The Spectacular Wytheville, Virginia, KOA (Returning to Scene of the Fun)

Working our way back to Texas and sharing some stops along the way.

One of my photos of the beautiful KOA campground.

I was plotting our way through Virginia to Tennessee to visit family and friends when I saw that the Wytheville KOA was en route. We don’t stay in KOAs often, but they almost always have lots of amenities, easy access to highways, and long pull-through sites with full hookups. The problem is that those pluses come with a big price tag.

My husband and I are retired and live on a budget. Paying more than $55.00 a night for campsites makes me slightly unhappy. When you tack the fuel cost to expensive RV campground stays, it’s a big hit to the bank account. I’m not cheap. I’m frugal and realistic. 😊

I use the RV Trip Wizard app to arrange our trips. I’ve mentioned it in some of my posts as my go-to app for RV travel. You can add filters to your map that highlight campgrounds you usually use. We have Thousand Trails, Elks Lodges, and KOAs, to name a few. I saw the KOA emblem and decided to check the reviews and the pricing.

Lo and behold, it was the campground we stayed at in 2019, where we met a wonderful couple we wound up visiting in Georgia. I wouldn’t have remembered it if I hadn’t noticed the bowling alley. There aren’t very many KOAs with a bowling alley. As far as I know, Wytheville is the only one.

I remembered how much fun we had with Tom and Mary. They were Christians, which always leads to an immediate bond. They were also conservative like we are. They value the Second Amendment as much as we do, and we wound up going to a shooting range when we visited them in Georgia. They were much better marksman than we were.

I decided to book a site despite the $ 64.00-a-night price tag. It was worth it to go bowling without leaving the park.  I remembered it being a pretty park, too. When I reminded Tommy about meeting our friends there, he decided to give Tom a call. We were devasted to hear that Tom lost Mary a year ago to a brain tumor. Damn, cancer! My Tommy said that Tom cried through much of their conversation. I can’t imagine the pain of losing a spouse. 😢

The news made me think about how easy it is to lose touch with people when you are constantly traveling. It also made me more excited to settle down for at least seven months of the year in our new RVICS Village site. The community there is amazing. It’s a retirement community, and we are always praying about someone’s health. Having the camaraderie of prayer warriors is an excellent thing.

We headed to the KOA with hearts a little heavy but with the expectation of a nice relaxing time. The park and its surrounding area did not disappoint. We were assigned a site where getting good reception on our Starlink would be difficult. I returned to the office and asked the nice young man working there if we could move to the row before ours. He checked the reservations and moved us without a problem.

Many stores and restaurants are within ten miles. We finished our Wally World shopping and followed it up with a great Japanese lunch. We’d intended to try out the Peking Chinese Restaurant that a lady I met at the pool told me about, but when we spotted the Tokyo Japanese Seafood and Steakhouse in the Walmart shopping center, we decided to eat there. What a find! The food was delicious, and the prices were reasonable.

We enjoyed Bento Boxes. I had the filet, and Tommy had the shrimp. We shared the Hurricane for two.

After taking a water aerobics class at a Pennsylvania campground, I got a water noodle and continued exercising with it when I was in RV parks with pools. The KOA has a lovely pool, including a water slide. At 64, it’s been over 35 years since I went down a water slide. I had no intention of doing it, but the more I looked at the darn thing, the more it called to me. I knew I’d have to try it at least once during our four-day stay.

On our third day, I headed to the pool with my noodle and the resolve to go down the slide. The lady I’d waved to at the pool the previous day was on her usual lounge chair. After saying hello, I told her I decided to go down that water slide and asked if she could take a picture when I got up the nerve. She graciously said she would.

I did some exercises with my noddle before I was ready to brave the slide. Then, I marched up the steps, sat on the slide, and hurled myself forward. The instructions clearly stated that you should lie on your back and cross your arms across your chest. I didn’t like the idea of lying flat, but I did my best.

This is one of the photos the lovely lady at the pool took of me on her phone.

When I popped out of the water after being plopped into the pool, I saw that the sweet lady had taken a picture of me with her phone. I’d intended to give her my phone after I tried out the slide in case I looked like a complete idiot doing it. I asked her if she would take a video of me with my phone when I did it again. As you will see in the video, I came to a complete stop at the end of the slide. It didn’t happen the first time, so I don’t know why it did the second. However, it was fun, and I have a silly video to back up my shenanigans.

I enjoyed the hiking trails in the park, but they weren’t nearly long enough to get in my 10,000 daily steps. I looped around them, some coming to a few dead ends, and found silly signs and interesting trees. The park is beautifully laid out, so walking around it was a joy. I walked up the road outside of the park to get in a good butt burner workout. The hill was steep.

I thought this sign was a crack-up. We’ve all gotten those annoying phone calls about our extended vehicle warranties. 😅

If you are looking for a great family destination for camping, the Wytheville KOA is a wonderful option. We stunk at bowling and quit after one game. It was $7.00 a person to bowl, including the shoes. They have every kind of video game you can think of. You can drive cars and motorcycles racing each other on the video screen. We played a quick game of Skee Ball, and Tommy won again. You will not get bored in this park.

We both had one of the worst games EVER! 🥴

I always take a photo of our motorhome at the campsite, but I somehow forgot this time. It was a nice long site, and our Starlink worked pretty well at the front of it. There are many wooded sites, so if dish reception is an issue for you, I’d mention it when making reservations. If you get one that doesn’t work for you, I’m sure the nice folks there will find you one that does.

Thanks for coming along with me. Here are a couple more of the travel tales I posted on Medium that you may have missed.

Afraid of Traveling Without a Reservation? (Sometimes it Works Out)

I used Canva to make this photo with my cute boy, Paddy. 🥰

We May Never Pass This Way Again (The Roads Are Miserable)

This is just one of the many sites my husband manages to squeeze our behemoth motorhome into.