Campground Review

We stayed at the Topeka / Capital City KOA campground for one night on our way home during a 3-week road trip. We had a water / electric pull-through site around the middle of the campground. It’s a small campground for a KOA, but still has all of the great amenities that you expect from a KOA: extremely clean bathhouses, nice playground for the kids, beautiful pool and connected pavilion, small fishing pond, etc. The campground hosts were very friendly and helpful and the atmosphere was quiet and peaceful. The kids really liked playing on the playground as we got the pop-up situated, but we did not have the chance to check out the pool since we were only there for one night. Everyone enjoyed taking a nice stroll around the decorative pond and fishing pond (which are separate) that night, and we saw a bunch of frogs, fish jumping, and two ducks that followed us around for a while.

My husband and I got up early and took the rods to the fishing pond prior to packing up and heading out in the morning. Though the fishing is usually pretty limited, we still really enjoy having a small fishing pond at a campground. It’s nice to be able to walk to something in the morning or before bed and get some relaxing fishing in. The fish we caught (about 1/2 a dozen bluegill and 1/2 a dozen bass) were all pretty small, but still fun and they’ll be a decent size in a few years.

Product Review

As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I occasionally receive products to test or gift cards for new companies to check out. Prior to heading out on our 3-week road trip, I received a gift card to Roanline.com, which is an e-commerce company specializing in outdoor clothing and accessories for men and women. The company is based in North Carolina, and the first thing you notice when you hit the website is the focus on high quality outdoor clothing brands, some of which I had never heard of before. I love supporting new, smaller outdoor clothing brands, especially niche brands like Parks Project that prints high-quality t-shirts representing our National Parks or Free Fly who makes high performance, bamboo based clothing popular with the flyfishing crowd. The website is stylish and easy-to-use, and I like the clean interface that allows you to filter by just about anything you can think of. The ordering process was straight-forward, I received a pleasant confirmation email, and my order arrived even earlier than expected - which is exactly what you want with an online retailer! Roanline went above and beyond with order fulfillment with the package presentation, which I did not expect. My order came wrapped in a ribbon with a hand-written letter from the fulfillment team. Who does that in 2017? Great online retailers that want to let you know that they appreciate your business! Shopping at Roanline was a great experience, and I have added additional items to my Christmas wishlist for myself and others, so they definitely have a return customer.

My favorite purchase from Roanline was the women's Free Fly Bamboo Shade Hoody. I'm glad that I ordered a small because the shirt is pretty long for me (I'm 5'2" so I'm on the edge of petite in terms of sizing). I really love the design of the shirt, with thumb holes and a hood that inlcudes neck cover. The shirt has UPF 50+ sun protection, which made it perfect for flyfishing in the rocky mountain parks (Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Rocky Mountain National, etc) where the elevation is high and the sun exposure is certainly more than I'm used to. This quickly became my go-to flyfishing shirt, and it will stay that way for most trips as I would much rather wear long sleeves than lather on a ton of sunscreen. The material is extremely comfortable, so much so that I even wore it to sleep at night a few times when it was very cold in Yellowstone - very cozy. I also love the color of the shirt, and the overall fit is nearly perfect (just a bit long, as I mentioned, but I'm sure that's perfect for most women). And as you can see from the photos, clearly this shirt is lucky as it helped me land this MONSTER at a campground fishing pond... but seriously, this is the nicest and most comfortable fishing shirt I've ever owned, and I will be looking to purchase at least one more!