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May 15, 2006

What a view of a nearby mountain! Tucumcari KOA is right off of I-40, and a very convenient place with nice amenities at a good price. Small rabbits are everywhere in the campground, making our dogs antsy and excited. Two criticisms… the bathroom was steamy and hot in the morning. No air conditioning makes this so uncomfortable that I needed a shower after washing my hands, which brings me to number two. The black water dump connection at our site (9 or 10) was filled to about eight inches below the rim when we got there so we said something about it. The next morning… nothing had been done (and I had done a little perk test and watched as the water level receded but slowly…). When I dumped, what happened was somewhat expected (and that was why I did it slowly so as not to make a disgusting mess). The wife (who is loathe to complain) mentioned it again after we went to the dump station, and was told that customers “flushed all kinds of things,” meaning the problem was on account of people like us, I guess. A small thing, but it added a little retch or two to my morning, and was not needed.

A good run can be had by heading out, taking a right, and running to the next exit or so. Very flat terrain there and isolated, except for the traffic (which cannot be heard from the campground). We’ll visit here again, but get another site.

Holbrook KOA – Holbrook, AZ

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May 15, 2006

Campground and RV Park Reviews | RVBuddy

What a nice couple that owns this place! And a nice place. Holbrook KOA is clean, friendly, and right off of I-40, and with wifi, decent cable, and some shaded sites.

The campground is an hour and a half west to the Grand Canyon (and don’t miss Meteor Crater on the way), and it’s less than an hour to Petrified Forest and Painted Desert (both to the east).

If you like pancakes, try the “all you can eat” in the morning… we missed it, but were probably the only campers who didn’t enjoy breakfast.

Fort McAllister State Park – Richmond Hill, GA

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May 8, 2006

Fort McAllister State Historic Park Campground is off the same exit as the KOA (which the in-laws tell us is very nice), about ten minutes’ drive east, two turns. Follow the signs. Not difficult to get to and worth the extra miles.

The big drawback: no reservations, first-come/first-served, which means that a phone call just as you are in range of the place (say a half hour or less) or a drop-by off-season (very late fall, winter, and very early spring) might get you one of the fine sites in the mile-loop. Most campsites are pull-throughs with a combination of packed sand and grass… ok for big rigs, but best for anything under 30 or so feet. They only have two-way hookups, with a dump station conveniently located on the right at the end of the one-way loop (as you exit). The campground has an excellent nature trail (about a mile long) and you’re at the end of a peninsula, looking out at the salt marsh. You can apparently rent canoes and kayaks, and there’s a free boat ramp. There are a couple of fishing tables, too, if that’s your gig. It was really nice just to walk around after driving all day. Oh yeah–free cable at GA State Parks! None of the sites has a much better view than the others, so go for the biggest, most private (an exterior of the circle) sites. The views are restricted by the green growth on the perimeter of the island. You can walk out to the marsh’s edge from your site, at most sites, and birdwatch. Bring your Petersons.

Additionally, the bathhouse was very clean, the staff is dedicated and friendly, the park is an environmental gem, and, last but definitely not least, there’s a civil war fort with “mud walls” (interesting construction method) that was attacked successfully. We were there in December when they had some re-enactors, and it was exciting to walk down the mile or so (you could easily drive and easily find parking) from the campground and watch them (more southerners than yankees, of course) march around and shoot off their cannons. Cheap State park prices, too (it might have been 20 a night).

Enfield KOA – Enfield, NC

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May 7, 2006

This is a pretty run-of-the-mill KOA… meaning clean and you know what to expect since it’s a KOA. It’s got nice pull-through sites and most sites are under the large trees. It’s only a half-mile or so from I-95, on the west side.

We walked around and there wasn’t a hint of litter anywhere, and the staff and management were very pleasant. As you approach the campground from I-95, just before it, on the right, there’s a road that runs beside the campground. It’s almost three miles down to a T intersection, where you can turn back. It’s a good exercise run.

This is a really nice stopover campground. No traffic noise from I-95, too.

Jekyll Island Campground – Jekyll Island, GA

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May 7, 2006

Jekyll Island Campground is nice, very nice, but there are a few things you should consider before you go. Plan on a half-hour drive from I-95. There are lots of places to get gas and camping supplies on this part of the trip. Just follow the signs to Jekyll Island, once the lair of the super rich robber-barons, who had a private railroad to the island. Their “summerhouses” were sometimes even called “cabins,” (which is a laugh because you could fit ten of our places into one of theirs), are still there to visit. The island charges you a few bucks for parking, even if you’re paying for parking at the campground.

The campground is filled with trees, and backing-in can be something you have to concentrate on. We got a two-way hookup near the campground entrance. Here’s the biggest problem there… if it’s spring or early summer, the bugs are literally blood-sucking horrors! We splashed two different kinds of bug repellant on us but could baely get hooked up without being painfully bitten/stung/whatever. We tried to walk to the beach, and our smaller dog was literally bleeding on his legs from the bites. We ran back to the van for tv and a cold drink. The next morning, I went running with both dogs and for some reason, the mornings are bug-free.

The walk to the beach is about a half-mile, and there’s a good spot for fishing, and there’s miles of running on the beach and for most of it we were alone. Incredible sights too! Tree stumps sitting on black-sand beaches! Very Ansel Adams-ish. It’s a nice place to visit, and if we had the money and were of that age, we’d stay there for a month in the early winter/late fall.

Jellystone Park – Natural Bridge, VA

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May 7, 2006

The in-laws always stay at the Natural Bridge KOA (right off I-81), which they say nice things about, but we decided to try the Jellystone because it was on the James River and because it was adjacent to some undeveloped State land/Federal park and had lots of hiking (something we always look for in the advertisements).

Jellystone takes a few more minutes to get to than the KOA. Say it’s about ten or fifteen pleasant minutes of sightseeing from I-81. You can map it, by the way, since it is on a oval connector route, so you can get there directly from either direction, north or south on I-81. You don’t, for instance, have to drive north beyond it, then exit and head south is what I mean.

Well it’s a nice place, and very large… it would take almost an hour to walk a dog around the perimeter of the whole place! There are two distinct camping areas. There’s the part by the James River, which can accomodate some big-rigs, but is mostly back-ins that are not perfectly level and sort of close together, but are literally right on the river: a nice sound to hear at night. And talk about fishing! Watch out for the poison ivy by the river.

We’ve avoided the place when it was busy because we heard from the owner it gets to be kind of “resort-y” or a destination campground for familes and kids… meaning for us, loud and too crowded. But for families with kids it’s perfect. And there’s lots that kids of all ages can do–lots of rec, minigolf, pools, old school video games (if your kids don’t bring their PSPs), fishing, hiking. I don’t know if there’s intenet access, something we look for since I bring my work with me on the laptop, and the cell phone reception reqires you do some walking around to get a signal. The other camping area is where you head to for hiking/running. It’s up, off the river, and may have been a separate purchase of contiguous property at some point. You can even bring your horse trailer, corral your horse (for free, I believe), and there are literally dozens, maybe hundreds, of miles of nice hilly trails for riding/hiking. Aside from my ddogs, I never saw another soul while in the woods–it’s private and quiet. Nature at its best.

The bathhouses in the new, upper area are a little smelly. This is where the dump station is (oh, yeah–the river front sites are twoways only–no dump hookup), and after dumping the van, I went in to wash my hands and discard the rubber gloves, and WHEW! that’s some bad smell! Had me retching. On the other hand, the big bath, laundry room, (and attached game room with pool table) just above the wading/swimming pond, near the nicely stocked camp store… is really super clean! And air conditioned! A plus when it’s hot, and it can get hot in this part of Virginia in the summer.

We’d recommend visiting here. Nice surroundings and if you’ve got a family, you’ll think it’s a treasure. It’s a little pricey, say high 30s or low 40s, but the amenities, if you use them, make it worth it. Plus the staff and management are friendly and helpful.

Rally Park – Seffner, FL

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May 6, 2006

Located just east of Tampa off I-4, Rally Park is an odd place, but one we would return to in a heartbeat. Our van looked like a miniature rig compared to some of the big rigs in this place, which is essentially a huge parking lot with about ten foot green grass borders. They have all back-ins, but any size rig can do it if this newbie guy (about my age) who must have been driving for the first time could do it with his 40-footer

The sites are big and level! You get good cable, a free morning paper, and lunch and breakfast on the house. The buffet is a good three quarters of a mile across the complex, so it’s better to drive. Also, watch out for the oddball longhaulers hanging around the Flying J and be careful walking to the Flying J because of the dangerous traffic! Rally Park has a nice pool, and a great rally pavilion! An added bonus was walking around and looking at the dozens of Class A’s, Cs and some trailers (no vans while we were there) without having any sales people “offer assistance.” We’d go back and buy there because of that freedom.

I took one of the dogs and ventured offsite to run in the morning… a mistake! I ran north on the three digit florida highway (Rally Park is about a tenth of a mile north of I-4…very easy-on/easy-off). There’s a grass-covered (but nonetheless) municipal dump (you cannot smell it at all) across the street which, unbelievably was the place I would have preferred to run in with my good dog.

Just north of the campground (and you’ll never know this if you stay on the campground) is an industrial complex, and after that noisy aesthetic nightmare you find pit bull-guarded singlewides that only someone looking for a hit of meth would venture into. I turned right around, went back to Rally Park, and ran around the campground… getting in a 45 minute workout in a much more pleasant place. The other campers are friendly transients like us and had a variety of nice dogs for my fool to sniff and stare at. And this place is CHEAP! Like 12 bucks cheap!

Fort Summit KOA – Lake Buena Vista, FL

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May 6, 2006

Fort Summit KOA was disappointing. The campground is expensive, but they do have a good cable selection. The bathhouses are a bit of a mess, with trash scattered around the campground. There are little invisible burrs (that make the dogs wince in pain) in the area where you are directed to walk your dogs. Why other campers did not clean up after their dogs is probably related to the trash everywhere and the horrible smells coming from the overused and infrequently placed dumpsters. There were ants at our site but they were taken care of almost immediately by the nice staff, but in a real toxic mess of some liquid that we wished, afterwards, we had not solicited, because of the dogs sniffing around it.

There’s another campground right next door, but it didn’t look much better. We even had to say something to these teenagers that were going to walk through our site and stepping right over our hookups for no apparent reason other than they wanted to go that way, which was not even faster or more direct for them. Ultimately, we asked this nice older couple in a class A (from Ohio: Hey there, thanks again!) to watch our van while we went to the wedding (fifty grand if you want to know!) because we worried about our site’s safety… and believe me, we aren’t normally worriers about this sort of thing.

There were lots of unsupervised, moody/unfriendly, and weird teenagers (is that too redundant?). This is the truth of it, and this bad review is beyond the owner’s(‘) or management’s abilities.

The traffic up I-4 is a nightmare whenever the sun is up! And worse are the other people camping… RUDE! No kids with us, so maybe we’re just not used to it, but weren’t there some spoiled and rude kids there! Lots of political bumperstickers, mostly supporters (if you get my drift here), for any campground, which is normally an apolitical place.

Oh… the sites were not level. It took us about a half hour to find the least tilt on our pretty average site. There was nowhere to walk or run. It was hot, noisy with constant traffic, and the way some of these families in their tow-vehicle minivans drive to get their precious kids to see Mickey! We’d sooner stay at a WalMart parking lot than here again.

W. Kerr Scott Dam And Reservoir – Wilkesboro, NC

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May 6, 2006