Madison-Pittsburgh S.E. KOA

This KOA was a perfect stop for our family of 4 traveling across PA on the way to the Midwest. Just needed to get a few hours of travel time in a day early. We were late arrivals, after 9, but we were still greeted pleasantly by a friendly staff member who took the time to direct us to our site and offered to open up for us to buy firewood if we needed it. The kids had a great time playing on the playground and the big bouncy jumping pillow. (And now they want one in our back yard?!). Checking out took a bit longer than it should have as their system went offline and items I was buying seemed complicated but everyone was pleasant and apologetic and we have a great first night of a 5000 mile trip!

I was looking for a safe, quiet spot for one night while on the turnpike and this fit the bill. Got there after dark without a reservation but the cell number provided on the sign for check in was answered by a very helpful, kind manager who set me up with a site in no time. I was a little concerned as there was a group hanging out outside a few spots away but they quieted down long before quiet hours. Most of the campers appeared to be long term folks and a lot of them got up early for work but were quiet about that as well.

One down side was signage was nonexistent until you got right to the entrance and even then it was tough to spot in the dark on a hill/curve. GPS worked…just go slow on the road.

Most important things first: the giant jumping pillow was still inflated and ready for jumping action in late October. WIN!!!

This is a KOA with most campsites placed pull-through style on a slope of land. Our site (40) was pull-through and full-hook-up (30/50, water, sewer). Campsites are very typical for a KOA: picnic table, fire ring, and close proximity to your neighbor.

Roughly half of the campsites here seemed to be inhabited by seasonals or long-termers.

The campground offers a nice playground, a seasonal outdoor pool, a small fenced-in dog run, a basketball court, and the excellently bouncy jumping pillow. There is a well-stocked camp store and a communal tv area. There is also a large laundromat on site. Wi-Fi is available, although we did not test it.

We were able to use Verizon, AT&T, and Starlink here.

Our biggest complaint with this campground was that there was nowhere to safely run or walk beyond looping throughout the campground. It was also a bit muddy and the campground roads were a bit potholed.

We stayed here for 3 nights while we went to the NCAA tournament in Pittsburgh. We had also rented one of the small cabins for my father in law. When we checked in, the camp host noticed that we had rented both and let us pick any RV spot we wanted to be close to the cabin. We ended up right across the road and it worked out great. This is a little bit of an "unimproved" camp ground. None of the roads in the grounds are paved, all gravel, and the paved sections in and out of the grounds are pretty rough. That being said, the gravel was well tended to and the grounds were clean. The spot was pretty level, too. Power/water/sewer and cable all at the site. We didn't use the cable, but the power/water/sewer was good. Shower/bath house was adequate, had plenty of hot water and a place to to sit/dry off.
Easy in and out of the grounds, too. It's a little out of Pittsburgh, about a 40 minute drive into town.

Definitely recommend a stay here, we'll stay again if we come back to Pittsburgh.

We stayed here for two weeks. Unless you're driving a class B, you want to approach the campground from the south (from I-70): it's a hard left on a downhill curve if you come from the north. After passing the entrance sign, watch for oncoming traffic before taking the left fork in the road to pull up to the office.

The campground is essentially a small valley. The office building, dumpsters, and propane refill station are on the west hill, the fishing lake occupies the bottom of the valley, and the rest of the campground is situated on the east hill. The long term sites are located in the northeast and southeast corners of the campground. The rest of the sites are arranged into 4 rows of pull-through sites and a half-row of pull-in sites (most of which were wide enough to get the towing vehicle out). The rows are divided by gravel roads, some of which are pretty narrow for two-way traffic. All of the sites have gravel pads with a mix of gravel and grass lawns, a picnic table, and fire ring. Many of the sites in the top third of the rows have one or two trees that provide some shade, while the lower sites have none. We stayed in site 68, which had two trees on the right side of the site that provided some early afternoon shade, and was fairly level.

The office building contains a large laundry room with change machine, a small lounge area with a pool table where they stack delivered packages, and a camp store with some convenience store items and souvenirs. The bathhouse on the east hill contains both bathroom and shower stalls. Next to the bathhouse is a large pavilion with several picnic tables and a large grill. Walking down the hill past that pavilion brings you to the communal fire pit area, then the pool area, and the playground. There is also a new jump pad (installed during our stay) and basketball hoop in that same area. On the east side of the lake is a short dock, an equipment shed, and two boats available to rent (a metal canoe and a rowboat).

There are two adjacent dog runs located at the base of the east hill next to the entrance road, with an airlock gate. They're not lit, but there is some light from the nearby street light. If the runs are both occupied, you can walk your dog around the lake or next to the grassy horseshoe pits adjacent to the runs.

In terms of cell service, the best speed I got on my Verizon Jetpack with MIMO antenna was 96 Mbps down and 60 up. However, there was a stretch of several days where I couldn't get any internet service...except for YouTube TV service on my laptop (YouTube TV didn't work via the Roku on our TV during this time). It was very strange: it started right after a brief power outage early one evening, then returned to normal several mornings later after a late night power outage. The campground WiFi was solid, with 14 Mbps down and 12 up (we were one site away from a repeater pole). The speed test I ran on my 5G AT&T smartphone showed 77 Mbps down and 3 up.

We would stay here again if we were in the area.

Another place ready to shut its sleepy eyes for winter so not many overnight ears. On a slight hill but I believe they did a good job at leveling sites. Didn’t use any of the amenities so can’t comment. Not much in way of entertainment so used as a place to do trailer cleaning.

As noted in other reviews there is a number of long term oil field workers living here. They have loud diesel trucks and leave early in the morning. The worst was the domestic issues, just sayin

The site was reasonably level considering it was on the side of a hill. only took one block to level trailer side to side. AC power was good as was the water pressure.

Shower houses were closed due to Covid. Pool was opened and completely choked with kids.

The campsites are very close together, I was thankful that our neighbor didnt have a campfire as it would have probably bubbled the paint on my truck, they are that close together.

Rate was with KOA camper card

Stayed 6 nights to see the Pittsburgh area. This campground has around 100 sites but not sure how many are available for short term stays. It seemed many were longer term residents but the park was clean and quiet enough. The Madison / New Stanton area left much to be desired but we found some cool places in Mount Pleasant. WiFi was surprisingly good here and we, 2 people working full time during the day online with Teams calls and Outlook going all day, never had to switch off the WiFi to our cellular backup, which is rare. Verizon had 4 bars of 5G service here. We’d stay again if we were in the area.

We only stayed at this campground for one night, so we didn't use many of the amenities, but it seemed like a nice campground. The campground was wooded with plenty of shade and there were many activities- a lake, heated pool, nice playground for kids. We stayed at a pull-through site with plenty of room. The staff was very friendly and responsive.

Overrun with frackers. Appearance more like a long term trailer park than relaxing KOA. In addition, they messed up the checkin/checkout time so someone had to wait for us to pack up and leave, instead of just giving them a different site (not like they were full). On top of treating them like that, the staff acted discussed with us and acted like it was our fault when we were not ready to leave hours before our checkout because they messed up.