Campground Reviews Hidden Acres Versus Brattleboro KOA
VS.
Dummerston, Vermont
In our last post Stephanie claimed that the royal "we" had booked the postage-stamp sized site at the Brattleboro KOA in Vermont. Her generosity of spirit never ceases to amaze me. I was solely responsible for booking that pie-slice of a site and despite all of my vigilant hours of research, she was right. It was a complete bust. In her post she was willing to accept corporate blame for the poor decision making, but at the time things were just a bit different. She mentioned her pacing around the campsite (in a tight little circle) but not her cussing. Yes--she was cussing at me. I had pestered her about reservations and camping plans all winter--and for this?
The campground itself seemed perfectly nice, but our site should clearly have been combined with the site next door to make one larger one. If we had showed up at the KOA on fourth of July weekend with no reservations I would understand being stuck on a flea bite of a site like that, but like a good little camper I had made my reservations in March! Perhaps when the reservationist heard that I was from New Jersey she thought I would be happy with a piece of small overpriced real estate. But we were on vacation and the boys needed room to roam. Plus, my idea of a relaxing weekend does not involve having Max and Theo unplug the hookups from a godzilla-sized RV situated five feet from our front door only to dance around and beat each other silly with 30 AMP power cords and hoses wrapped around their necks. Yes--I was to blame and it was time to step up my camping game and save the day.
Lucky for us I remembered passing a campground called Hidden Acres about a mile up the road. I wanted some acres to hide on pretty badly at that point so I persuaded the wife and kids to hop back in the truck and "TRUST DADDY."
I raced over to Hidden Acres and asked the camp worker at the desk if they had any sites available (remember, it was 4th of July Weekend). She said that a few campers had just called to cancel their reservations and would I like to take a ride on the golf cart and check out a few sites? YES, YES, and YES! Despite her Boston Red Sox Jersey she appeared to me like an angel whose sole purpose on earth was to redeem our family camping trip.
The first two sites that she showed me were nicely sized and situated but they were located in a pretty crowded part of the campground. I would have been happy with either of them though. They were at least twice the size of our site at the KOA. She then told me that she had one more really nice private site that was a bit hard to pull into. She asked how big my RV was and I told her that we had a pop-up camper. She smiled and said, "you wont have a problem getting into this site--we had a fifth wheel in there last week."
When she pulled up to site C1 I almost cried. This was the mother-of-all campsites. Spacious, private, and shaded. The site was carved out of the side of a small hill, so at night we could see campfires above us and campfires below us. Beautiful. ZENCAMPING. The way vacation should be.
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