Lovely natural scenery; campground leaves something to be desired
Let's start with the good stuff:
- The park is beautiful. Lovely trees, lots of shade, the hiking trails are nice, well marked, and they even have an accessible trail for those with disabilities!
- There is a restaurant and gift shop on site. Gift shop sells wood if you run low or forget.
- The bathrooms and shower house are relatively clean and well kept.
Now for the not so great stuff:
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Many of the campsites are sloped and some are sloped A LOT. This isn't obvious from the booking page.
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The campground is absolutely jammed with camp sites- it's ridiculous. I've never been to a campground where the sites were so on top of one another.
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We stayed in the Sunny Crest loop and the drinking water well was broken so we had to travel to other parts of the campground for water. When carrying a 10 gallon jug full of water back, that really sucked.
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The sites that are marked as "hike in" aren't secluded and away from other sites at all, as one might expect. They are jammed in with all the others but there just isn't any parking nearby.
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It had rained the day before was went and so the road to the campgrounds was blocked off (presumably because the creek was running too high), but there was NO SIGNAGE telling us how to get there another way. There was no one in the park office or in the camping registration station to ask. We finally figured out that we had to take an emergency road/auxiliary road to get to the campground, but that was after about 30 minutes of confusion.
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The breakfast buffet at the restaurant is mid but very pricey- $50 for 2 of us.
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The quiet hours and no alcohol policy are not enforced at all. While we were there, there was a very loud group playing beer pong into the wee hours of the morning.
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About half of the fire rings don't have grill grates so bring your own or bring a camp stove (See pic). Also, when you book your site, there is no way to know if your fire ring will have a grill grate or note.