Sophie Gray
Local Journalism Initiative
The Osoyoos Indian Band’s Nk’Mip RV Park and campground quietly reopened to campers over the May long weekend, as the province started to reopen their own campgrounds to the public.
The Nk’Mip RV Park is only accepting people with structures to stay in, like RVs or campers, and not allowing tenting at this time. This is partially due to all the facilities on the grounds, including bathrooms, the swimming pool and the camp store, remaining closed to encourage social distancing and decrease shared touch surfaces.
Michael Sanders, general manager of the campground said everyone (so far) has been very good at playing by the rules.
“We have the beach open, but even then it seems like everyone’s really spread themselves out and it’s family units only,” said Sanders.
Sanders said they decided to open without advertising to have a dry run and see how the campsite would work under the restrictions, hosting around 90 families over the May long weekend.
Provincial sites remained closed over the holiday weekend, opening up to allow for day use only. On May 25 the province opened up reservations for overnight camping, to allow visitors from within B.C. only to book sites for their summer vacations. The site promptly crashed due to overwhelming demand.
Sanders said because they are not a provincial campground and were not mandated to close, they decided to open a little earlier than the provincial sites, with increased safety measures. The campsite has instituted touchless check-ins thanks to payment taken before arrival, and a code of conduct outlining the updated campground rules on arrival.
“We’re hoping people take it and say yes, I understand this is the code of conduct and our expectations of that,” said Sanders. He said they will be monitoring sites and will ask guests to leave if they are violating the rules.
Unlike B.C.’s provincial sites, the Nk’Mip RV Park will be allowing Alberta visitors. Sanders believes that because they are not open to tenting, people can isolate in their RVs and campers if they are coming from out of province.
“If they are told to do a quarantine, they have to put a quarantine sticker in their window, so that basically they’re not supposed to leave their site.” explained Sanders.
Chris Bower, business development officer for the Osoyoos Indian Band, isn’t too worried about travel from Alberta. He said roughly 70 per cent of their business comes from the Lower Mainland anyway. Although they will continue to accept reservations from Alberta residents, the campground does not plan to encourage that business.
“What we’re doing is, we’re not advertising (Alberta reservations), we’re not promoting it, but there’s reservations already that we’re honouring,” Bower said.
He and Sanders agreed that the campground has already been adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Neither Bower nor Sanders expect a normal summer. But they do say the interest is there.
This interest was demonstrated Tuesday when tens of thousands of British Columbians tried booking spots at the provincial sites. The Ministry of Environment reported over 35,000 bookings within five hours of opening the reservation system.
Sanders and Bower are hopeful that some of this camping enthusiasm spills over to help their site regain some of the business it has lost.
