Payne’s Creek COE Campground - Hartwell, Georgia (August 2019)

Before talking about the Paynes Creek COE Campground, I want tell you about our adventures eating lunch on the way to the park. 

We decided that lunch at Cracker Barrel was a great idea. We needed some good ole’ southern vegetables and their sugar cured ham was calling my name. 

We were about to pull into Cracker Barrel’s parking lot when we saw the sign that said no RV parking. No problem because we saw a big parking lot for the local newspaper about a block down the road.  There were about a dozen cars next to the newspaper building, so we elected to park about 400 feet away in an area of the parking lot without traffic. 

The original plan was to park Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer, and walk to Cracker Barrel. It was too hot, too far to walk and we were too hungry to wait so we decided to make sandwiches in Rosie. 

We weren’t inside Rosie three minutes before Becky noticed a car stopped about ten feet from Rosie and the two young guys in that car appeared to be eyeing Rosie and our truck. After a few minutes, the car crept off and parked about 300 feet away from Rosie. It didn’t take long for the car to pass on the other side of Rosie then stop about 100 feet in front of us near the newspaper office. 

We didn’t wait around to see what their next step was. We quickly ran for the truck and got away. There was a rest area about 15 miles down the Interstate. We decided that it would be safer to eat lunch there surrounded by truck drivers who would probably beat the “stuffing” out of anyone attempting to mug someone there. 

Sure, the young men in the car stalking us may have only been interested in looking at an Airstream trailer. Still, lunch tasted better without any unwanted attention. I trusted Becky’s intuition and removed us from what could have been a very bad situation. 

The lesson learned from this experience is clear. RVers know that they have to park away from a building to avoid being blocked in by other cars. We need to start parking closer to the building and in a “busy” area and not be a tempting target in an isolated spot. 

The remainder of our trip to Payne’s Creek Campground was uneventful, if you ignore the anxiety caused by heading to a park with no address and only geographic coordinates. Maybe the GPS knows when a campground doesn’t have a street address and takes you down some small back roads for fun. 

The sign at Paynes Creek Campground

We found the campground, checked in and parked Rosie in our site for the night. We were right on the lake and it was beautiful. Similar to most other COE campgrounds, sites were large and wooded.

Our site in Paynes Creek Campground

We loved being parked along the lake. We sat outside Rosie that evening just watching the water. What a great little campground.

The lake

Rosie as seen from the lake

The lake

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site was a back-in and paved with dirt
• Our site was mostly level 
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection 
• Our site did not have a sewer connection 
• There was a dump station in the campground 
• The campground had several restrooms and showers. None were close to our site
• According to the TV Towers app on our iPhones, we should have been able to watch several TV stations using Rosie’s antenna. We didn’t try to watch any local stations because of our antenna problem 
• AT&T placed three bars of 4G service for voice and data
• The campground does not provide a WiFi service 
• We noticed evidence of “ant powder” around the site we camped in. Maybe previous campers had an ant problem, but we didn’t. 
• Finding the trash dumpster was an adventure. Its location wasn’t on the campground map and our neighbors knew it had been moved but didn’t know where it was now. The new site for the dumpster ended up being a long, long way from our site 

It took nearly 20 minutes to arrive at this campground from the Interstate and all we passed during that time were farms. You need to make sure you are well stocked when camping here. 

The benefit of camping so far from the beaten path is that the campground is very peaceful and relaxing. Sometimes camping out in the woods is just what you need to recover from an upsetting incident. 

A great view from Rosie's site

Dan Nicholas Park Rowan County Campground - Salisbury, North Carolina (August 2019)

Sometimes you are simply lucky when it comes to picking a campground for the night. We figured how far we wanted to travel our first day heading home from the North Carolina Outer Banks, then used the AllStays, RVParky and Campendium apps on our iPhones to find a campground. 

The campground closest to our target destination for the night had horrible reviews on all three apps. It appeared that the campground was nice, but the owners enjoyed abusing their guests. We decided to avoid that one. 

Our next choice was the Dan Nicholas Park. This was a county campground in Rowan County, North Carolina. It was farther than we wanted to travel that day and it was farther from I-85 than we really wanted to go for a simple one-nighter.

A sign at Dan Nicholas Park

Another problem was that we would be staying there on a Friday evening in August and that is prime camping time for families. Still, it was worth giving the park a call to see if they could squeeze us in for the night. 

We were impressed with how friendly and helpful the park’s staff was when we called. The campground had a two night minimum over weekends, but found us a site reserved by another family the following night. That meant we could be scheduled for one night and not their normal two day minimum over weekends. 

The friendliness of the staff carried over when we arrived. The campground staff members made sure we knew of the other amenities the park offered across the lake and where the bike path was to the other side of the park. 

We quickly parked Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer and rode our bikes over the bridge because the “other side” was closing in about an hour.

Rosie in Dan Nicholas Park's campground

The other side included a nice park for families. It included paddle boats on the lake, a carousel, a train, petting zoo, miniature golf, tennis courts, an expanded playground for the children, a water splash area and then a gem mine. It was a surprisingly nice and fun park across the lake.

The bridge to the amusement area of the park

Riding our bikes

Carousel and train rides were a dollar each. We couldn’t resist and bought our tickets. We ended up having a private ride on the carousel. It was great!  We laughed and talked about how we wished our grandchildren could have shared that experience with us.

On the carousel

We avoided the lion

Enjoying our ride on the carousel

There was another family that joined us on the train ride. They selected the area close to the engine and we took the caboose. We enjoyed the train ride through the amusement area of the park.

On the train ride

We decided to sit in the caboose

The animal experience and the gem mine were closed when we reached them so they will have to be on our agenda for another day. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Out site was a back-in
• Our site was paved with packed dirt and we needed to use our leveling tools to correct a side-to-side lean
• Our site had a distant view of the lake through the trees
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection 
• Our site did not have a sewer connection 
• There was a dump station in the park 
• According to the TVTowers iPhone app, we should have been able to watch about a dozen TV channels. We plan to fix our antenna problem before we head out again 
• AT&T didn’t place a usable signal over our site
• The park provided surprisingly good WiFi service 
• The park had several bathhouses. The one nearest Rosie was clean and well maintained 

It was great to return to the woods in Rosie after spending a week along the Atlantic coast. We loved how the sites in this park were wooded with a nice amount of space between rigs. This park had the feel of campgrounds developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. 

What a great find! We really enjoyed our visit to Dan Nicholas Campground. 

Mom and her babies on the lake

On the train ride

Cape Hatteras KOA - Rodanthe, North Carolina (July 2019)

We decided to head for North Carolina’s Outer Banks after the 2019 Wally Byam Caravan Club’s International Rally in Virginia. We traveled on a Saturday and some of our friends at the Rally told us about some good back roads we could use to avoid the backlog of traffic heading to the Outer Banks for the weekend. That turned out to be an enjoyable route to kickoff our first visit to the Outer Banks.

Welcome to the Outer Banks

We found the traffic as we pulled in to the Cape Hatteras KOA. The staff was trying to make room for all the RVs that were parked at the camp store to check in. After paying more money for a campsite than we had ever paid before, we were escorted to our site across the street from the dunes separating the campground from the Atlantic Ocean.

Our site in the campground

If you have read several postings from this blog, you know I have struggled with KOA campgrounds. Some are great while others fail to measure up to anything more that a parking lot. This is more of a square peg fitting in a round hole. 

For example, the campground is at a great location along the beach. Why distract from the camping experience by cramming as many sites as possible into the space? Our neighbor’s truck was close enough that we could touch it standing in Rosie’s door. (Rosie is our 25 foot Airstream trailer.)

The Atlantic Coast off the Outer Banks

The closeness of the sites and the narrow roads meant we had to plan our exit from the park at the end of our visit. We could only imagine how the rigs bigger than Rosie pulled out of their sites. 

This campground may hold some record for having the most families with small children. With more than 500 sites, the park is huge and July is prime time for family vacations. 

The campground had many features that would attract families. These included the beach, swimming pool, the playground, the huge jumping pad and the pirate ship. 

Speaking of the pirate ship, the park has one on wheels that was pulled behind a golf cart on weekend evenings and weekday afternoons. A pack of kids on bicycles followed the pirate ship as it meandered through the campground during the evening runs. 

It was fun to watch the evening pirate parade the first time or two as it rolled past Rosie. The enjoyment waned a couple of hours later as it continued to pass playing its loud “pirate” music and followed by fewer and fewer children. Mercifully, it stopped around 10 p.m. 

The afternoon visits had the pirate ship full of kids with super soaker squirt guns drenching anyone foolish enough to cross paths with it while the pirates were aboard. The afternoon pirate attacks ended when the buckets used to reload the water pistols ran dry. 

Only a couple roads in the park were asphalt. The remaining roads were very narrow gravel paths. That meant the paved road attracted walkers, kids on bikes and scooters. You have to be very cautious when driving in this park. 

There is no shortage of things to do when visiting the Outer Banks. The obvious draw to the area was the beach.

Sunset as seen over the Sound

We both grew up in Florida living near the Atlantic and remarked that these beaches were very nostalgic to us. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site was gravel and a pull thru 
• Our site was slightly off level
• Our site was across the road from the dunes along the beach
• Our site had 30 amp electrical service. You could pay an additional fee for 50 amp service. Our site’s voltage tended to hover in the 108-112 range 
• Our site had a water connection 
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• The park had a popular swimming pool 
• The park had a very well used playground 
• The park had a jumping pad that was a favorite with the 12 and younger crowd 
• The campground had three restrooms we could find. These were probably inadequate for the park’s size and they were normally sandy due to the beach traffic  
• The park had a couple of showers for its guests. As expected, they needed to be cleaned
• The campground advised us when we checked in that the WiFi was terrible. That description may have been too optimistic 
• AT&T placed two bars of 4G service over our site 
• The TV Towers app on my iPhone could not find a TV station closer than 100 miles to our site. The park provided a basic level of cable TV service, but our TV antenna coax cable was only 25 feet and we needed double that to reach the box. Once again, our over-the-air DVR stepped up and provided our entrainment 

In addition to being on the beach, we were able to visit three lighthouses, a life-saving station (forerunner of the US Coast Guard) and rode the ferry over to Ocracoke island. We didn’t suffer from a shortage of things to do while on the Outer Banks.

On the ferry

Our truck was the last vehicle on the ferry

The GPS wasn't confused about being on the ferry

Suzy enjoyed the ferry ride

I started this posting by calling the Cape Hatteras campground a square peg in a round hole. You start to think this is a good campground only to be shocked back into the reality of this being a maxed out parking lot that you couldn’t squeeze another camper in for any reason. After talking to the families around us, our view wasn’t unique. It is a great place to take young children to. If you are traveling without children, you may find the park is not geared towards you. 

There must be better choices of campgrounds on the Outer Banks. I think we will hold out for a space in one of the National Park Service campgrounds next time. 

Bodie Lighthouse

Cape Hatteras Lighthouse

Ocracoke Lighthouse

Meadow Event Park - Doswell, Virginia (July 2019)

We finally arrived with Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer, at the staging area for the WBCCI (Wally Byam Caravan Club International, the Airstream Owner’s Association) International Rally in Doswell, Virginia. We arrived a few minutes before 9 a.m. so that we could enter the park as prearranged with our group.

The question was where was the group?  The staging area was empty because the volunteers were parking Airstreams as fast as they arrived. We told the parkers that we wanted to be parked with the unit we planned to arrive with and they said they would take us to that area. 

Waiting in the Staging Area before being parked

That was a good thing because our unit friends somehow were parked in a premium location. We were farther away from the meeting areas than at past International Rallies, but we had great utilities.

Rosie parked in Doswell

We couldn’t have been set up more than 10 minutes before we started seeing people we knew from our previous caravans. One of the things we love about WBCCI caravans is how we make friends with others sharing that journey. 

It is always amazing to see a sea of 700 Airstream trailers in one campground. I imagine that local people driving by the park couldn’t help but notice all of the shiny aluminum Airstreams in the park. 

Some of the Airstream trailers in Doswell

The Doswell International Rally was different than the ones we attended in the past in that most of the excursions this time included a two hour bus ride to get there. That didn’t tempt us to sign up for any tours. 

Another anomaly with Doswell as an International Rally was that it only had a couple of restaurants and the arrival of hundreds and hundreds of Airstream trailers completely overwhelmed them. We did find a nice restaurant about 15 minutes down the Interstate and enjoyed our multiple visits there. 

You always learn useful information at International. The programs we attended were helpful to us. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site was grass and that was much better than parking in the heat on asphalt 
• Our site could be best described as a back-in. It is hard to tell when you are being parked in a field 
• Our site had both 30 and 50 amp electrical service. Most sites at this campground had a “shared” 50 amp service. That meant most campers could only depend on 25 amp power
• Our site had a dedicated water feed. Most sites at this campground had shared water connections
• Our site had a sewer connection. Most sites did not have sewer connections
• The restrooms and showers were few and far between. The temperatures inside them easily exceeded 100 degrees and they were not stocked nor maintained. 
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS and NBC using Rosie’s TV antenna. We were also able to see digital channels Antenna, Bounce, CHARGE, COMET, Escape, Grit, ION, LAFF, ME-TV, and MY-TV
• AT&T placed 3bars of 4G service over our site
• The campground had very overwhelmed WiFi service available in select buildings 
• There were many roads in the park that were bicycle friendly 

The heat was a big issue while in Doswell. Temperatures exceeded 100 for nearly a week. We were relieved that Rosie’s air conditioner preformed well during the heat wave. 

The temperatures returned to normal the second week and it was great to see people riding their bikes and out walking during the day. We have noticed that everyone is friendly to each other at the WBCCI International Rallies. 

The claim to fame at Doswell’s Meadow Event Park was that Triple Crown winner race horse Secretariat was born there. Multiple reminders were around the park of its past significance in breeding race horses.

I'm sure they won't mind if we take the horse out for a spin around the park! (OK, it’s a horse mural!)

Catching the shuttle to move around in the park

They say that Virginia is for lovers . . . 

Lilly pads

Rosie's flags in the breeze

Suzy about to enjoy the show

Becky's original watercolor painting entered in the art show

This was labeled as the world's second largest horseshoe

Richmond North / Kings Dominion KOA - Doswell, Virginia (July 2019)

To paraphrase fictional character Forest Gump, KOA is like a box of chocolates. You never know what your are going to get. Some KOA campgrounds are great while others have room for significant improvements.

Our experience at this campground may have been unique. Others in the campground probably had a great camping experience in this park. 

Our problems started when we arrived at our site for the night and found another camper there. The person in our site said that his tow vehicle broke down and he notified the office that he couldn’t leave. Somehow the office didn’t make note of this.

The entrance to Richmond North / Kings Dominion KOA

OK, things happen while on the road. We understand that and we hope the family who had to make emergency repairs on their tow vehicle were able to salvage their vacation. Still, we couldn’t help but notice that the site we reserved weeks earlier was one of the park’s better ones and it was in the shade. With temperatures soaring around 100, shade was important. 

The alternative available sites were in the sun and came with problems. For example one of the suggested alternative sites had a strong left-to-right lean. The leveling app on my iPhone said the right side of Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer, needed to be lifted more than five inches to level it. We’ve had less leveling problems camping in the mountains. How could an asphalt site lean that much?

We finally ended up in a sunny site that only required two inches of leveling tools. Well, it was only for one hot night.

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site was a pull-thru and paved with asphalt 
• Our site was very unlevel, something we didn’t expect from an asphalt site
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection 
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• The brochure we were given at the park said we had cable TV. We didn’t and none of our neighbors had cable TV hookups either 
• We were able to watch ABC, CBS, FOX, PBS and NBC using Rosie’s TV antenna. We were also able to see digital channels Antenna, Bounce, CHARGE, COMET, Escape, Grit, Ion, LAFF, ME-TV, and MY-TV
• The campground brochure said it had WiFi. We wondered where the WiFi was?
• AT&T placed two bars of 4G service over our site for voice and data
• The campground had a nice swimming pool 
• The campground had a good playground area for children 
• There was only a small restroom and one shower near the swimming pool. According to the campground brochure, a larger restroom with more showers were located somewhere else in the campground 

By the way, the campground had a bumper crop of mosquitoes. Somehow, that wasn’t in the campground brochure. 

Iron City Campground - Blacksburg, South Carolina (July 2019)

We were on our way to the 62nd WBCCI International Rally, which was being held this year in Doswell, Virginia. (The WBCCI is the Wally Byam Caravan Club International, the Airstream owner’s association.) Our plan was to take it easy heading to the Rally and stop along the way before dinnertime for the night. 

We used Google Maps, AllStays and Campendium to find Iron City Campground. It was about half way to Doswell and the reviews looked favorable. 

You need your GPS to find this campground. There wasn’t a sign along the road to point you in the right direction. Maybe the signs will show up later since this is a brand new campground and a work in progress.

The entrance at the Iron City Campground

Speaking of new campgrounds, it was good to see one in operation. It seems to us that more people are on the roads camping and new locations are always welcome. 

One of our first questions when we arrived was about refilling our propane gas tank. We had to switch to our second tank before leaving the warehouse where we store Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer. We always feel better when Rosie has a full spare propane tank. We appreciated the campground owners help in refilling ours.

Rosie in the campground

It was clear to see that the owners were trying to make this a nice campground for their guests. They were developing a fishing pond, playground and a pavilion. 

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site was a back-in
• Our site was paved with gravel 
• We had to use leveling tools to correct a side-to-side lean
• Our site had 20 and 30 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection 
• Our site had a sewer connection 
• The campground had restrooms and showers that were clean and up-to-date 
• The campground provided WiFi at the campground store 
• The park provided basic cable TV service 
• AT&T provided two bars of 4G service for voice and data over our site
• The park had a swimming pool
• The campground had a camp store

This was a small campground with less than 45 sites. We look forward to seeing how this campground grows in the future.

The Swimming Pool