Sleeping in Seattle: Seattle KOA Campground Review

Often when we visit friends, we are able to set up the camper in their driveway or yard. But since our friends in Seattle live in an apartment, we needed to find a campground. There weren’t a lot of options available, and because the Seattle KOA is actually located in Kent where our friends live, we chose the KOA. It worked, but it certainly wasn’t our favorite campground. Here’s our review:

Price: $42/night, after KOA member discount. Thus far one of our most expensive.
Location: Well, that’s why we stayed there. Easy access to Seattle and for us, close to our friends.
Facilities: Bathrooms were nice and clean, but the showers had very poor water pressure. And by very poor, I mean it probably would have been easier to use the water fountain to get the shampoo out of my hair. The playground looked like it was a great one, but we didn’t actually use it.
Site Description: Grass and gravel, literally 1 pop-up + 1 minivan + 1 picnic table wide. A pull-through site, approximately 1 pop-up camper in length. There was not a whole lot of wiggle room here. If we didn’t park the minivan in just the right spot, we either couldn’t open the van door because of the picnic table or we couldn’t open the camper door because of the minivan. One of the tiniest campsites I’ve ever seen. And while this wasn’t true of all sites, our site was very close to a major road where there was considerable traffic noise all night.
Neighborhood: The usual mix of retired RV-ers, families, etc. Also a group of bikers who liked to make noise (both themselves and their motorcycles) late at night. Not my favorite neighbors.
Comments: It was the right choice for us all things considered, and if I had to do it over again, I’d probably make the same choice. But we did decide to leave after 2 nights instead of staying for 3, mostly because the quality we received didn’t really match the price we were paying.

Weekend in Seattle

Ah, Seattle. Home of the Space Needle, Boeing Airplanes, the original Starbucks, and our good friends, the Christs. Keegan and Becka used to work with us for Young Life in Sweden, and are now working for Young Life in Kent, WA. Their daughter is about 8 months older than Emelie, and their son just 5 days older than Peter. It was a joy to catch up with these friends and to see a little bit of Seattle. It was also a little glimpse of what life could be like with two sets of twins under 4. Scary.

The best shot we could get of all 4 of them together

After the usual arrival, catch up and settling in stuff, we had dinner and went with them to the local high school football game. It was a late night for the kids and somehow Peter managed to fall asleep amidst the cacophony of marching band, cheerleaders and cheering fans. Emelie was captivated by the whole thing and loved watching all the big kids chasing the ball around the field. Her favorite, though, were the “ballerinas” at half time (a dance group that was kind of like color guard minus the band).

The next day, Sunday, we went to church with them at the Covenant Church in Kent, then drove to the ferry that would take us across the Puget Sound to downtown Seattle. We walked to the famous Pike Place Market and saw all the beautiful flowers and the place where they throw the fish. The fish place was disappointing, though. I thought they threw the fish to (at?) the customers who bought them, but it’s just that one of the employees comes out among the crowd and they throw it to him. They also can’t sell the ones they’ve thrown, since apparently it damages the fish, so they don’t do it that often. I’m not sure why they do it at all except that huge crowds gather and watch for it, so I guess it’s cheap advertising. It’s a great market, though, and full of life and customers on a Sunday afternoon!

Emelie and Sofia on the ferry

The whole gang (minus Staffan, who’s behind the camera). Lunch on the ferry.

Holding hands in the market on a crowded Sunday afternoon. We didn’t lose anybody!

Back on the city streets, we watched cheese being made through the window of a cheese shop, saw a street musician with an upright piano on a street corner (how did he get it there?) and then Emelie got to hold a snake at another street “performer” (her credentials badge from the city was a street performer’s license, but really she was just letting people pet her snakes so it wasn’t much of a “performance”).

She loved this. Not even a little bit afraid.

I love that she’s fearless like this. She doesn’t get it from me.

Not the usual instrument you choose for a street corner performance

It was a fun day and Seattle was a fun city, but we were all getting tired. So, after a little ice cream break and a bit more walking, we got back on the ferry and went back to our cars. Monday morning we had a little more time for visiting and then it was time to move on. After weeks and weeks of driving west, it was time to try a new direction: south!

Becka with Peter and Kai on the ferry back.