Dates visited: July 25-29 2016
Site: E178
Mode: Car / tent camping
Price: $20/night
Amenities: Restrooms, water source, picnic table, fire ring
Note: No Hook-ups, Pay showers at front of campground, for entire campground; strange layout for restroom access
I am a Girl Scout Troop Leader and I camped here with my Co-Leader and four, fourteen year old Girl Scouts. The site was a little small, but had peek-a-boo views of the valley and it was adjacent (literally just a few steps) off of the Appalachian Trail. We could see and hear groups of backpackers coming by on the AT which was cool to us. We struck up conversations with some passers by, but honestly, we weren't at the campground much anyway. As I said, the site was a little small and the grassy area sloped fairly gently toward the side and back toward the Appalachian Trail. There's room for a 27' vehicle on the parking pad, but the rest of the site is either a bit rocky with gravel or sloped grass - so for our tents, the slope it was! We set up the tents on the least sloped area and learned to deal with sleeping on the slight grade. We set the tents up to that our heads were higher than our feet and tried not to have much slope side to side. It was a little annoying, but the slope actually helped us because we had monsoon style rains every day and one night. The inside of our tents stayed totally dry, when I actually thought everything might just wash right down the AT!
Our site, and most of the sites in this campground were shady, and it was a great central location from which to explore a lot of the park. There was a restroom right across the road from our site, but in reality we were really supposed to walk all the way around this crazy loo to get there, so as not to cross over anyone else's campsite. There were no paths to the restrooms designed into the layout of this campground - weird. Thankfully, the people across from us had a HUGE site and said we were more than welcome to cross through it to get to the bathroom in 1/4 the time/distance - sweet! There was a campground check in area and next to that were the pay / coin showers (clean and warm), and a place to buy ice and wood ($7 for four pieces of wood and $3 for a small bag of ice) The park website says that all wood must be bough onsite at the campgrounds, but their printed literature says that if it's state certified, it's ok (so we could have bought our wood from the Walmart down the road and been fine. It's probably a lot cheaper there too)
Sites are a little close together, so you can hear your neighbor's conversations, but everyone was compliant with the quiet hours of 10pm to 6am. People were friendly and the setting was serene. It was mostly tent campers in this campground, with some pop-ups and small RVs mixed in. We did see a huge class A make its way through and set up on one of the sites near the entrance. There are no hookups here, so you're bookdocking if you stay here - bring battery-operated lanterns. The lodge at Skyland is air conditioned and has a place to charge your phone in the lobby. There's ice cream novelties and camp supplies at the camp stores in each of the main locations throughout the park, and there's also a gas station in the Big Meadows area as well. There are bear boxes on some sites, but not on all - so if you don't have one, you'll need to keep your food and trash in the car overnight. There's bear-proof dumpsters and recycling at the front of the campground near the check in station and shower house. BTW - from most of the sites in the campground the showers would be kind of far to walk in shower shoes, but there is a small parking lot so you can drive or ride your bike to the showers too. We cooked over the campfire which had an adjustable grate on it. The water source was also close by so we could fill our water bottles easily.
We stayed 4 nights and hiked our butts off throughout most of the days. We saw a lot of wildlife - including bears, but nothing bothered us in our campsite. We did wake up one morning to find paw prints on our picnic table, but since there was nothing to eat there, whatever it was must have just moved on. Overall, this was a pleasant campground. Staff and campers were friendly and unobtrusive.
tt
