Virginia - Day 2

Fredericksburg KOA
Saturday, 2 March 2019

I'll bet half of the campers here have dogs - mostly big ones.  And there are a surprising number of campers.  I know I need to get used to it, since there'll soon be campgrounds full of campers and many many dogs.  But I've gotten spoiled.  The weather's been unpleasant for much of the winter so it's kept campgrounds quiet.  Now that spring's on its way, dogwalking is more challenging.

This campground is set up with basically 2 long thin loops, both starting at the office in the center.  My campsite is within rock-throwing distance of the office.  This means the dogs and I can't walk more than a few feet without running into another dog.  I've been watching the other dogs - they all walk by our site at some point - and most of them seem as excitable as mine, so it's extremely unlikely we could have a calm encounter.  The camp's dog park is at the extreme end of one of the loops. 

I walked the dogs as far as the roads go early in the morning and, since this is a weekend, I squeezed in a 2nd walk before most people woke up.  But after that, we had trouble finding a window of time to venture out.  It's not good for the dogs.  So it's not good for me.

I'd been planning to stay here 5 nights, but now I think I'd better try to find somewhere else and hope for a better dog set-up.  Plus, this doesn't seem like an ideal place to use as a base for sightseeing, with that moderately steep hill and freezing weather in the forecast. 

As a result of all this, I spent much of the day figuring out somewhere else reasonably priced and reasonably located that I could move to.  Tomorrow I'll go up to a campground in a state forest near Quantico and try that out.

The sun came out briefly today, which was nice, but there'd been so much rain recently that the ground was really soggy and, in one part of the campground near my site, there was an odd smell in the odd-looking water, as if maybe a septic tank overflowed or something.  So walks included rubber boots.

I imagine this is a great campground in the summer.  It's well-run with pleasant employees and most of the usual KOA facilities.  It's probably nice and cool down in this valley with all the trees and with dryer weather.  This being March, however, the cool valley isn't helpful and the weather's not so dry.  Too bad.