Cody’s blog

St. Johnsville Marina & Campground
28 Marina Dr
St Johnsville, NY 13452

518-568-7406

June 18 – 22, 2025

Our final stop for the trip was the St. Johnsville Marina and Campground, a city park in St. Johnsville, NY. I arrived at around 1 PM, after a somewhat confusing drive from Westcott Beach State Park. I planned to stop for gas after getting off the 81, about an hour into the drive, but my GPS confused me and I ended up driving around aimlessly for about 20 minutes until I stumbled across a gas station and filled up. Then, when we got to St. Johnsville, navigation stopped in the middle of town and insisted I was there, when I was next to a bank and no campground was in sight. I circled around a bit more, then gave up, pulled over, and called the campground to get final directions to the site. Talked to a very nice lady who told me where to go and met me at the gate to show me to my site. John and Jill were already there. I set up and spent the rest of the day relaxing.

The campground has only 24 sites but it’s very well-kept with plenty of amenities. Our sites had full hookups, which was nice for a change. I could dump my cassette whenever I wanted to without having to leave the site! I’d filled the tank two days before and figured it would last the rest of the trip, but if it didn’t, I had water available. We were also right on the canal, on lovely deep sites with picnic tables by the water. Only negative was that the railroad tracks ran right along the back of the campground, and there were trains running through regularly. But I kind of like the sound of trains, so it didn’t really bother me. There was also a clean spacious bathhouse with laundry.

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Westcott Beach State Park
Route 3
Henderson, NY 13650

(315) 646-2239

June 13 – 18, 2025

We left our previous campground around 10 or 10:30 AM and drove the short 75 miles to our next campground, Westcott Beach State Park. Found my site just as John and Jill were parking their trailer at the next site. It was a nice little grassy area with looooong shallow sites, all grass with no pads marked out for parking, so it was a bit difficult to figure out where the borders of the sites were. I backed in at first, and ended up with my back door right against the trees. Stayed that way one night but discovered that there were birds sitting in the branches right by my back windows that decided they wanted to come into the van, and they pestered me constantly banging against the windows. The next day, I moved the van and parked it lengthwise on the site, hoping that moving away from the trees would cut down on the bird attacks. It did help quite a bit, but I still found myself chasing birds away from the windows. There was a Gray Catbird that was especially determined to come in, along with some smaller American Redstarts. Ah well, at least it wasn’t mice.

Aside from the birds, the sites were nice and level and reasonably private, with trees behind the sites on both sides of the road, and not that many other campers on our loop.

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Green Lakes State Park
7900 Green Lakes Road
Fayetteville, NY 13066

(315) 637-6111

June 8 – 13, 2025

Our late spring/early summer camping trip was to three parks in upstate New York, beginning with Green Lakes State Park in Fayetteville, New York. We arrived at around 1:30 PM on Sunday afternoon after an easy one and a half hour drive. I was in site 61, a nice level electric-only site, a few sites down from my brother and sister-in-law’s trailer. The sites were a bit close together, which caused me some annoyance, especially later on. The site to my driver’s side was occupied by a family with kids when I arrived. Their fire ring was only a few feet from my van, and they had a fire going all afternoon and evening. They left early the next morning but I could still smell the smoke in the van the next afternoon.

On my passenger side, a group arrived around 8 pm on my first night, and they were quite a bunch. Large trailer with several pickup trucks and tons of people. Most of the time, they were gone, so it was nice and quiet, but when they were all at the site, they liked to party, and the music and loud voices were bothersome. Plus, they had lots of guests with more cars parked all over the place, at the side of the road and on the grass and they took up quite a bit more than their allotted space. I put up with them for most of the trip but ended up moving sites for my last night in the park because they were partying all afternoon and evening and I couldn’t stand them any longer.

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