Best Campgrounds near Vestavia Hills, AL

We stayed at Tannehill Ironworks Campground for a long weekend and had a great experience. We arrived late on a Thursday night and appreciated that the ranger is on-site 24/7, since the campground doesn’t take reservations. The process is easy—you just pull in, find a site, and register/pay the next morning. It was a little hard to find a spot in the dark, but that was on us.

There are three main campground areas. • Campgrounds 1 and 2 offer full hook-ups, with many outer sites backing up to a scenic creek. • Campground 3 has water and electric only.

We stayed in site 122 in Campground 1, right on the creek. The sites are all gravel with picnic tables (a little worn—we brought our own table setup). Ours was pretty spacious, and since it wasn’t full, we had empty sites in front of and behind us, which made it feel even more open.

The creek is peaceful and adds great ambiance, but there’s no designated access area for wading or swimming. That said, lots of kids were playing in the water right near their sites.

T-Mobile service was decent—we were able to use our hotspot to stream TV at night. There’s no public Wi-Fi, but we didn’t miss it. We didn’t use the dump stations, but they looked clean and easy to access.

Check-out time is 1:00 PM, and we didn’t see an official check-in time or posted quiet hours. The campground was fairly calm and relaxed, especially at night.

The best part of Tannehill is everything there is to do. We brought bikes and explored miles of trails, all clearly marked by difficulty level. The park is also full of historical buildings like an old mill, furnace, blacksmith shop, and restored cabins (some are available to rent). There’s a Sunday church service at 9AM, playgrounds, picnic pavilions, a general store, a miniature train ride, and even an ice cream shop.

If you visit during one of their Trade Days weekends, you’re in for a treat—it’s like a huge flea market with over 400 vendors, food stands, and all kinds of local treasures.

Tannehill is a unique blend of history, nature, and activities for all ages. We’ll definitely be back and would recommend it to anyone looking for a laid-back getaway with lots to explore!

Great campground & people! Only reason for 4 instead of 5 stars is the lack of things to do. No fenced in dog park but plenty of space to have one. Right on the lake but unaware of any kind of rentals available nearby— closest rentals are 40 mins away on the opposite side of the lake. Nearest Walmart is Cullman which is 45 mins away. Wouldn’t recommend staying here if you prefer to be closer to the city but perfect if you want to be in the middle of the woods and have no reason to leave. Very hot, humid and rainy time of year! Would be back in the fall perhaps.

To be fair, the check in and staff were nice. Sites are level and partially shaded. Rules loosely enforced as there were trucks parked on grass which was noted as a very prominent rule on reservation and check in. Ants attempted to infest anything we sat outside (not food related items were specifically targeted as it was a pair of diving boots and our leveling blocks). It was horrible. There’s little to no control over everyone’s dogs. The best you can get is that they are leashed, otherwise, lunging at people or other dogs and barking all throughout the day is completely permitted. The sites are very small and your neighbors sewer hookups happen to be about 3 feet from your site’s picnic table. It’s just gross.