We arrived at Aquia Pines Camp Resort, in Stafford, VA, on a Saturday afternoon a couple of weeks ago. It’s kind of an urban park in that it sits between Route 95 and Route 1 and is surrounded by businesses of all kinds, noise, and traffic. The campground, though, is surprisingly quiet and peaceful in the midst of all this. Yes, you can hear traffic, particularly that on I95, at all hours. The noise was certainly noticeable, but didn’t keep us awake. It would be our base for visits to the Civil War battlefields and historic areas of Manassas, Fredericksburg, Spotsylvania, and Chancellorsville.

The campground has obviously been around for many years. The “front” part of the park is mostly open without trees, but with grassy areas between and around sites with cement RV pads. We were in this area and found it quite satisfactory. This appears to be the area primarily used for transient traffic. We were there for six nights, but quite a few others stayed for only a night or two or three. The “back” side of the park is wooded with full hook-up sites as well as more primitive sites for tent and pop-up campers.

While we used our rig’s bathroom facilities, we noted that the park’s bathrooms were nice and clean. We did use their laundry and that was in good shape also. The people were quite nice and very helpful and there is a small, but pretty well stocked camp store. No eggs, though! No ice, either!! According to one employee, they had been out of ice for several days. Of course, they got an ice delivery on the day we left.

Wi-Fi is available but was useless as far as I’m concerned. The signal strength was so low that I couldn’t connect most days. On the one or two occasions I could connect to the Aquia Pines hot spot, I was unable, because of the low signal strength, to open any of the websites to which I tried to connect. No Yahoo email. No logging onto my office computer back in NH – although I think Deb was just as happy with that! And, hey, the mini-golf “fairways” and “greens” were bare concrete. It wasn’t important enough to us to even ask about it, and maybe they put “grass” on them during the summer.

How would we rate Aquia Pines? Nice in many respects. The sites were well kept, level and easy to get into. Every day they pick up your bagged trash at your site. The hookups are well placed for easy setup. Maybe we’ve just been lucky, but this is our first time at a campground where we couldn’t get ice during our stay. The unusable Wi-Fi service was a disappointment. Overall, I’d give it maybe a seven out of ten. Agree? Disagree? We’d love to hear your opinion.