Campground Review: Thousand Trails Lynchburg, Gladys, Virginia

Introduction:

We visited this campground just after it opened for the season so it was very quiet during our visit. We very much enjoyed the heavily wooded sites and well maintained common areas, however, the company needs to invest in infrastructure repair or they're going to have a lot of unhappy customers once it gets busy this summer.

The Basics:

Overall Rating: 3.9/5

Price per night / Discounts: $0 / We have a zone pass through Thousand Trails, so this stay was free for us.

Campground website: Thousand Trails Lynchburg

Our Site #: 47 FHU (30 amp only)

Privacy Rating (how spacious and private do the sites feel):

4.25/5: Thousand Trails Lynchburg offered some of the most private sites we've found in a commercial campground. We were in loop C which was very heavily wooded, and luckily, the place was nowhere near full when we visited. Other than on the weekend, we basically felt like we had the park to ourselves. But even if you're there during high season, the sites offer enough space and there are enough trees that you won't feel like you're on top of your neighbors.

Location Rating (accessibility to points of interest or to major highways):

3.25/5: The campground is located in Gladys, Virginia which is just south of Lynchburg. It would typically take us 20-30 minutes to get to various destinations in Lynchburg, depending on where we were going. As for access to the highway, it wasn't particularly out of the way, and the roads are in great condition, so it was a decent place to stop while driving from West Virginia toward Northern Virginia,

Site Quality and Big Rig Accessibility Rating (utilities and accessibility of campground hook ups):

3/5: Site quality here is very mixed. Our site was large, relatively level, and the utilities were well placed (Note: they only offer 30 amp service). However, many other sites were heavily sloped and/or much smaller. More problematic was the fact that numerous sites had electric boxes that were covered with plastic - indicating that they were out of order. We also noticed there was a lot of trash left in our grill. It seems like the folks who work there work hard to maintain the large common areas, but the campsites themselves are often neglected. I would have thought that whatever electrical issues they were having would have been addressed in the offseason, but alas, they were not. Hopefully they'll get their act together before it really gets busy in a few weeks.

Technology and Customer Service Rating (online resources, reservations, and staff):

5/5: Like all Thousand Trails campgrounds, this one offers the ability to book your reservations online. All the staff members we interacted with were friendly and helpful.

Internet Availability Rating (Verizon coverage or campground wifi):

3.75/5: Verizon service could have been a bit better, but it was workable. If they had wifi, we didn't even try it.

Summary:

All in all, we enjoyed our time at this campground. We love heavily wooded sites because of the privacy it provides, and because we were visiting at the very beginning of the season, the place was fairly empty. I imagine it gets much busier as the summer goes on, and if they don't work to fix the many broken electrical boxes at various sites, people may have a harder time getting a workable site. If you are able to score a good site though, the campground is lovely. There are a lot of nice walking trails and the common areas are well maintained. The campground is located in a quiet town just south of Lynchburg. It definitely took a bit of time to get into town, but the back country roads are very pretty and Lynchburg has everything you could possibly need.

Campground Photos (Click for larger image):