Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Huntsville, AL

Although we have been to Monte Sano many times to hike and attend events, this was our first time camping here. Monte State Park Campground is a large campground with 15 full hookup sites, 59 water& electric sites, and 21 primitive tent sites. All the sites are gravel, most sites are wooded with lots of shade, and most site are mainly level. All style sites include a picnic table and fire ring. 

Check-in is at the camp store if you arrive during store hours or with camp host if you arrive after hours. We stayed on site 24, which had complete shade throughout the day. This site backs up to a draw and each evening just before dust we could watch the deer walk up through. 

The bathhouse is centrally located, newer, and cleaned daily. There are also laundry machines available between the men’s and women’s area. 

Firewood, ice, limited grocery items, and souvenirs were available at the camp store. There is a full grocery store about 15 minutes away. 

We found ok to limited cell phone service with Verizon throughout the property. The state park did have wi-fi near the camp store. 

The park has many trails for hiking and mountain biking, as well as host the North Alabama Japanese Garden. The North Alabama Land Trust also connects to the state park and adds many more miles of trails. We hiked about 15 miles this weekend and there are many more miles to explore on another visit. 

The state park is located 5 minutes from Huntsville where you can find many restaurants, breweries, and the Space& Rocket Center. Check the Huntsville visitor’s center website for all that is offered in the area. In addition, the Burritt on the Mountain located just minutes from the park entrance and has an open air museum and an amazing overlook of Huntsville. 

We are very excited that this gem is located so close to use and are proud to call this our home camp!

This place was still being built and was already amazing. There are large spaces in the woods only minutes from Huntsville. A quiet piece of heaven. A beautiful large creek runs through it, with miles of walking paths, a horse barn, and spaces to play and relax. LOTS OF SPACE Lee and Joy are fantastic hosts and will do almost anything to make the stay comfortable. We got a sneak preview while they were just getting open and I cannot impress on you how much this Park has to offer. Did I mention fossils? All over the place some of the oldest creatures to crawl the earth are there for you to find! I'm not kidding we saw trilobites everywhere along the creek. I cannot judge access really as they were still working on the roads and with the plans they have, it will be very easy to get aro[und. We have a 44 ft DRV and with a little care were easily able to get around. we had a boondocking site and had to go fill and empty tanks and could do so easily. Did we mention how much space there is? We did have poor coverage for our mobile data but the phones and texting always worked.

Visited Lake Guntersville State Park, for the day. After taking our granddaughter to Screaming Eagle Zip-line Adventures, located at the gorgeous Lodge, we visited the Campground…and it’s amazing! At the office, we were helped by Rocky, who was friendly and knowledgeable! We received CG info and a map, as well as rates. We are already planning our next trip to visit! The general store was stocked with necessities, as well as souvenirs. Of course we had to get some ice cream! There are several types of sites, monthly, cabins and tent camping. There are boat slips (local rentals) and a Pavilion on the water, basketball and tennis courts, playground, shady dog park, splash pad, and clean bathhouses. Firewood and ice can be purchased at the store. There are also many trails to hike and bike . It is easy to see that this SP is well maintained! The SP Lodge is worth visiting, which has a nice restaurant. LGSP has a golf course, and the quaint town is close by and has shopping and several restaurants.

The campground(CG) was easy to find for our mid-October stay. We exited off on 14A to gate 9 where we went through the gate and then did a u-turn to take us back down past the golf course to the CG. We had no problem doing the u-turn with our 40' fifth wheel. We followed the signage to the CG and then into pull-through site 21 with FHUs. There was no formal check-in, but our name and stay dates were on the site post. The pads here are huge and the utilities including 50 AMP worked well. We got 3 bars on Verizon and 2 bars on T-Mobile along with a large selection of OTA channels. We could have used satellite as there are no trees near the RV sites. They have a nice fenced dog park plus a shower and laundry facility with 4 machines each costing$1. The WiFi worked well for a CG this size. Use Gate 8 near the commissary and BX versus 9. Gate 8 gives you an easier drive to the campground. Overall we enjoyed our overnight stay.