The Tyler campground has also installed basketball, sand volleyball and pickleball courts
“We are constantly making improvements,” said Jellystone Park co-owner Don Tardy, who bought the campground five years ago with his wife, Jan, and her two adult children, Colt and Bree Perrin.
The Tardy family is also upgrading several existing campsites to “platinum” RV sites that include covered decks, picnic tables and barbecue grills as well as hoses with spray nozzles that can be used to playfully spray other park guests as they pass by their campsites on hayrides on hot summer days.
“Our guests like to have fun,” Tardy said.
The Jellystone Park at Whispering Pines has numerous onsite amenities, including family and adult swimming pools, a 10-hole miniature golf course and a one-acre laser tag course that can accommodate up to 20 players. The park also has a gem mining sluice, a jumping pillow and a fishing pond.
Last year, the Tardy family remodeled and updated the poolside and tenting area restrooms, added four loft rental cabins, as well as new horseshoe and washer pits. Washers is a game where you toss a washer into a container, aiming for the hole in center so that the washer drops through the hole.
The Tyler campground is also one of the first Jellystone Parks in the country to offer its guests a free texting service, which enables them to be notified of Yogi Bear™ sightings, arts and crafts activities and special events while they are staying at the campground.
“The texting program supplements the activity schedules that we have in print and online, so it helps our guests get the most out of their stay with us,” Tardy said.
Jellystone Parks offer organized family activities and themed weekends with Yogi Bear, which help families create unique memories. Activities include arts and crafts, scavenger hunts, face painting, a jumping pillow, gem mining as well as evening campfires and special visits by Yogi Bear.
The themed weekends, which are scheduled from March through October, range from family competitions with various sporting events to Christmas in July with campsite decorating, Christmas cookie making activities, and visits with Santa Claus; to pre-Halloween themed weekends with costume and campsite decorating contests and trick or treating.
In addition to offering 116 RV and 10 tent sites, the Jellystone Park at Whispering Pines has 27 rental cabins. For more information, please visit www.JellystoneAtWhisperingPines.com.
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