From Chatham Illinois to the Springfield/Route 66 KOA it is 313 miles or just about five hours of driving.  We rolled into the campground around 1:00 PM.

For some reason we had thought that we had stayed at this KOA before….but we were wrong.

I don’t think I took any pictures of this KOA primarily because it was such a disturbing experience.   For a campground that offers so much it’s amazing how much they allow to go on and just turn their heads.

Here was our experience:  We ended up in site 10, a pretty decent pull through site to the west of the KOA office.  Directly in the site across from us was a family obviously living in tents.  They had five dogs at the site, all barkers.  They had perhaps three or four children the youngest running around in the same diaper all day crying, most of the time because the mother was screaming at him.  The Dogs were basically kenneled in these folks mini van, the windows covered in blankets.  Meanwhile numerous KOA employees drive right by their site and seemed conveniently oblivious to the chaos that is going on within their campground. Trust me – there is no way a normal person could not see what was going on.

The dogs made it almost impossible for us to enjoy our spot with the incessant barking.  Barking that sometimes reached a feverish pitch where you might think a dog fight was imminent.  Needless to say, if you are traveling with dogs, this kind of setting is not ideal for walking your own dog because of the racket that takes place not to mention I was really worried about the dogs breaking free and attacking one of my girls.

After watching the KOA folks ignore this situation, we just wanted to leave.  I just can’t believe what some campground owners will allow; we have scratched this KOA for getting any sort of a second chance. Perhaps it was nicer in a different part of the campground, we will never know.  The KOA people here are nice but apparently oblivious to what’s going on right next to their office.  Please read their reviews online before you stay here – it appears to be a mixed bag of reviews with many people being very happy and some very unhappy.  It would have been great to have been happy – but this was another bad KOA experience for us.

They have a pretty decent campground and they offer a lot.  They could be so much more than we experienced.  Hopefully if you choose to stay here, your experience will be better than ours.  Perhaps our experience was a fluke or perhaps they need to train their employees better.  Or perhaps they need to actually look at what is happening within their campground, perhaps, perhaps, perhaps…

We stayed in the trailer and waited for dawn so we could just get out of there before the hoard in site 3 started their morning.

Goodbye Springfield/Route 66 KOA.

Our next stop would be the Choctaw/Lake Eufaula KOA – Hoping for a good KOA experience after this.

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