Spring break campers locked out of bathroom
What happens when the campground you visit for spring break has the bathroom doors locked? Some folks found out this week when they visited North Twin Lake near La Pine.
With almost the entire campground in use, this had the potential to be a smelly situation.
“They may have an explanation, but there’s no excuse for it,” Curtis Bean, a La Pine resident, said Friday. “Unlock the bathroom! It’s spring break!”
The locked bathroom doors prompted some campers to go out back and use the woods, out of necessity.
“Doing it old-fashioned style,” Austin Mallory said. “Grabbing toilet paper and finding some bags and doing it that way.”
Josh Byrd came to the North Twin Lake campground knowing what to expect, since he called officials in advance.
“They told me that there’s no services because of the (lack of a) camp host, and their contracts didn’t start until May,” Byrd said.
That still frustrates Bean, who lives near the campground and even pays for an annual parking pass. Revenue from the passes is supposed to go toward maintenance.
“It says right on it, it’s for maintaining and improving forest service facilities,” Bean said. “I don’t get it. All they have to do is unlock the door.”
Another camper believes that since the lake is open for fishing year-round, the bathroom should be, too.
“It sucks,” Mallory said. “I wish it was open. That way people aren’t stinking up the whole area, just one area. Especially when you run across other people’s stuff they haven’t taken care of properly.”
Byrd said it’s a little inconvenient not to have it open, but he can sympathize with the Forest Service.
“I was aggravated about it at first, but then I got to thinking about it,” he said. “They don’t have a camp host out here or somebody to clean it up, so it would be destroyed in a matter of hours,”
We did reach out to the Forest Service, which told NewsChannel 21 the facilities will be closed until the start of summer, despite the weather. The agency spokeswoman went on to say there were no additional funds to open up early — to the dismay of some campers.
