Winthrop / N. Cascades National Park KOA

This is a nice place to camp with kids: pool, play area, flat gravel roads for biking, peddle tricycles for rent, dvd's for rent.

Gravel and grass parking. Some sites have only 30 amp, but full hookups have 50 amp. Old wooden picnic tables, nice shade trees. Resort is right on the river and close to town.

We would have given it a four star on cleanliness, but the pool does not have a bathroom. And we gave the site only a three due to the old picnic tables, lack of gravel on site creates mud when the grass is wet and the sites aren't clearly marked. Setting those things aside this is a great place to camp with kids ( they are everywhere) plus the staff are amazing!

Pretty park on the bank of a river, filled with beautiful mature trees planted by the current owners 40 years ago. Sites are mostly roomy. Ours had grass for 75 feet on our curb side. Short drive to check out Winthrop plus the area is a big draw for hikers.

Has full hookups and most have decent amount of shade trees. Make sure you obtain a site that doesn’t directly have your patio space face another patio site. That makes it less private. We couldn’t find any over the air TV signals due to the remoteness of this area. They have Free WiFi that is about 1.5 Mbps up/down and does work. Verizon data is about the same. The Cascade mountains are clearly the draw for this area. Grocery store is just down the road that has everything you need.

Fairly straightforward KOA that has excellent access to the town of Winthrop & Twisp Also good home base for the N. Cascade NP. It was a very busy weekend and the nose level was through the roof. Both nights this group across from me was up drunk as all get out and having overly loud conversations until midnight. I get the family get togethers are fun but have a little respect.

Sites are great and the staff was very helpful and friendly.

This KOA is right on the Metheo River that at this time was moving quite rapidly. I wouldn’t get close to it.

No cable hook ups and their WiFi is awful. Cell service is also not great. Bring books because streaming is probably not gonna happen.

We had to stay due to reservations made, sight unseen, for the Memorial Day weekend. One night was $110, two @ $80. It is a fair KOA as far as family camping, the usual plethora of activities for the kids. However, for these prices I expect a little more refinement. The driveway immediately clogs up at the registration office. Interior roads are dirt, tight turns, and lots of obstacles to navigate (trees, boulders, etc). Trees are thick, good for the shade but bad for satellite/Starlink and birds leaving their marks on your RV/cars. The one dump station, when busy, fully blocks the interior road to access campsites 1-8. The sites did have FHU's, but we were pretty close to our neighbors. Great, friendly staff, good location for the park for access to Winthrop, Twisp, and the No. Cascades Loop. The prices are the reason we would not stay here again.

We are Washington natives, but have never been to Winthrop, and while Winthrop is a draw, in and of itself, along with the North Cascades National Park and the North Cascades Highway, the reason we went to Winthrop was because we got a promo from KOA that detailed this location’s patio sites. From what I can tell, they only have two patio sites, but they are fully fenced and include hot tubs. The price for these sites is quite high, however that is to be expected based on their exclusivity and the cost of equipping them with private hot tubs and the ongoing maintenance.

The driveway entering the KOA is very short, so if many campers are arriving at the same time, the entry will clog up really badly. That cannot be avoided since the campground is land locked between a couple other commercial properties along Hwy 20 and the river. Check in was reasonably quick. They had a fully staffed office/store and had staff at both check-in computers. You really can’t ask for more. Initial impression of the campground as you drive in is essentially positive. Your classic A-frame KOA office and restroom building, pool off to the right and a view of a central overflow parking area, a bit of the river beyond and a rather large playground and outdoor group kitchen.

The campground is along with Methow River and the sites by the river are very picturesque, although they have limited or no hookups. The patio sites are very well equipped. Fully fenced in, with a gate, you have a large, round, commercial picnic table, could seat 8 if everyone is friendly; a higher end, small, Weber gas grill, a number of Adirondack chairs around a large fire pit, plus an Adirondack style loveseat. The grilling/dining area is on a large concrete pad, along with the hot tub. The grass area around the fire pit is mostly dandelions and wild grass. The concrete continues through the gate of the fenced patio to a short sidewalk that runs alongside your rig. The RV parking pad is pea gravel and not as level as I had expected. I was never able to get my rig comfortably level the days we spent there. I also had to park the RV a bit of a distance from the sidewalk so I could connect to the sewer port.

Patio sites, and most of the pull-thru sites in our line the campground, are full hookup. Electrical and water hookups were normal. Our site had 20/30/50 power and two water faucets; however, the sewer port was very odd. It was a piece of PVC laid horizontal to the ground with a cleanout cap on it. It was guarded on three sides by a box made of trex-style decking. Moreover, the sewer port was super close to my neighbor’s campsite. This lead to me parking on the edge of the gravel drive so my sewer hose could reach. The threads on the sewer pipe are very worn out, so much so that my threaded sewer connection did not really secure itself properly to the pipe. On top of that, the manner in which the threaded connection stopped had my sewer elbow pointing upwards making drain flow more difficult. This may go down in my book as the worst on-site sewer connection I’ve had to deal with. I stayed at another KOA on the other side of the state and experienced a remarkably similar poor sewer port layout and location. Is this a KOA thing? When I went to dump my black on our last morning I noticed effluent bubbling up from a seam in the sewer pipe in the rear part of the box the pipe came out of. The PVC that leads to my sewer hose is connected the pipe going underground using a rubber flex fitting and pipe bands. This was apparently loose and allowed some ooze and bubbling to occur downstream of my connection to the pipe.

Upon checking in I was provide some additional rules regarding the hot tub on the site and informed that the tub had been drained and refreshed prior to our arrival. The hot tub on the site was clean and well maintained, however it has been in service for quite some time and there is quite a bit of wear and tear. A number of the jet controls are missing, so there are jets that cannot be turned off or adjusted, they just run. The control panel for the tub had long ago lost its label, so the buttons didn’t have any indicator of what they did, you had to experiment to see what each button did. The hot tub rules indicated that were were not to adjust the tub temp, but that was basically impossible as we had to press each button to find the one that turned on the pump and jets. The lid for the hot tub was a disaster; one half of it had been broken somehow and was no longer solid. Apparently, a hot tub lid is a large piece of Styrofoam encapsulated in a vinyl case, and this Styrofoam has been broken up and now is just loose in one side of the lid’s casing. This made removing the lid and putting it back difficult for one person and was always a two person job. We also noticed small flecks of Styrofoam floating around in the water immediately after removing the lid, eventually getting cleaned up by the hot tub skimmer. I would have to say at a minimum the hot tub lid needs to be replace, and a hot tub lid lift installed, or the whole hot tub setup needs to be replaced since they do appear to have been used hard and for many seasons.

Staff at the park are excellent. They are always friendly and seem to be working hard. The park has a few activities. At 3pm they run a “train” for the little kids through the park. On Sunday night they were doing a complimentary hot dog BBQ in the group kitchen.

The campground is not far from the bike trail that goes into Winthrop. A short bike along Hwy 20 to the gas station will put you directly across from the pathway entry, and you can avoid the traffic and bike into town on a meandering pathway. You’ll want to use this pathway on bike because Hwy 20 is quite busy.

We had a great stay because the patio site was a fun place to hang out, the staff at this KOA was excellent, and the overall location was pretty and well maintained. We would come back again. I would hope that the maintenance issues I identified with the hot tub would be addressed in the near future. And I’d also hope that they do something with their sewer ports that make them more convenient and usable. Plus, this campground is very convenient to the central part of Winthrop and using it as a base camp to bike into town is very convenient.