Alex N.
Yelp
Went to hike at Sturtevant Falls and as usual, parking was full for about a quarter of a mile down. We went around the parking lot and as we looped around, there was a sign for parking for $20. Kinda of expensive, but hey, convenience is nice. The person in front said it was private property and we could park there and it would be valet and we would need to drop our keys off.
Dropped our car, no issues. It was weird, however, to see all the parking/valet attendants were wearing volunteer t-shirts and barely looked like they were even able to drive. I would put them at 18 years old tops. Should have been a red flag but we wanted to hit the hike. We gave them our key, they gave us a card with a number. They didn't have any numbers on the cars so all they really know is who gets what keys and not which car the key belongs to.
When we came back, our car was parked tucked in the corner. We were blocked to the side and from behind. We had about 2-3 feet space to the left, and 3-4 feet space behind us with no space in the front or to the right. They apparently lost the key to the car behind us. How do you do that when your lot only holds 20-25 cars tops? For 20 minutes, all you see are them pressing the key remotes and we see all the cars around us light up since they didn't know which key belonged to that car. They ended up moving the car to the left of us and expected us to navigate using a 26 point turn. I shared my concern about this as earlier, since it was a dirt, sloped road, we were slipping. Told one of the older ladies that if we back up and we slip, we'd hit the car right behind us and we would be held liable and we weren't comfortable doing that. She was like "oh, that won't happen." Sorry, I didn't know you were God and knew the exact outcome would be....Then I brought up the fact that we slid earlier and she said "oh that's cause you were on a slope." Hello???? We're on a freaking mountain and your entire parking lot is sloped. After our 26 point turn, we eventually was able to escape this trap...but one more point..they had the volunteers go DIRECTLY BEHIND our car while we were backing up saying "just go till you almost hit our legs" to make sure we don't hit the car behind us. I'm sure insurance would love to hear that they are letting their 16 year old volunteers (or workers, i don't know what they really are) stand behind a car backing up, on a dirt slope parking lot, to stop the car from hitting the car it's backing up into.....smart. At the end, they never apologized and made it sound like it was my fault for them losing the key. They were speaking in a condescending tone and if they were nice about it, I wouldn't have cared. But not one apology, not one "it was our fault", not even a refund.
In a nutshell, don't go here and just do the walk up the hill to the hike...i mean, we're all coming here to hike anyway right? Might as well add another 1/4 of a mile. If you do choose to park here, pay by card so you can get your money back if they do something shady like this. I made the mistake of paying cash where I can't get that back.
