Rally Park – Seffner, FL

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May 6, 2006

Campground and RV Park Reviews | RVBuddy.com

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

By

vancouple

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May 6, 2006

1

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

By

vancouple

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May 6, 2006

0

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 – Buena Vista, VA

By

vancouple

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May 6, 2006

0

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 – Yemassee, SC

By

vancouple

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May 6, 2006

1

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.

Delaware Seashore State Park – Indian River, DE

By

vancouple

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May 6, 2006

3

The new Indian River Inlet Bridge currently under construction will be incredible. It will likely bring in thousands of new tourists for the beach communities and unfortunately, for this, once little-known campground. Unfortunately, as of late Delaware Seashore State Park has become much more well known and has become WAY more crowded due to the loss of the extensive dry-camping areas that were very well used by people looking to fish 18 hours a day :). The best sites (I hate to give away our secret but the wife and I haven’t been going as often due to the construction) are the farthest away ones, with 304 being the absolute best site on the campground (it has a pretty little shade tree, is oversized, and faces a corner so you can watch all the birds, including some variation of a sea eagle or something majestic). The sites that run along the far west side, facing the superxpensive condos a half mile west are all good, too. When it’s busy–and, wow, it’s busy there now all the time, but unbearable when the kids are out of school. The bathrooms are a humid, smelly nightmare, just because so many campers use them and there are only two bathhouses for a hundred and say afifty campstes, many of them non-self-contained units reliant on the bathhouses. (I’m almost certain of this–they have closed at least one in the dry camping area adjacent to the New Camp, as it’s called, and maybe closed two there.)

Anyway, the nearby beach is a half mile walk (hot in the summer), and if you’re up to it, walk across the bridge and hang out in the early morning with the surf fishers on the north side, where there’s about five miles of beautiful beach where you can walk a dog or two and really enjoy a pristine beachfront. Say hey to the employees and the resident managers. They are always very fine and helpful people.

RVBuddy.com

Rally Park – Seffner, FL

Fort Summit KOA – Lake Buena Vista, FL

W. Kerr Scott Dam And Reservoir – Wilkesboro, NC

Glen Maury Park – Buena Vista, VA

Point South KOA – Yemassee, SC

Delaware Seashore State Park – Indian River, DE