Best RV Parks & Resorts near Hartwell Lake

Hands down, the best Thousand Trails campgrounds I’ve been to. I have visited several since we got the membership and I had been hugely disappointed...until now.

It has such a family feel and beautiful grounds, beautiful lake, and easy hook up camp sites. I had no trouble getting into our spot. We visited over the 4th of July weekend and they had all sorts of activities going on. Bingo, parade, fireworks, hotdogs and more!

Ashley here from The Dyrt! All of their RV rentals are stored inside River Vista RV resort and kept up and in good condition, so they can offer experiences of a lifetime. Check them out and leave a review of your experience here!

Jake from the Dyrt here! The Gatlin Ridge RV Park is the perfect basecamp for those looking to explore the area and return home to their RV with full hookups. Check them out and make sure to leave a review on the Dyrt!

Spacious long-term Resort with bathhouse, laundry facility, dog park, hiking trail, private dock on Lake Hartwell, boat storage, and more. Also allows tiny homes!

Great experience at end of May, 2023. The park has had primitive camping for years, but this year is the first season with an area for RVs/trailers and a separate area tent campers. All sites are level with concrete pads, except for the tent site. Fire pit is on bricks. Bathhouse is immaculate. The park has a great visitors center, lots of trails for hiking and seeing waterfalls, campground is pristine, and non-tent sites have full hookups. The park covers 7,000+ acres and hosts the start of the trail into Pisgah National Forest to the famous Rainbow Falls. We have a 17' Casita and stayed in a site with full hookups. Activities in the surrounding area include lots of waterfalls, hiking, mountain biking, golf, shopping and dining in the Highlands, and some great restaurants.

So, we are here for 3 weeks. We are under a WiFi pole and have good signal and usable internet. It was actually worth paying for. There is a boat launch but, it is hard to get to and down a large, steep incline. I wouldn't bring anything sizable down that hill, no real marina.
It is a functional park and what I have come to expect from a Thousand Trails park. The lower section of the park is tight and can be difficult to get into a site, roads are very narrow. The laundromat was nice, facilities are numerous though I can't say exceptional. We will use this place as a stopping point for a night or so but can't say I would stay here for a few weeks again unless we need to be in the area.

Wonderful small campground w less than 50sites. Most are creekside back ins. Full hook up including cable. Smoking wifi. Level gravel sites with concrete patios. Some with yard swings. Very clean. Clean bathhouses. Cute camp store. Free library. Pool and other rec. Propane refills and wood$ delivery to site. Trash pick up. Great hosts. Campground is easy to get to and tucked into the woods.

One of my favorite places! Campground 2 is the first to fill up! Safe and fun! Huge sites with wonderful scenery.  Clean bathhouses! Laundry on site. Friendly staff. Great for kids & pets! No full hook up yet. Cell signal spotty depending on site.

This does not seem to be the typical KOA, and it is small compared to my recent visits to some other KOAs. However, it was very quiet with lots of shade, but tents are not allowed. There are cabins, and the remaining sites have RV hookups. There are several things I loved about this campground. There is a small creek running beside the campground, and I believe most of the sites run along the creek. It is a very clean campground with a family like atmosphere. I met the front desk clerk, Julie, who was very helpful, and I also met one of the owners, who was very friendly. What is really unique about this KOA is that there is a nature trail through the woods. That is something I don’t recall seeing at any other KOA, and it was a pleasant surprise. I wish my grandson had been with us. He would have loved the fire truck playground and the Johnson Creek Mining Company water tower and trough. The recreation area had a ping pong table, a swimming pool, and cornhole boards, among other things. The showers/bathrooms were attached to the main office, and I really liked how the showers had a flexible hose. For safety and privacy, it was the type that can be locked so you don’t have to worry about strangers being in the bath facility with you. Overall, I recommend this campground highly. The only negative I have is that there are no tent sites.

Precious! I’ve never stayed in an RV park next to a small airport with a train track running through the middle of the park! Our pull through site was located under an old oak tree, conveniently next to the laundromat.

Fell asleep to the soothing sounds of a locomotive horn punctuated by the plinks of acorns bouncing off the roof. Awakened at 5:30 AM by sirens tuned to major thirds followed a little later by the thumping sounds of helicopter blades. What a symphony of delightful sounds! Thankfully, I wear hearing aids I can remove at night. Unfortunately, my wife was not so lucky.

The park did have full hookups, wifi, and while it did not have cable it had excellent reception from a number of local stations. I give it to two stars - one star for infrastructure and a second star for novelty. Zero stars for ambiance.

This campground is so nice. The family invested money in infrastructure and they have quite a few full hook up sites. The host led us to our site, gave us a newsletter If events, and they have lots of amenities. Close to DuPont for hiking trails and waterfalls. Nice, large bathhouses. Can hardly wait to go back.

I can't give Carolina Landing five stars because the sites are so close together. Also, our site- A5- was super unlevel. I felt unsafe with our fifth wheel's two left tires up in the air after auto-leveling. That was a first for us, and hope we never have to do that again. The hill getting up to our site was steep. This place is full of big rigs, however, it is not conducive to them. Every turn is tight. The dog in the camper next to us was allowed to bark nonstop when it came outside. The park staff even texted us after arrival to see how things were going, and also again mid-way through our stay. I mentioned the dog. Nothing happened. The neighbors did manage to hear the dog after about ten minutes each time, and they did put it up, but gosh. That's a lot of unnecessary barking. Currently, the pool is green, but I expect that will change soon. The mini-golf needs some love, but it's in pretty good condition considering some that we've seen other places. The clubhouse, office, bath houses, and laundry are nice and clean. The staff is friendly. The tall tall trees are beautiful. We didn't meet any of our neighbors as almost no one comes out of their campers. The weather was very nice at least 3 of the 8 days we were there. We never saw anyone sitting out around a fire, cooking out, or just hanging out. We saw a few people playing basketball a couple of times, and lots of kids rode their bikes occasionally. We saw a lot of big rigs struggling to get up the hills to park in the A section. If you have a big rig, park somewhere else besides the A section if at all possible.(We paid$0 because this was part of our Thousand Trails membership.)

We arrived a little late to the RV park, and the office closes at 5:00. I find that strange since it was in the middle of the summer. The whole check-in process is a little strange for this RV park, and the sites are first come first serve. The sites are gravel and many of the ones that were open were almost level. The biggest thing I do not like about this“campground” is that I felt as if the sites were squeezed in on top of each other. The only privacy I felt that we had was because one site next to us was apparently seasonal since nobody was there, and there were a LOT of seasonal RVs there. There are a lot of activities for campers such as mini golf, a swimming pool, a basketball court, a volleyball court, and a playground. However, we had our grandson with us and the playground was closed off, and the pool closed at 4:30. Our hope was to spend some late afternoon time at the pool, but that didn’t work out. Some of the mini golf holes were also missing carpet in some places. The big attraction for this RV park is Lake Hartwell, so a lot of people stay there for the water activities. Unfortunately, there is no onsite boat ramp. When I asked if I could put in my kayak, the answer was yes. However, there really wasn’t a suitable place to put in without having to drag it over large rocks. The campsite itself had quite a small fire pit and a very weathered picnic table. There was some shade, but we set up our dining canopy since the heat would have almost killed us. The bath house in our camping area really needs updating. It was okay, but it just seemed old. The showers were small and were accessible through a separate door. The worst part was that the showers and restrooms were as hot, if not hotter, inside than it was outside. Later, we discovered that the bath house next to the pool was air conditioned. There was one shower in the pool area that might be considered ADA accessible, but there were no hand rails. We paid to stay two nights, but we left after one night because of the heat and lack of shade and privacy. Fortunately, we were in our teardrop camper with an air conditioner. This is a huge campground, and we were hoping to get ice at the camp store. The only problem is that there is NO camp store, which is again strange for such a large RV park. This RV park does not have hiking or biking trails, but it does have access to water. Overall, the RV park is acceptable for RVers who want to be close to water(it is a short drive away), but getting to the water is inconvenient unless you have a boat already docked at the shore.