Cody’s blog

Claytor Lake State Park
6620 Ben H. Bolen Dr.
Dublin, VA 24084

540-643-2500

August 13, 2021

Claytor Lake State Park was my first time camping in a state park, and it was an adventure. I arrived around 2 PM, several hours before official check-in time, and began searching for my site. I had a heck of a time finding it — kept driving around in circles, feeling very stressed out and lost, cut a corner and scraped a sign, went the wrong way and had to back out of a row, then finally parked in the overflow lot to go find my site on foot. I got flagged down by the camp hosts in their golf cart, who showed me where my site was, along an empty stretch of gravel next to the trees. I didn’t realize they were camp sites, just thought it was a picnic area. The sites were pull-throughs, but lined up end-to-end, and you had to pull in between the picnic tables to get to your RV into the site. Which would have been difficult if the rest of the sites had been filled, but since I was early and the sites were all empty, I was able to pull into the far end of the row and drive through all the sites to mine, at the other end of the row.

Stressed out from all the maneuvering, I forgot to level the trailer, and by the time I remembered, I’d already set up and unhitched and didn’t want to bother, so it was a bit sloped. I was also stressed out because that morning before I left the Baileyton KOA, I’d tried to reserve a KOA for the next day after Claytor Lake, only to find that both the KOAs in the area I wanted to stay were fully booked. Then I had to check out and didn’t have time to search for more options, so I was trying to look up campgrounds on my phone with one bar of cell service while I was setting up.

After much searching and calling, in which I discovered that there was some sort of event happening in the area where I’d been planning to stay and all the campgrounds were booked full, I ended up making a reservation at the Charlottesville KOA, which was about 40 miles east of 81, and would add about 70 miles to my trip. But it was the best I could do. Then I went ahead and made a reservation for the night after Charlottesville, which would be my last stop before reaching Windsor, New York!

Despite all the stress, I enjoyed Claytor Lake State Park. I thought it was very pretty and loved all the tall trees. It really felt like camping out in the woods!