Sampson State Park - New York Finger Lakes Region | ZEPHYR TRAVELS - RV Lifestyle

This week we're at Samson State Park. Which is located right outside of Geneva, New York on Seneca Lake. That's right. So we're camping here for a few days and we're going to show you around. It's got a lot of history. It used to be a naval base and an air force base. So we'll show you Geneva, New York. And it's on Seneca Lake. And Seneca Lake is one of the finger lakes. It's actually the largest of the finger lakes. Is it the deepest too? It's also the deepest. There's some people say that it's bottomless because it's so deep. But there is a bottom. Because otherwise water would fall out the other end. Well that's true. Yeah but it's no it's considered to be at least 600 feet deep. Wow. At the center. Through the hole? Oh at the center. Oh okay. It's you know v-shaped because it's the mountains from each side coming down. Yeah. We're camping here for till the end till Friday. Yeah so we're here for a few days. Four days. Right. We didn't want to be in the crowds that usually come to campgrounds on the weekend. Although it seems to be pretty full. Yeah I'd say it's 80% full or so. I think we saw a few empty sites in our loop but not many. Yeah. And I imagine the other loops are probably about the same. Right. Well it is summertime and you know during the virus here. And it's good because there's quite a bit of different distance between each campsite. And we noticed the people down at the beach they do have a small beach and swimming area. And it's nice because they do have a lifeguard. But everybody seems to be social distancing. Yeah and you know there is a mask rule here. It seems to be mostly people wearing them when they're either in groups of you know strangers or definitely when they go inside any of the buildings they always wear a mask. As far as just walking around if you can stay six feet from other people that seems to be all right. Right. And that seems to be pretty easy to do if you walk along the paths and such. You know if you see somebody coming the other way most likely you can you know spread out to you know and avoid being right on top of other people. Right. Right now we're on a walk with our two dogs and have stopped to rest under some shade for a little bit. Yeah but this is a nice campground. I don't know there's we're campsite 145 so there's got to be a I think we're loop four there's a loop five. So there's probably close to 200 campsites here. They're all just electrical only no water and they're all just 30 amp no 50 amp and that's within the state park part of the campground. Now this is kind of unique in that there's actually a private campground inside the state park and those sites are full hookup and they are considerably more expensive and they do have a minimum stay. From what we've been told they're closer to $80 a night and you have to stay 15 days or longer but they do run them seasonally and it seems to be most of the people that are in that area are seasonal. And they also do have some what looks like tiny homes that you can rent. We haven't been inside but from the outside they look pretty nice. Right and that's in the um the private section uh the private managed section of the park. It's not private in that you can't walk through it. We did walk through it and I'll show you some video of it but it is a privately managed section and they also have they also manage the marina down here where you can launch your boat or you can actually rent a pontoon boat and take it out of the lake. Within the state park they do have 10 cabins that they've recently built and they're really looks looks like to be very luxurious. Big windows over looking the lake and and they're one and two bedrooms with you know basically like a wall of windows on one side and porches on the water side and such. So right they look pretty sharp. There is a museum here um it is managed by um veterans world war ii veterans I think or I don't know maybe not world war ii veterans anymore but they are military veterans manage the museum here and it's dedicated to the people who actually came to this area. This state park during world war ii was a naval training base. The sign behind me points out that Sampson state park used to be a naval training base during world war ii and 400,000 sailors and waves were trained here in preparation for world war ii. The museum is dedicated to the people that trained here and then there was a Seneca air force base here. During the Korean war Sampson state park was repurposed as an air force training base and over 300,000 airmen received their basic training here and that was from 1950 to 1958 that they had the air force base and then after that there was the army depot across the street from here for a number of years. I think that closed um in the early 2000s. Yeah because yeah the last time we were here they still had the army depot across the road. Yep like I said it's been 25 years since the last time we were here. Yeah and some of the park hasn't changed you know typical little state parks or state managed property you know a lot of it doesn't change but a lot of it has. Right I mean the park is very well kept up the lawns are you know well manicured the trees have certainly grown up since we were here the last time. Yeah and but it is a really nice park. Yeah it is one of the nicer ones in New York state that's one of the reasons why we like coming here. Right. I did notice that the museum is open Wednesday through Sunday so maybe we can get there tomorrow or Thursday. Considering you know we are in a pandemic there's a lot open here. Yeah the snack stands open they have huge playground areas that you know for the kids that are open the beach area is open. Right and they do have a swimming area and it's all roped off so that's nice. Yep so and I think we already said they do have a lifeguard on duty. Yep yeah and so okay all right well we'll have to show you our campsite next. Right and hopefully the dogs have not fallen asleep. Yeah so this is our campsite 145 loop 4. Here's the electric as you can see it's on the wrong side of the trailer so I had to run it across giving the perspective of where the next campsite is there's a right over past this tree there's a campsite so it's probably 50 feet or so between each side plenty of room it is on stone so it's fairly level at least side to side is level forward to back a little bit slope nothing didn't you wouldn't expect. So we're heading into the Samson Museum here Samson Memorial Museum and it's here on the grounds of Sansom State Park. It was a World War II training facility for the U.S. Navy and then during the Korean War it was a training facility for the U.S. Air Force. So it's got a little bit of a history here and we're going to go check it out. Okay you can't take video just still photos. Right so we will show you some pictures of our walk through there but no video unfortunately. So we just toured the Samson Museum here at Samson State Park and what did you think? I thought it was really neat. I guess I wasn't aware that it was also a base for the Air Force. I thought it was just Army no Navy I'm sorry. Yeah so it was a Navy training base during World War II and it during then after World War II it kind of sat in limbo but then the military opened it up during the Korean War for a number of years as an Air Force base. Okay yeah it had a lot of I mean there's a lot to read a lot of memorabilia. Unfortunately there's some rooms that you really you can't go into because of the COVID. Right but yeah. But you can still see quite a bit of it. Right. Yeah it wasn't that limited but it was nice. Yeah it was really nice. Yeah a lot of pictures a lot of different artifacts so yeah it was very interesting. Yep yeah we enjoyed it so definitely worth stopping at while you're here at the campground. Part of our tour of the Samson State Park area takes us to the Samson Veterans Memorial Cemetery here that was recently opened in 2011 and it is the final resting place of a number of veterans from World War II in Korea that served and probably trained at the Samson Naval and Air Force Base. We'll take you back now and show you the cemetery. So how was your stay at Samson State Park? It was great. It was good to get out of the house and away for a few days. It was a lot of fun. So what did you think of Samson Park after you hadn't been there for 25 years? It's very nice. It's well maintained. The campsites are a good distance apart so you don't have to worry about social distancing. But you know it was a good week. We did have rain which is good. Unfortunately it cut down on the humidity. Yeah so it seemed when it did rain it just got more humid. Yeah. So I mean it was a nice stay. Like I said it was great to be able to get away and get out of the house. Well let's see we haven't been camping since we came home from Florida in March. Yep. Well this is where we're going to end this week's video. We hope you enjoyed it. If you did please give us a big thumbs up. Subscribe to our channel and if you haven't done so already make sure you hit the notification button so that you notify when we post new videos. We post new videos on a weekly basis and we'd love to have you come along with our journey. Until the next time we will see you down the road. Take care everybody.