There are basically three areas that serve as RV areas, one which is close to the highway and is primarily filled with seasonal RVs, another that falls on the northern hill, and the primary visitors area which is basically a large field with multiple gravel spots, each with their own hookups and a small grass patch.

Cows on the southern hillside migrate from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill, spending the hottest hours of the day under the shade of a tree, and this will be your primary view when looking out of your front door. An exclusively-goat petting zoo awaits your children at the bottom of that hill, and across the driveway are paddleboats that you can use to laze away a day in the small lake that’s right inside of the campground. Best of all, I’d surmise, is the giant “hillbilly slip n’ side” that the owners have built from a large farm tarp, some sand, and a hose. Seriously, if you’ve ever been on a slip n’ slide, or if you’ve never been but always wanted to try, this is a blast for hours.

The office also holds a small store, nothing special but if you need some snacks or camping essentials — from smores to toilet paper — you’re in luck.

We stayed in August and there were farm’s selling freshly harvested veggies and corn everywhere; drive between the campground itself and Somerset and you’ll likely pass four or five of them. There’s also an RV store nearby where you can buy your more substantial needs. Somerset itself is a very small city, and though it has a quaint little downtown and even a nice cafe with WiFi (Maggie May’s), don’t expect to find much to do therein.

The laundry and bathrooms are both amazingly clean, the staff is incredibly nice and told us about all types of cool activities in the area, including a county fair (which we ended up visiting), an ice cream shop known as Shepherd’s Farm (we didn’t have the time) and what is supposed to be an amazing bike trail in the nearby town of Rockwood.

All in all, we very much enjoyed our time at Hickory Hollow, it’s a very relaxing place to stay and we ended up doing so for more than two weeks.

And believe me, the mind is sharp and focused, if anything too needlishly steady, often enough that a slow break is a new welcome.

We made tracks to the Somerset County Fair, tucked deeply into a heavily wooded, substantially hilled valley and between a stone bridge gapping a creek and a live motion train. Really, it was all too poetically “back home” in every way.

There was the midway, majestic and focal…on your left towers the grandstands, readied for anything from a demolition derby to a beauty pagent featuring horses…on your right, all of the funnel cakes, ferris wheels and carnival people you could find.

We made coneheads and fatsos out of ourselves in the fun house, had mammoth downhill burlap sack races on the funslides, and paid to play carnie games we knew were rigged but wanted to try our luck with anyway.

But that leads to the beautifully most wonderful part. Think back on your youth, those childhood days visiting your local fireman’s carnival or county fair. We all remember the gnarley-toothed, drunken breathed and missing fingers atmosphere that surrounded “the carnie”. And this particular fair had, also traveling with them, many young foreigners. Foreigners of Eastern European descent. Which, of course, made them all the more exotically cool.

Then remember back on those childhood fairs again. Remember the outer limits, behind the horse barns and tucked away in he corners. The RVs.

These people, carniefolk, they travel the country, some maybe fulltime and all of their lives, some maybe only for a summer or so, some, maybe they start out one way and end up in the other. They live where they work, and their work travels. It’s not just a representation of an idea from a movie or a book or fable, it’s reality, as much today as it was in the dustbowl or Romania or otherwise.

Long live those gypsies.