park facilities?  To be certain, these 2 facilities are not apples to apples comparisons.  Both represent their particular parks' version of a '2 bedroom cabin' but one of them is over 2x as expensive as the other.   I doubt many people would choose the cheaper one based on the 'great value' it offers.

Contestant 1: 

We had to arrive before 5 pm or make prior arrangements with the office to have our cabin setup with a passcode to get in the door.  We arrived late so we were told to come in the next morning (at 9 am or later) to leave a cash deposit to protect against damage of this cabin we already paid for online.

The cabin itself was adequate.  It had plenty of power outlets and a few bleak halogen light fixtures and a queen size mattress pad on a frame in one room and 3 or 4 bunk beds with pads in the other.  There are no fans, no heat and a table that barely seats 2.  It was clammy and damp inside and smelled of what I'm charitably going to guess was Listerine or some similar disinfectant.

The bathroom facility was dreadful.  The paint in the main room was peeling and layered.  The toilets looked like prison style units with flimsy plywood doors and wooden walls between the stalls.  There was absolutely no place to set anything down (such as a toiletry bag for campers) and no paper towels, just an extremely loud hand dryer.  

The showers (there were 2) were each in their own room with a door to the outside. The shower enclosure is stainless steel and there is a button to start the water for about 90 seconds with each press.  No temperature adjustment is provided.  The floor is rough cement and with no shower curtain or divider the entire floor gets pretty wet.  A small stand made of boards is the only place to set things you hope won't get wet.

At check out time (which couldn't be before 9 am) the ranger came and validated that we hadn't damaged the cabin and returned our deposit.

Contestant 2:

Like the first park, we booked and paid for this ahead of time online.  When we arrived we parked in front of an enormous beautiful hotel/lodge.  The lodge has hotel rooms, a pool, hot tub, library, restaurant, bar, full-service spa, meeting rooms, fitness center, good sized gift shop, 24-hour front desk and lots of comfortable places to sit and enjoy the beautiful landscape vistas.  We got the key to our cabin and several color pages of trail maps, basic information including hours of the major facilities and a calendar of events for the next few days.

We went to our cabin (which is a few miles from the lodge and on a mile long spur road with just 7 cabins spread widely out on it) to unpack. We returned to the lodge, had a good dinner at the dining room. Brian had a half chicken which he loved.  My spaghetti was filling and good but nothing too great. We both had a salad bar visit with our meals and split a desert at the end.  Then we used the very large modern hot tub and we were thankfully the only people in the entire pool area.

The cabin is really a house.  It seems like it's from the 1940's or 1950's probably but has been nicely updated with a quiet and efficient heat pump, 5 burner fancy gas stove, over-range hood and microwave and a large refrigerator. The kitchen setup is very nice with state park logo dishes, a toaster, coffee maker, good pots and pans and knives and everything else you would need to cook even a fairly complicated meal.  The only tough things about the cabin are the bathroom (both toilet area and shower stall are very very tight) and the double bed that is pretty tight for 2 not skinny adults.

Our cabin is just a few hundred feet from a trail crossing of both the challenging 'Ziller' loop that goes to the top of the mountain ridge the park is nestled in and the 'Central'  loop that ambles around the park grounds for 5 gorgeous miles up and down across many streams etc. (see entry for that hike to come soon).  Being able to just walk out the cabin door and have a challenging and beautiful hike was wonderful.

So, to answer the big question, Connecticut is the unfortunate home of the thread bare inconvenient American Legion State Park shown as contestant 1.  And West Virginia has this national park worthy luxury resort as contestant 2.