RV Camping, Cherry Hill Park, College Park, MD

This page may contain an affiliate ad banner and/or text link. If one clicks/taps on one of these links and then makes a purchase, I sometimes receive a small commission. Please patronize our advertisers. This RV campout occurred between 09/19-22/2024. It was me and Julie R on this one. This RV campout was sponsored by:

The Potomac Dogwoods

and was hosted by Walt and Cathy Dassler.

Thursday, September 19, 2024– We got all packed up, bought some last minute supplies and were ready to roll around 12 noon. The goal was to get to Cherry Hill Campground in College Park, MD. We could have gone clockwise or counter clockwise around the I495 beltway to get there. I wanted to go clockwise. But the Waze app said to go counter clockwise. Big mistake. So we took I95 northbound to I495. The traffic started getting bumper to bumper and slow around Newington, VA. It continued that way until we got to Andrews Airforce base in MD.

My RV The Breeze was very hot because of all of this slow, bumper to bumper stuff. When we went over the “flyover” that connected I95 to I495 my check engine light came on. I was frazzled because of the traffic. Now I was really a nervous wreck. What happens if the RV comes to a stop? How will I get help? Will I get rear ended? The list of questions that I asked myself was endless. The traffic got better between Andrews and the US1 north exit at College Park, MD. But now the RV was shaking, didn’t have a lot of power and the exhaust smelled funny. I didn’t think that we would make it to the campground.

But we did. We got checked in and set up. I was so uptight about the traffic and the check engine light that I drank a can of red wine, something that I normally do not do. So I spent the rest of the afternoon trying to figure out what to do. I got someone from the park to place a scan gauge onto the OBD port of the RV. It came back with a P503 error. This was a misfire of plug 5 on the engine. Great. I tried calling a mobile tech to come and look at the rig but, when he finally returned my call, he said that he was going in for gall bladder surgery next week and didn’t want to mess with it beforehand. I next called the shop that I normally take the RV to and they quoted me $1,426 to replace all 8 spark plugs and coil wires.

I didn’t want to spend that much money and told Julie that it was time to get rid of our RV. She said no, that she really enjoyed RV’ing and that we should get it fixed. I told her that I didn’t have that much to spend on it. then she volunteered to pay the majority of the repair. Now I was more agreeable to getting it fixed.

Friday, September 20, 2024– A beautiful day, I hiked the 1.3 mile perimeter trail around the campground early in the morning. This trail was well maintained and a pleasure to hike. Later that day we went to a park called Lake Artemesia. It was a beautiful park with a lake and between 1.2 and 1.4 miles of trails around it. We did the 1.2 mile loop.

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A number of our fellow campers were arriving on Friday. There ended up being 5 rigs present. We ordered a pepperoni pizza from the onsite restaurant. It arrived in 20 minutes and was very good!

Saturday, September 21, 2024– We continued to discuss the RV situation. What happens if replacing the plugs & wires doesn’t solve the issue? What happens if we can’t get our rig back by our next camping trip on October 7th? We realized that the outcome of all of these questions was not certain. So we concentrated on getting the RV home and would go from there. We played mini golf at the course within the campground. Julie beat me by 1 stroke 🙁 We had a group pot luck dinner that night complete with a campfire. We got the dinner in, then it rained for a bit, then we continued to sit around the fire and kibitz.

Sunday, September 22,2024- We got up early, hit the road by 8:45 AM and got home by 10:00 AM. I will take the RV in for servicing tomorrow. This was a very nice campground. It’s a great place for people to camp while navigating the I95 torture chamber. Here are my pros and cons of this campground:

Pros: Over 400 sites at this campground. They have ALL the amenities, staff was friendly, bath house was clean, cable had 60 channels, OTA with only a telescoping antenna picked up 39 channels, AT&T cell service had 5 bars, Verizon only had 2 bars. All sites were full hookup. And the WIFI was easy to access and very fast.

Cons: the only cons that I could think of were that the bathroom sinks were the type that only dispensed cold water for about 10 seconds. No hot water, not good for shaving. And while Verizon cell service was good at the front of the campground, it was weak in the back where we were camping. There were only 2 bars at our site. They need to put a Verizon transponder on the AT&T pole at the back of the campground. The fishing pond in the park was all full of algae and didn’t look desirable to fish in. Traffic was horrible in that area generally speaking. But the campground has no control over that.

So I’m giving this campground 4 stars. Not sure if this was our last RV’ing trip. We’ll see how the repair goes. Our RV called The Breeze turns 20 years old this coming January. Will it make it?

Map of campground (we were at site 1424.)