Best Campgrounds near Great Falls, VA

Terrible experience. Very, very noisy. So loud couldn't sleep. Just wanted to rest for a night. Was awakened by extremely rude staff when I just wanted to rest. All those bad reviews are true. Never had such a bad experience. As I was filling the fresh water for travel it overflowed and revealed the huge amount of septic black water which really smelled. Looked pretty but that revealed their true nature, turd with a ribbon on it. The staff was so rude and really had a mean demeanor, just as other reviews have stated. I will never stay there and though I usually only give good reviews, I felt compelled to warn others. This place has park nazis in golf carts that harass people. I saw it happen to others who cut their stay short. No wonder the park was almost empty.

We set up camp at Harpers Ferry/Civil War Battlefields KOA Holiday as our launchpad to visit the historic sites in and around Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and Frederick, Maryland. 

We paid$114/night(average per night, including fees and taxes) for Site# 94. A bit pricey considering a lack of elbow room, but it’s a great location and everything is well-kept. 

THINGS I LIKED: 

• Location, Location, Location! Close proximity to plenty of historic and tourist places to visit. The Harpers Ferry National Historical Park Visitor Center is literally next door. Harpers Ferry Lower Town and Bolivar Heights are a few minutes by car(or shuttle from the Visitor Center). Frederick and Antietam are each barely 30-minutes by car. Gettysburg, Baltimore, and DC are about an hour’s drive. 

• Clean and level gravel site with well-maintained utility hook-ups. 

• Great campground store filled with food, drinks, camp supplies, souvenirs, and essentials you may need while away from home. 

• Friendly staff in the office& store. 

• The whole park is quiet and well-maintained. 

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE SO MUCH: 

• Heads up, big rig owners! Our Pull-thru FHU Patio site(#199) had a serious slope. It was impossible to level my 45’ motorhome without elevating the front wheels dangerously in the air. The nice staff kindly moved us to a FHU site without the patio and furniture. And refunded the difference in price for the lesser site. Thanks for providing the move but ‘premium’ sites should be somewhat level, am I right? 

• Get cozy, the sites are quite small and tightly packed together. 

• A $3 per night“Pet Fee” for our small, mostly-indoor dog felt a bit like nickel-and-diming. I realize it only amounted to an extra$12, but he didn’t need any extra gravel. 

WOULD WE COME BACK? 

• Absolutely, this is a nice campground with lots of great places nearby including Harpers Ferry, Antietam, Frederick, Washington DC, Baltimore, and more.

We have found municipal campgrounds in Northern Virginia are a bit spendy for being government sponsored.  Not as bad as South Carolina, but way more than Florida.  Fine.  Comes with the territory.  But Bull Run manages to goose you even more.  There are occupancy AND transaction fees that really add up if you're only there a few nights.  But the real kicker is a 2-night minimum stay.  Even mid-week.  In APRIL for gosh sakes!

While we were here, there was a fairly heavy day of rain.  Couple inches, I suppose, but nothing Biblical.  The mouths of the metal culverts in our loop were bent downward from campers driving over them, which obstructed the flow.  Result was lots of standing water at our campsite.

We're done with NOVA Parks campgrounds.  Better cost options exist with Fairfax County Parks.