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.