Missoula KOA Holiday

Super big KOA. Used to be located out of the country, but now surrounded by the city! Lots of campers, had a quiet evening… Great showers and toilet rooms.

If you want a beautiful campsite and unbelievable hostility and belittling treatment, this is the place for you. I use KOAs frequently. I booked and prepaid for a premium tent site at this, where the description stated a pickup camper was acceptable. I have a newer model F250 with a camper shell that I built out/converted into a very nice camping setup. Apparently that doesn’t qualify as a“pickup camper” in their books and instead qualifies as“vehicle sleeping”. They told me my options were to buy a tent- which I wouldn’t be allowed to set up because it was after dusk- or get a refund and leave. To quote the man behind the counter who spoke to me like I wasn’t there,“Well there’s a Walmart across the street. She can get a tent there or she can park in their parking lot overnight if you’re going to sleep in your vehicle”. Another staff member stated,“They’re strict you know, trying to keep out the homeless people and riff raff”. 1. Thank you nameless staff member for confirming that these rules are arbitrary and discriminatory by design 2. How does that at all explain why I couldn’t stay in my**already paid for** site and sleep in a camper buildout? They still checked me in, gave me a parking tag, bathroom codes and map. Said nameless staff member still led me by golf cart to my campsite. I, mistakenly, believed this was them giving me the go ahead to stay in my camper and that they were going to let it slide. It was one single night after all. I was showered, lights out, and in bed by 10pm. Wrong. At 11:15pm someone starts tapping on my window. It’s another KOA staff member telling me I have to have a tent. Except the Walmart is now closed and there’s nowhere to buy one. I explained I was traveling solo, out of state, had nowhere else to go, only there for the night, and asked what it was he wanted me to do in the middle of the night. He didn’t respond and walked away. I thought this meant they were just going to be decent human beings for the night. Wrong again. 12:15am police are pounding on my camper door.“The business wants you trespassed, you have 20 minutes to leave” 20 minutes to leave in the middle of the night, from a site I paid for, was checked into, and was already asleep in because I didn’t have a tent? Because I was sleeping a customized camper that locked from the inside because Im a woman traveling alone? Yep. The police explained my options were a truck stop 10 miles down the road or Walmart. I was traveling solo, staying one night after traveling from Arizona. It was the college homecoming so there were no hotel vacancies. The staff had absolutely no care for that fact or the fact that I was traveling alone. Again, I had booked and prepaid for this site 2 weeks prior. I read the rules. Thought I understood said rules. Still don’t understand how they considered that violating the rules. The staff and this KOA have absolutely zero concern for where you’ll end up when they turn you away.

Happy with the campsite. Nice trees. People were very friendly