RATING: ???
- Length of stay: 17 days
- Cost per night: $18/night
- Discount: Introductory offer for Escapees of 10 nights for the price of 7
- Hook ups: 50 amp electric, sewer, water, and cable.
- Site number/quality: #40. Flat, gravel pad with concrete sitting area. Sites are fairly wide and neat. However, they cannot accommodate rigs over 40 ft.
- Park Quality: This was the first SKP Co-Op park to be built. We like the Co-Op concept, and are thinking seriously about buying a lease at one of them. So far, we’ve checked out four of the eleven Co-Ops, and hope to visit the rest in the next year. Like the others we’ve visited, this one is well maintained, but is not as nicely laid out as the newer SKP parks we’ve visited. The town of Casa Grande is 10 miles away with plentiful shopping. Normally, we would give this park about 3 stars, but instead we have giving it 3 question marks because of negative factors beyond the park’s control, namely a couple of nearby cattle feedlots and a crazy infestation of flies. It turns out that this part of the county is home to many feedlots, and has been nicknamed “Cowtown” by the locals. See the additional information about the issue at the end of this post.
- Access: The campground is about a mile off I-8, west of the I-10 split.
- Connectivity: AT&T strong, T-Mobile weak. We discontinued our Verizon service hoping that AT&T and T-Mobile will provide sufficient coverage.
- Return yes/no?: No.
- Notes: We had originally planned to stay 10 days to take advantage of the three days free offer. But the stench from the feedlot was so bad that we were going to leave early. However, we ended up extending our stay because Becky unexpectedly had to go back to Ohio for several days to be with her family and lay to rest her mother who passed away at age 89 on November 25th, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. RIP dear mother/in-law Donna Mae Schmidlin
- Website: Rover’s Roost SKP Co-Op
- The BIG Negative: As mentioned above, the park is downwind from a couple of large cattle feedlots, including one run by the Pinal Feeding Company. Their website says “Pinal Feeding Company is one of the largest cattle feeding operations in the southwest. We have several feeding yards located throughout Pinal County, Arizona with capacity for over 150,000 head of cattle.” What they don’t say is that the stench from their feedlots is nauseating. It tends to be the worst in the afternoon, making it impossible to enjoy the park or anywhere else outdoors. As a result, the cost of a lifetime lease at Rover’s Roost is very low, around $7,500, versus the other parks in southern Arizona, which run around $30,000. However, the people who live here seem to enjoy the park, and feel they got a bargain despite the stench. While they claim they got used to it, we are quite certain we never would. As I write this, I can still taste the heavy, dense smell – disgusting.
- The photo above shows the feedlot from just one angle. The actual feedlot is much larger than the photo captures, and it houses tens of thousands of cattle. Our close encounter with cattle feedlots has caused us to think a bit more critically about our meat consumption. We found an excellent article by Michael Pollan about the issue. Our travels take us to some places we never expected. Most are good, a few are not.