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 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).
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 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.
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.
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 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.
We went down to the W. Kerr Scott Dam And Reservoir park last July for a family reunion in the hills of Western North Carolina. It was hot and humid, and it rained a little each day. This is a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers park and the private company doing the reservations got it all wrong: no three way hookups (a real inconvenience for our van), no cable (we read lots of books that week), and man, no bathhouse at the campground (just a couple of his and hers outhouses) with the bathhouse a full half mile down the hot and humid road.
Well, we’re not into roughing it, especially when it comes to the bathroom, so we ended up moving every other day to dump, and that was a problem because the one closest to our campground (there are like three or four campgrounds spread around this huge federal park) was buried or mis-marked on the map.
It got a little noisy at night, and even though this is Bible-belt country (by which I mean, the Park has a no alcohol policy), we clearly weren’t the only ones with those orange and red plastic cups in the evening. We’d have a couple and make dinner, but there was some real partying happening around us, and once the management had to come and chase off the three extra vehicles on one nearby camper’s site and tell them all to tone it down.
Oh, very spotty cell phone reception, too. The Park is beautiful! I found a new running route for the two foolish spaniels and me every morning. We even got a little confused one morning and had to stop and think for a few minutes. It’s a big, quiet place. The swimming is a little funky–freshwater, of course, but kind of muddy beaches with too many kids in a way-too-small swimming area. So we just used the hose to douse ourselves when it got hot–and it got HOT last July! It’s out of the way… say an hour from I-77, and down I-77 about an hour from I-81. The lack of a dump connection means we’d not go back. Big rigs beware: there are mostly back-ins.
Glen Maury Park (municipal campground) is easy to get to. It’s about ten minutes from I-81, just north of Natural Bridge. (never stayed at the KOA there, but have stayed at the JellyStone/Yogi bear place a few times and loved the riverfront sites and the incredible hiking/running with the two dogs in the adjacent state lands… stunningly beautiful!)
We decided to try Buena Vista, a predominantly LDS town, with an almost unknown Latter-Day Saints University right on the hill in the middle of the old mill town. Man, the guy running the campground office is friendly! The prices are great… $18 a night. I don’t know if I would venture uphill (where we always stay) in anything longer than 30 feet. There are pull-throughs up there, but the angles of incline and decline in the campground on the hilltop past the pool (extra if you want to use it, we believe) are a little steep and you might touch a back bumper somewhere. In our 22 foot van, though, we have no problem. And there are some beautiful sites up there. For big class A’s stay down by the office on the river there, it’s a little sunny in the hot summer, but a nice waterfront location.
There’s a municipal golf course (which nobody really uses in the early morning, even in the middle of the summer!) up there on the hill… and lots of character from all those hills! Plus, there’s a walking/jogging path one mile downhill from the upper campground that is really nice and safe. There are a few permanent residents up there. Last time, one staggered around the camground talking to someone (maybe an old flame or an ex-GF or wife) obviously inebriated, but he and everyone else never gave us any thoughts that it was a seedy place. Just working-class Virginians set-up there for a couple of months. They’ll wave and sit there like it’s their porch and have a few drinks or talk into the evening, but they’re not a problem and they keep the riff-raff out. The Buena Vista town police drive through once in awhile. The price, the friendliness of the guy in his 60s at the main office, the natural beauty, and the amenities (with the exception of the hot bathroom), all make this a great place to overnight or to stay for a couple of days. Good restarants nearby if you like BBQ.
Point South KOA is located just off I-95 Exit 33 & US 17 Interchange. We always wanted to stop over here because of the hottub advertised. Figured we could have a drink and relax after a long drive, but we always stopped in Richmond Hill (the GA State Park–beautiful place) or just kept going north to Enfield, NC KOA (a nice place too).
Well, we’re a little sorry we stopped by last December. We were stuck in “inexplicable” traffic for almost an hour heading north. When the traffic just dematerialized for no more reason than it materialized in the first place, we jumped off at Point South. Do visit the small kitchen knife outlet there… very good cooking stuff and good outlet prices. We were surprised at the number of regulars there in their trailers… not something we normally like to see (sorry to be honest: a little seedy). We didn’t care for the closeness of the trees in the back-in, and discovered the next morning (after running around… nice trails, but watch out for the resident gator!) that the water had been turned off due to some emergency that had a plumber and his assistant sitting around smoking cigarettes and staring at the younger female campers, while I had to dip in the hot tub for a shower (sorry about that, but what was I goonna do?).
The place is all dirt, so it was especially muddy that morning. Now for the good aspects: the management and employees were all very nice (and some of them were the permanent residents, so my little “seedy” comment is mainly directed at the state of disrepair of some of their units and sites).
The walking trails and nearby area is safe and quiet (you can’t hear I-95 but you’re about a quarter mile from it). There’s a lot of shade trees, and they deliver a good little frozen pizza to go with your cold one after a long day of driving in traffic.
