Best RV Parks & Resorts near Barkhamsted, CT

I’m told that this used to be Jellystone. 

It’s now called Pine Lake Rv and cottages.

Not knowing what the previous campground was like I can’t compare. But the new owners surely did a total revamp. There is approximately 30 cottages and many pull through and back in sites for any size RV.

The bathroom/showers were all new and very nice and clean. It seems to be very family friendly. There’s an 8 acre lake with kayaks and fishing, a basketball court,   a game pavilion and a well stocked store. The RV sites are   spacious and pretty close to near perfect level.

The problems I came across was there were very few places to dispose of camp trash, I had to actually walk around looking for one. The camp store doesn’t open until 9:00AM and closes at 4:00PM

 If you can, try and NOT stay on the back upper level ( the 700 ) spots. It’s around 100 feet from a very busy road and loud !

This place is off Route 9 in Connecticut on the east side of the Connecticut River (major RT 9 highway is on west side). You need to cross the river via bridge to Goodspeed Opera house and past to get to the RV campground. Nearby attractions are Gillette Castle and Goodspeed Opera. The campground itself is realy nice. Cable TV at most sites. Only electric 30 or 50A, and water; but there are a few dumpstations around in the camp. Very peaceful. There are activities on Friday and Saturday (like Bingo). Great store with extended hours. The camp staff will help you with anything. Really long or tall RV will need to stay close to the front of the campground, as typical older campground is not designed for 40 foot long or 10 foot high campers.

Chose this spot to give us a rest on a trip to Canada (and again to go back to Maine to complete the vacation after we had truck trouble). Chose a pull-through to save time and effort. The first time we chose site 1 (pull through). This past weekend we chose site 38 (pull through).

A few weeks ago when we visited, site 1 was close to the entry gate, but was very confusing as a pull through. I just backed the trailer in. The next morning we saw that the "pull through" had not been maintained in several seasons. Tree limbs and brush intruded on the driveway. There was no way to get a truck and trailer through that without damage.

Yesterday we tried site 38. We had to take the camp road around the entire park, then enter the "loop" section. Even the "main" roads required my wife to watch as I cleared tree trunks; it was difficult to snake our little trailer around the bends. The driveway to site 38 was a mess. Tree limbs and brush invaded the drive, and there was nowhere level on the whole site. I used a record 9 blocks to get 4 levels high on the downhill wheel. When leaving we had to go out through the adjoining site, because there was no way we'd be able to make the turn out of the site onto the 10' wide tote road because of the trees.

A surcharge which makes it $50/night for non-MA residents, plus, no dump station on site and $7 for four pieces of firewood (go to the Walmart 2 miles away instead) will have us skip this place in the future, even if it's in a convenient place.

For those looking to vacation here. There was minimal cell phone coverage with Verizon. I could check messages but wouldn't try to stream. The highway is very loud (I-90 is across the lake). There are a lot of boggy areas and swamps which, although pretty, grew a lot of mosquitoes that kept my wife indoors. A lot of sites were fairly large and private. The beach area is close to the lower sites. Bathrooms and showers were tight and needed updating, but cleaned.

The campground is older, and the roads/driveways need work. For those looking for newer facilities, this isn't the place. There are no 50 amp sites. The rec hall and the bath houses are old, but we don't mind the old fashioned spots at times. Reminds me of camping as a kid. There are a lot of activities for the kids and adults. Shuffleboard, bocci ball, fishing, bingo, playground, pit luck dinners, etc. There is wifi available.

There are a lot of seasonal campers which can sometimes feel like you're intruding on their space. There is a page of rules to follow, the seasonals ignore them.

There is no black water hookup, only gray water. You have to have them clean out the black or dump on the way out.

Just ok. This is a small family run operation. We stayed 3 nights and that was plenty. We basically used this campground as a base to get out and explore the surrounding area, so in that sense, it was fine. They only had a couple spots open as the entire campground was basically full of long stay campers and cabins. The shower house was in the main home of the owner/operators, which was at times odd (you could hear them talking, cooking etc, so it kind of felt like you were intruding). No sewer hookups . At Check-in they said their son would come to our site and remotely pump our tanks before we left, but that never happened and we didn’t even bother to make a big deal about it. As we were pulling out they apologized saying he came by but we weren’t there 🤷🏻‍♀️ The cabin “resident” next to us had loud dogs that barked at anything that moved outside, so that didn’t make for a peaceful stay. The sites were set up a little weird with the hookups not where it made sense to park. If you had a big rig (40 ft+), I don’t think it would be easy to figure out a solution. We had to wiggle ours around to get in a position to hook our electric up. In a pinch this campground would work, but this is definitely not a campground that I’d recommend for a longer stay. Cell coverage was ok for us to work (att & Verizon).