Best Campgrounds near Natural Bridge, AL

This is a great little campground tucked away on the edge of Bankhead National Forest. The location of the campground makes it an excellent location to enjoy the numerous waterfall hikes in the area. The campground was laid out well with spacious gravel sites and full hookups. Sites 2-4 had good views of the pond/field, sites 10-15 backed up to the tree line to provide a little shade all other sites had full sun. The camp host was super friendly and helpful. They have a general store, laundry, bathhouse, and small dog park. The campground has hiking trails on the property if you don’t have time to visit Bankhead NF. If you’re in the area or wanting to spend time in Bankhead NF I’d recommend checking this campground out.

Our RV GPS and Waze brought us south from Tishomingo via MS-25 to MS-4 to John Rankin Hwy. It’s a more scenic and narrower road than just taking MS-25 south, but there were no issues. We had made online reservations earlier that day for this Army Corps of Engineers Campground (CG) where we get a 50% discount per night using the National Parks Access Pass. We arrived earlier than 2:00 PM when the check-in gate opens, but there was a sign to go ahead and set up and come back at 2:00 to check-in. As we had our site number, we headed directly to pull through site 9 with water and electric(50/30/20 AMP). This was our third time camping at Whitten and we were delighted to find that they had combined site 8 and 9 into one long site. This site still had the old site amenities, which meant that we had double electric pedestals, water spigots, patio areas with picnic table, standup bbq, and fire pit. We were able to adjust our 5th wheel to avoid the several unlevel areas in this very long pull through. As with most COEs, water pressure was good and the electric worked fine. Whitten CG has a lot of mature trees, so satellite is iffy. We had no north shot for our Starlink. However, we got 2 to 3 bars on Verizon and the Mifi worked well for our needs to include streaming. There’s no WiFi in the CG. Site 9 has water view and does not bump up to other sites, which we found highly desireable. During our first stay in 2019, each loop had a shower house with a washer and dryer that we had used. Our last stay was an overnighter and we didn’t need to do laundry, so we hadn't checked those facilities out. This time we were here for three nights and had planned on doing laundry only to find the doors locked. We asked the camp host about the washers and dryers. He stated that the washers and dryers had been closed during COVID and now they were no long functional and weren't going to be replaced. We again enjoyed the trail system through out the CG and recreation area to walk our dogs. The James L. Whitten Historical Center is interesting to go through. There are several fishing piers as well. We came on a Wednesday and were pretty much by ourselves. Both Thursday and Friday campers started coming in around 11:30 AM filling up the CG. The camp hosts didn’t seem to mind the early arrivals and even opened up the office around noon for a few minutes to accommodate check-ins.