Disappointing
I'll start with the basics, then a little about our experience. The majority of the sites that we saw in this park are quite tight, with ones in the center being back to back sites. We had very little room to park our truck and just barely fit into the site assigned to us. There was very little shade, we had a single tree next to us that our slide pushed into to get it open. Parking the truck required moving the picnic table almost into our neighbors site, but it was way too hot to sit outside anyway. I used the laundry and other than being hot it was clean and convenient. If you have to be in the area, I don't think that there is much else to choose from. The location is an easy drive into downtown Pendleton and close to the highway. Now, here is what happened to us.
We booked this in a panic, needing a place to stay for the Fourth of July. We selected a back-in, full hookup 50/30 amp site, it cost a little more, but we thought the few extra dollars would be worth it. I remember it saying we would have a view of the mountains from our site. We checked in and were directed to our spot, which is in the middle of the park, with another site directly behind us. The staff was very nice, trying to make it easy for us to get into our spot, even changing it to the one on the backside of the one originally assigned because it has more shade (highs have been in the hundreds, even a little shade is welcome). We unhooked, leveled, and I went to plug in and the site only had 30 amp, with the heat we really wanted 50 amps to run both AC's, plus we thought that we had reserved a site with 50 amps. We double checked our reservation and all it said was full hookups. We went up to the office and they only had one 50 amp site for our stay (just a couple of days, but over the 4th), so we went and looked at it. It wasn't a great location and looked awkward to get into, plus we'd have to take our bikes and bike rack off the RV to fit in. Considering we were planning on leaving early, and putting the bikes and rack back on early in the morning would be difficult (and would probably require blocking the road to make it happen), we decided to see if we could live with 30 amps for a couple of days. Ends up, we can run both AC's and a fan on 30 amp, just nothing else.
This was a learning experience for us, we thought if you reserved 50 amp that you will get it. We have learned that is not always the case. It's especially frustrating because, before our arrival, I tried to get the days leading up to our stay but they only showed 30 amp available, which led us to believe that we really had 50 amp. It's the ultimate in bait and switch. We don't often stay at KOA's, if we can help it, but we hadn't experienced this problem before, so we really were upset about it. At least the staff attempted to be accommodating, and they weren't upset when we told them we backed in to the picnic table and bent it. They said it happens all the time and people usually don't bother to tell them.
Overall, we survived and we're glad that we cut our t me there short. If you need to be in the Pendleton area, by all means stay here, just don't expect a bunch of room and be prepared to not get what you expected if it's a busy weekend.
