Visiting the KOA Niagara Falls | Ep. 27

Today we’re diving into a park review which will hopefully be of interest to both our Canadian and American listeners – because we’re reviewing the KOA Holiday Niagara Falls in - you guessed it – Niagara Falls Canada!

Since landing a reservation at State, National and Provincial Parks is proving very difficult this year with increased demand for camping, we thought we should review some private parks that have proven to exceed our expectations both as base camps for day exploring, and as places to stay in their own right.

If you are interested in trying to land a reservation at an Ontario Park this year, Melina created a short YouTube Video to give you the best chance. Go check it out.

And, be sure to check out Episode 11 of the podcast where we review the difference between campgrounds and RV resorts and let you know our opinion on whether the latter is worth the extra fees.

Have you ever stayed at the Niagara KOA? Let us know what you thought - you can reach out anytime on Instagram and Facebook @RVCanucks

Transcript

1 (5s):
Welcome to episode 27 of the RV Canucks podcast. Today, we're diving into a park review, which will hopefully be of interest to both our Canadian and American listeners, because we are reviewing the Koa holiday. Niagara falls in you guessed it, Niagara falls, Canada. And at the risk of alienating our Southern neighbors, we love to proudly say that we can claim the horseshoe falls, kind of that iconic round beautiful waterfall in Niagara, which is by far more majestic than the American falls. And if you're thinking how <inaudible> it is to brag about something like that. You're right. But as you listen, you'll find out that we love to brag about six things in this country and only two of them aren't geographic locations.

1 (52s):
So we can brag about Niagara falls. We brag about the Bay of Fundy Lake Louise and Whistler. The other two are Tim Horton's coffee and hockey, but I digress originally we were going to talk about some tips for handling camping trips with friends, but all we've heard about over the last couple of weeks over social media is how hard it is to book provincial and state parks right now because Covid has of course created a whole new community of campers, which is awesome. So we figured diving into a review of a private park, seemed like a good fit and spoiler alert. If you've listened to our episode on Bronte Creek provincial park, you're going to pick up on some similar themes in why the Koa Niagara kind of gets a bad rap and how we got over our own misconceptions about the park and why it's now one of our favorite home bases today trip from.

1 (1m 43s):
So if you're just discovering the RV connects podcast, I'm Melina and together with my husband and co-host Dan and our two girls, we travel all over North America on a part-time basis to show you how far you really can go on your vacations from work. We're always glad for you to be here and we're happy and super humbled that you join us each episode. If you love what you hear, please follow or subscribe to our show, wherever you listen to podcasts. So you never miss an episode and consider leaving us a review. It helps us appear to new listeners and it gives us a great idea of what you like, maybe what you want to hear more of. And we can use that for future episodes. So if everybody's ready, let's dive in.

0 (2m 22s):
We're going to spend a little time today and talk about the Niagara falls Koa. And this is the Niagara falls Koa on the Canadian side. So we're talking pretty much all about Canada from this perspective or on this trip. I want to tell you right off the top, that when I grew up as a kid, we started in a tent trailer, not even a pop-up tent trailer. It was a tent trailer made out of canvas that we'd borrow from my grandparents one week of the summer and go camping. And it was always in a provincial park and it was always in a shady site with lots of trees around. And there was always lots of hiking. And later on in life, we kind of upgraded at some stage to a larger travel trailer, an Airstream, but my whole camping experience as a kid was that it had to be done in like a state park or provincial park.

0 (3m 5s):
And it had to be like nature camping. And so the first time that we went to a Koa, I felt like some kind of center, or I was sneaking a cigarette out behind the woodshed, or I was having my first beer under age. But when I got there, I was really pleasantly surprised. And it doesn't mean that we still don't like to go out there and do the nature stuff. You've heard us talk about all kinds of nature parks you can go to and hikes you can do. And you've heard me talk about the trip that I've taken to Temagami with the girls we've been to Temagami more than once, but there's a time and a place for a park like this. And so maybe you want to explain a little bit about RV parks and Koa in general.

1 (3m 46s):
Yeah. So the Koa Niagara falls is a, it's called the Niagara Koa holiday. And for anybody who doesn't know Koa categorizes some of their locations into three different types, which kind of cater to a different type of visitor. So a Koa holiday is basically a full service base camp. It's like a great place to go. You can spend a number of days there and it makes a good base camp location for doing other things, as well as staying at the park. There are Koa journeys, which are primarily located near major roadways and highways, which have a lot of pull through sites. They're like perfect for like going to at the end of the day, if you need a safe place to stay overnight on a road trip or on along your journey.

1 (4m 29s):
And then there's the Koa resort class parks, which are kind of like a very bougie, like a hotel in the wilderness vibe where you're going to get a little more of that kind of exclusive feel to the RV resort. So if that's kind of the Koa classifications, if you want to hear a little bit more about that, we dive into that a lot on our episode, I think it's episode 11, but it's the episode we did on RV parks versus RV resorts. And if the latter is worth the price, so this is a specific Koa holiday level, meaning it's not the fanciest, it's not the most basic.

0 (5m 4s):
Yeah, absolutely. So specifically the Niagara falls Koa, it's an urban RV park. There's no Lake. It really is in the city. You will see houses, you'll see stores from certain parts of the park, but it is an urban park. There's no Lake, but there's a pool. There's a restaurant, there's a playground. There's all the usual suspects for amenities to pools.

1 (5m 29s):
Actually there's three pools there. They have that kitty pool, like, which is a more shallow pool outside. And then they have a separate outdoor pool. Plus they have an indoor

0 (5m 38s):
Well, and now's probably a good time to tell you that the indoor pool is monitored by video surveillance because Island, I got kicked out of the hot tub for me having a kid in the hot tub, but it's supposed to advocate in the hot tub, but I digress that was after I had just run a half marathon. So I thought there was some leeway, but there isn't, but needless to say, it's well monitored and they are friendly and polite. I was the one who was quite clearly breaking the rules, but at any case, this is a really great Homebase for seeing Niagara falls, Niagara on the Lake there's outlet, shopping, there's local wineries, tons of parks. I mean, it's even a great home base. If you want to stretch it a little further and go into Toronto.

0 (6m 20s):
Now, if you want to go into Toronto and that's your sole purpose, there are like Bronte Creek, provincial parks, a little bit closer to Toronto, but if you want to minimize the number of travel days and set up and tear down, you can make a comfortable day trip from there into Toronto and back again. So you can do it. So it's a great place for that full disclosure. It's not camping, there's no trails. There's nothing like that, but it's a great home base. The other thing I would tell you, and this is kind of one of the observations that I just kind of thought was neat or random piece of information is there were literally people from around the world. There is license plates here from all across North America because people want to drive and see Niagara falls.

0 (7m 2s):
It's an amazing natural wonder of the world. Maybe it's the seven wonders of the world. I dunno, but it's really cool. And people from all around the world want to come and see it there's even people there from Europe who rent motorhomes, drive them down to that area to see it. And so there'll be Europeans in the campground as well. And I know this firsthand because there was a delightful French couple having their fancy bread and find frankly

1 (7m 24s):
<inaudible> board with wine and cheese

0 (7m 28s):
Romantic. And then this good-looking guy comes over with a sewer pipe and hooks it up to the, to the hookups. So

1 (7m 35s):
They're the poor people, but they were very gracious,

0 (7m 39s):
Random French people. Thank you for coming to Canada. But the point is, there's lots of cool people from around the world there. So it's really an interesting place. A couple of my first general impressions. Yeah. So the first time we went there, my mom wanted, I want pictures. I want to see what it's like inside, because this is one of the two people that convinced me that you should only camp in provincial parks. And so the most amazing thing that still sticks in my mind to this day, they have, by far the cleanest washrooms I have ever seen in North America now,

1 (8m 10s):
But at this specific Koa, like you could eat off the floor.

0 (8m 14s):
The decor might be dated. It was dated at the time. But what I will tell you is they, it was pre COVID times. They had the cleanest washrooms I've ever seen and lots of them. Yeah. And I think that's probably just symbolic of the way that they take care of the park for maintenance in general. It was also the time before we use stuff like happy camper and everybody had to go do their number two in the washroom or during daylight hours, we would encourage the kids to go use the washroom, but know that the washrooms are absolutely spotless. Yeah. They're really friendly. I'd say the park is not too quiet, so it's not too stuck up, but it's not too loud. Either people are going to play bean bag toss and the ring game and ladder ball and have a couple of beers, but it's not going to it's allowed party park.

0 (8m 56s):
So you can have a little bit of fun. You don't need to worry if your kids are going to go down to the playground that you need to worry about them too much. So it's a great kind of park for that has a really family feel.

1 (9m 6s):
Yeah. And they tend to do events and have, you know, organized activities. I don't remember if it was our first or a second trip there, but they brought in a country. We look at kind of a budding country music singer, Stephanie Quayle. If you like country music, go check her out. She was actually really, really good. And she had a hit song at the time called Winnebago, which is also very catchy and on our road trip playlist. But in any case, we, they went and they had a big campfire and they had her come and her band kind of did a concert, but I mean, that was even done by like nine o'clock. I know we've done hula-hoop contests, dance con freeze dance contest, like where they give out prizes to the kids. So there's a lot for the kids to do. Like they have one of those big, you know, jumping pillows and that those gigantic chess sets where you have like chess pieces that are, you know, two feet high and you play chess and a good playground and things like that.

1 (9m 55s):
So there, there is enough, a little arcade as well. There is enough to keep the kids entertained for sure.

0 (9m 60s):
And it's an RV park, listen, the sites are not spacious, but the park itself is spacious with tons of stuff to do for kids. And so if your kids like to use the playground and get into the pool and see little stuff like that, it's a great spot to just have some good quality family time. And it's not really that expensive. Once you get into the front gate and the staff there is really friendly and helpful. Check-in's easy. Everything's really straightforward. It's just a great time for family experiences and memories really, and using the place as a home base. So maybe the best way to talk about this is we've done. Two stays there. The first time we went down there was just to see the sites and Niagara falls. We only live a couple hours away, but kids find that cool.

0 (10m 40s):
It was a day trip. It was a spot to take the trailer. I don't even think we had the F-150 then. So had to be kind of one of our first full res out with the trailer. So that was really cool. We took the girls, we went down, we checked in, we got into our site next day, we went out, we saw Niagara falls. I think we probably went down to Niagara on the Lake, really just for Fort George. George is in the area. I don't remember if we went inside or not. You can see a part of it from the outside. So really that was really cool. I think we ended up having to leave a little early on Sunday because Fiona got sick, but that was, was our fault, not theirs, but really just a good trip to, to try something different. So that was our first trip. Our second visit was probably a year or two later.

0 (11m 21s):
I had taken up running. So I was running a half marathon in Niagara, on the Lake, a really great event. It was in June. We talked to the girls, teachers. We, we left on Thursday night, took them out of school. On Friday. We went down on Friday that let us hit an outlet mall, picked up my package. We saw the falls. So that on Saturday we weren't overwhelmed with trying to squeeze in extra stuff while I was running a half marathon. So on race day, the girls dropped me off, kind of waved me goodbye. And then they went and took a stroll down, historic Niagara on the Lake, the downtown of, of the village. And I think they probably got into some sticky buns, but I'll let them,

1 (11m 57s):
They were amazing. Niagara on the Lake is a fantastic place to visit period, but they have a great bakery. And so by the time we walked down to the village, got a cup of coffee and some gorgeous sticky buns. We walked back to the start, finish line for the race and we sat there and waited for Dan. So poor. Dan had their run back up after running a half marathon in like 40 degrees Celsius heat, where I think you were only like one of 13 people in your age category to finish because it was so hot that day. And here we are just sitting on the ground munching away on treats.

0 (12m 32s):
Well, it was a hot day, but we got it done. We had fun. And probably, you know, I think it was just, it worked out really well for us on that day. And we didn't feel too bad.

1 (12m 40s):
Can I mention food? Absolutely. Because that weekend of our second trip was actually father's day weekend and the race was on Saturday, but Sunday they did a pancake breakfast for all the fathers in the park. So we went and ordered pancakes and had pancake breakfast the next morning. And they were huge pancakes and they were beautiful and fluffy and they have this great little cafe at this specific, specific Koa. And it doesn't have a huge menu. Things like, you know, burgers and sandwiches and things like that. But we've also had, and this will go down in history is probably one of the best plates of nachos I've ever had. And we've had it both times. We've been there. They do a great nacho and it's not fancy nacho. It's like your basic ground, beef peppers, you know, onions.

1 (13m 22s):
There's nothing crazy on it. Good cheese comes out fresh and hot to you and you can sit there and they have like a little patio with some TVs that they put sports on. And it's a great place to go without having to leave the Koa to go to a restaurant. Or if you just don't feel like cooking that night, it's like a little treat and it's right in front of the pool. And you can just have a great view and it's, it's a good place to grab a meal.

0 (13m 44s):
So if you just ran a half marathon and he played a nachos is amazing. True. So the last thing I want to talk about, you could do a huge trip review and do it online or do it on a podcast. And I don't think we would probably do it justice or give people nearly enough information, but I want to hit on a couple of the sites. Obviously you can see Niagara falls in this area. You can go to Niagara on the Lake, which is a historic village, 20 minutes away from Niagara falls, a really scenic drive. And this is really kind of bookends all of what you're going to see. You can see the tourist trap that blur bright lights and shiny things of the Niagara falls area, all the way to the historic beautiful gardens of Niagara on the Lake.

0 (14m 25s):
Both of those things you can do for very little money. If you don't want to buy anything in the village, you don't want to spend any money. Other than say parking, you can see Niagara falls without having to spend extra money. There's numerous parks in the area. You can see Brock monument from the outside. Again, you know, there's so many parks, little monuments. You can pay to go inside some of them, but if you don't want to pay any money, they're just as cool from the outside. And you can see them nice and easily and get out, stretch your legs, see them for minutes and keep on moving along. There's always something to do. That's not too far away.

1 (14m 55s):
Now. I mentioned this as well on our episode that we did, when we went to Gannon Oakway and talked about the war of 1812, and the, the battlefields and the history in that area of the province and Niagara is one of them. And the Brock monument of course, is a Memorial to general Brock. And we, you like Dan died. You can pay to go inside of it. It's a nominal fee. However, halfway up the broccoli monument when Eila was, I dunno, six, we discovered she was both claustrophobic and afraid of Heights. So know that before you go in, and it was a very tight space to kind of do this spiral staircase, like tighter than any lighthouse I've ever been to, like it is tight and it is stone and you feel very closed in, and it is also very, very tall.

1 (15m 35s):
So if you ever want to visit the monument, just be aware.

0 (15m 39s):
Absolutely. And then a couple other things, there's an outlet shopping mall in the area and a bass pro shops. They're kind of, side-by-side, they're free to get into how much you want to spend at those places is up to you. But if you're not up to, you know, the artsy stuff or the historic stuff, there's, there's stuff like that. At bass pro shops, there's Clifton Hill in the Niagara falls area, which is kind of the bright lights, the wax museums there's casinos in that area. So there's a little something for everybody in a really small space. And it's kind of divided up in such a way that if you don't want to see casinos, you don't have to see casinos. And if you don't want to see, you know, the bright lights, you can stick the hit to the historic areas.

0 (16m 21s):
And you're never really far from anything in the whole area, and you can do it on a inexpensive budget. You don't have to pay money unless you really want to.

1 (16m 28s):
And don't discount a trip across the border, like a day trip across the border as well, because you're, you're literally 10 minutes from the border into Niagara falls. And there's a great outlet on military road. In Niagara falls, you can go see Fortnite Agra, which is opposite Fort George opposite on the river. I was gonna say, I suspect you would hear two different stories about the hor, but I'm not even conferring that. So taking a quick day trip across is something you might want to look into as well.

0 (16m 56s):
Absolutely. And the last thing I'd say for sure, on the Canadian side, there's all kinds of local wineries. So another great spot to go see something different, get some good food and try some wine that you might not normally try. And they're all really close to that. Niagara falls Koa away. We've never really been stuck in traffic. It's just a really nice, easy, relaxing trying to get to places

1 (17m 18s):
I would recommend. Wayne Gretzky has a winery in Niagara on the Lake, the Gretzky winery, and it's actually really fantastic wine. So if you're looking for one to visit and step, that's a great one and try us as well.

0 (17m 30s):
And I think there's so many things we could do, but I really just wanted to emphasize the wrap this up. Those are the things you can do that are really inexpensive, that nobody's going to make you pay money to get inside there, things that you can do. And you really only out the cost of your groceries and your gas in your car,

1 (17m 45s):
For sure. Well said. All right. So if you're planning to visit falls and you happened to stay at the Niagara falls, Koa, let us know how it was. We'd love to hear your input on it as well.

2 (17m 56s):
Don't be afraid to try something new. Don't be afraid to push back against your parents and be rebellious and stay at a Koa. Love you mom.

1 (18m 7s):
And on that note, we will talk to you next time.

2 (18m 9s):
Bye.