The switch from a “customer-service” based park service to more like “Gestapo tactics” by NC State Park officials on Kerr Lake continues to mount.

Cindy Robinson, a widow, has a brick and mortar business, The Lake Shop, LLC is outside the NC State Recreation Areas. She has been told by park rangers who said the order came from above, that they were just the messengers, to stop bringing in rented canoes or kayaks to people who come to her store to rent them.

Robinson said her customers are usually people in tents or popups who don’t have boats or trucks to haul smaller boats, so the Lake Shop delivers, but the transactions or changing of money, takes place outside the parks.

Nonetheless, Robinson has been forbidden to go into the parks. The really odd part is that when someone is working in an entrance station, they actually hand out a map, that’s state employees now, a map that shows the campground and has ads of businesses close by which might be of interest or use by campers. Robinson’s ad is prominently displayed at the top of the map which NC State Parks employees hand to the public.

This is just another case of park management cracking the whip on regulations that are outdated, if on the books at all.

That means no pizza delivery, no RV repairs, no propane, no boat mechanics, no outside services or products of any kind, can be brought into the seven NC State Recreation Areas. Local businesses are furious and we imagine the local tourism groups are livid as well.

Campers have even been told that no firewood from outside any NC State Recreation Area, may be brought in; that all firewood must be purchased at the empty 75% of the time, entrance stations.

There are two problems with that: one being that 75 to 80 percent of the time the parks are open, no one mans the entrance station; and two, the bundle of wood usually of 4-5 small pieces are enough to burn but for a few minutes and cost $5 a bundle.

#kerrlake #kerrlakeparkwatch #badparkrules #ncstateparks