Little Bennett Campground

Fun weekend trip very close to DC. Well kept park with lots of activities for kids - jumping pillow, laser tag, pedal carts, arts and crafts. Nice little game room and some outdoor games at the activity center as well. Full hookup spots in the D loop were pretty nice. The spots in the first half of the loop felt a little close together for my taste, but our spot (D61) was nice as we didn’t have any neighbors on one side. Only complaint is that it’s pricey and has a two night minimum on weekends, but felt worth it with all the activities that were available.

We were going to a family reunion. So we brought our "mobile hotel room" with us. In D loop, they were long sites, clean, and a nice woods buffer between sites. Also, full hookups. We were quite pleased for a reagenal park.

We recently stayed the weekend here in loop A. 

There are several good things that can be said about this campground. 

Restricted- only people camping and visitors are allowed to use the facilities. Keeps things from being too crowded. 

Good sized sites- My family of 4 was able to stretch out 2 tents, our 4 camping chairs, the provided picnic table, our car, and have plenty of room left over. 

Limited activities on weekends- jumping pad/pillow, pedal carts, laser tag ($), ceramics ($), t-shirts ($), hikes, and more. Changes weekly. Details sent out at the beginning of the week. 

Decent stocked camp store with reasonable prices. $10 for wood, 3.50 for 7 lbs of ice, $5 shakes, and lots more. 

There are some clear downsides, too. 

Only 1 bathhouse per loop. Pay attention to where your site is located. You might be in for quite a hike to go to the bathroom, which is inconvenient in the early morning hours. Loop E doesn't have a bathhouse (mostly reserved for RVs). The bathhouses have showers and somewhat warm water. 

The tent pad is gravel. While this might help with drainage (I don't know), it makes it incredibly difficult to walk on and stake down your tent. 

The camp store/activities are quite a good distance from some of the loops. It took me about 10 minutes to walk at a decent pace from the start of loop A to the camp store. From our site which was only not even close to the halfway point it would have added another 5 minutes. The spots really deep in would have easily been a 30 minute walk each way. So driving, especially with little kids, is unfortunately necessary in some instances, especially if you want to visit the playground/basketball/volleyball courts which are WAY down past loop E. 

Activities are limited to certain times. When we arrived Friday the jumping pad was only open for an hour from 4 30 to 5 30. We arrived just before 4 30, so we unpacked a few things and took the kids to the jumping pad area (right next to loop A). It wasn't open and inflated until almost 4 50. You'd think because it was opened late they would keep it open later. Nope! Right at 5 30 a worker pulled up and shut things down much to the chagrin of the kids. Why they can't have it running more often is beyond me. 1 hour on Friday was clearly not enough, especially when opened late. Maybe 2-3 hours on Friday and 5-6 on Saturday. 

They should consider having time for younger kids on the jumping pad, who are bounced off by the older kids. On Saturday there were at least 40 kids, some pre-teens/teenagers from girl scouts. My 4 year old was having trouble staying on the pad because "it is too bouncy". Kids come and go as it stays open longer, but little kids have trouble keeping up. 

The pedal carts were a good idea in practice, but have 2 faults. 1. They are EXTREMELY hard to pedal. I tried two carts, one was totally stuck on an incline and the second barely made it around the track. I have no idea why they are so difficult to use. 2. There are no tandem carts. The only ones using the carts while I was there were little kids who couldn't use the jumping pad. I had my daughter on my lap while on the cart, but it was awkward to use this way. Either having a two seater or side car would have worked out better. Based on the condition of the other carts in the shed, only a few appeared usable. 

Clear signs are needed. Lots of cars were going the wrong way down loop A. The road is barely big enough for 1 car, so having to accommodate 2 is even more problematic, especially with kids walking around. There were at least 10 cars going the wrong way in the loop. 

The limit of 2 cars per site isn't enforced. A few sites had 3 cars, which fit ok. A pack of cub scouts were hiking a few of the trials, so a few sites had 4 or 5 cars. The sites were not big enough to fit that many cars plus camping equipment, so they started taking up the road. This made it hard to maneuver, especially with little kids running about in the road unsupervised. 

All in all it was a great campground and I truly do appreciate the staff trying to provide a few things for families to do. With a few considerations and improvements, this campground could easily be a 5-star location.

PROS 

Very nice small Montgomery County Park 

No reservation fee to make on-line reservations 

Reserved 137 days prior to arriving 

Entrance gate required entry code Instructed by staff via gate phone to proceed to campsite as check-in at camp store is at dead end with insufficient turning space for pickup towing 28ft bumper pull; complete check-in after camper was unhooked at site

 Great night sky viewing as no lights what so ever in camping loops except for toilet/shower buildings 

Lots of vegetation between sites providing privacy from neighbors 

Site#D69 shady 

Very quiet campground 

Site#D69 level side-to-side but we were forced to greatly elevate front of trailer to level front-to-back 

Site#D69 gravel parking pad 

Wooden/metal picnic table that was moveable 

Metal fire pit with cooking grate 

Toilet/shower facility very clean 

3 washers and 3 dryers, along with folding tables in the basement of the check-in building. Accepted credit card for $1.75/load 

Harper’s Ferry National Historical park 35 miles from Park 

Walmart and Wegman’s 5 miles from Park 

CONS 

Out-of-state campers pay higher camping fee than Maryland residents,$66/night 

No senior or veteran discount 

Trees falling on Park power lines caused power outage for hours 

No toilet/shower facility in FHU loop so had to hike to facilities in Loops B & E

No camp host 

No ranger patrolling thru campsite 

No WIFI 

1 bar Verizon

This is our second time here. This place is quiet the spaces are big. They can accommodate large campers,ours is 35 ft. Tent camping have big areas. Lost of nature trails.

Went here during the week and the tent sites where pretty empty. The facilities are well kept. My only complaint is I could here the traffic from the highway on the A loop. Otherwise my stay was quiet and pleasant.

Little Bennett has spacious RV and tent sites as well as cabins and yurts. It's very clean and well maintained. Lots of hiking within the park and many activities for kids. We were very impressed by their covid safety. Will be back!

We stayed at site D72 for 4 days. The sites are quiet, very spacious, level, and heavily wooded with 50A service, water and sewer hookup. D Loop is for RVs, A, B, C& E are tents only. AT&T 5 MB/s w/o booster(1 bar), 8 MB/s with it(2 bars). There is no satellite coverage due to the heavy tree canopy. OTA TV was descent using an external omni antenna. There is no WiFi. There is a very nice network of trails, most if not all were leashed dog friendly.

Only came through for a weekend but the sites were well maintained, and felt separated enough to have some privacy. Staff were amazing about maintaining safe conditions for campers. All possible precautions seemed to be taken.

I called for my reservation the lady hung up on me and was quite rude... i called back four times and they hung up on me twice, and never answered again. She wouldn’t give me her name.

We spent several nights here with kids aged 5-12 and will definitely come back. We live in Montgomery County and this is a nice camping get away close to home. We stayed in Loop E, where the majority of the campsites were set back a bit off the road, well spaced, and nicely shaded. We took a couple of walks through Loop A, and this seemed to be the case for those sites as well. We were a group of 5 and used 2 4-person tents. The tent sites all have a tent pad (great drainage during a downpour!) but the tent pad isn’t big enough for two tents. So beware if you intend to use two tents that most, but not all, of the tent sites seem to have a patch of level ground where a 2nd tent can be pitched. On Saturday there were fun activities for the kids all day (pedal cars, crafts, water balloon baseball, laser tag, to name a few from memory), with some activities also on Friday evening and Sunday morning. A fee is charged for some of these (laser tag and craft supplies) but most are free. There is a small arcade-style game room (with free wifi in the building) where we passed a rainy morning. Air hockey, table soccer, and a small basketball game could be played for free, but pool and the video games required $.25-1.00 per game. We used perhaps 5 miles in total of the hiking trails, doing loops down to the creek and back. They were all manageable for a 5-year old and the kids enjoyed playing in the stream in warm weather. We did see poison ivy at the edges of some trails. There is some distant ambient noise from 270 and overhead air traffic, but nothing too bad. If coming with kids, I would recommend bringing a playground ball and/or basketball so you can use the gaga pit or basketball courts even when no games are organized by camp staff. Also note that there was no ice in the camp store for the duration of our stay, but ice can be bought at the Liberty gas station and the small Clarksburg Grocery, both about a mile from the campground.

Update after also staying in Loop A several times: I might just be imagining it, but the tent pads seem bigger in Loop A. We we able to jigsaw our two 4-person tents and a single on the pad in site 6. Poison ivy noticed in the site, camp staff brought us gloves to take care of it and a free bundle of firewood by way of apology.

My family loves this camp ground. It’s conveniently located, it’s quite, it’s beautiful and there is plenty to do to keep the kids busy.

For a quick getaway that isn't far, Little Bennett is a great campground.

The staff is very helpful (they were great about helping me aid a lost 6 year old in finding his father).  They've got nice hiking trails, an adequate camp store (with a milkshake machine), a jumping pillow and other activities for kids. They even do outdoor movies. 

The campground is easily accessible in case you need to run out for forgotten supplies. Campsites are spacious and bathrooms, etc. are nearby.

Perfect for anyone, especially families.

Brought our 5 and 7 year old kids here on a Dad’s weekend. Camping sites are standard and well spaced out. Bathroom facilities were very clean and I’d say even better maintained than most. Kids love this place because of the other activities like laser tag and the cart track. I wondered why a camp site needs these things and the fact is they don’t. But when I ask which camp site my kids had the most fun at, they said Little Bennet because of the activities. We prefer hiking as a family and staying away from crowds and this camp site wasn’t crowded or felt busy. It’s a quick drive from NOVA but just far enough where you feel away from it all.

I don’t think they need to show movies at night. Live music or something more interactive like a bon fire would help elevate the experience.

Quiet woods in Maryland about 30 or 40 miles north of DC. Tenting, and RV spots partial to full service. Just of hiway 270. pricey ($66/night) for a state park, but nice.

Jumping pillow, pedal carts, weekend activities, camp store and outlets 10 min away. Wal-Mart 15 min away. Ice sold on location. Staff very friendly. Bathrooms kept clean.

They girls that register you are nice but don’t seem to understand much about rvs. This place is packed on weekends and so far we’ve had to move our 37’ motorhome 4 times. Our first space was too short and sloping to get level plus the sewer drain pipe was higher than our hose. What flows uphill? The pull through space next to us was occupied by a small travel trailer and had tons of extra room. Our next space was ok but had to move out for weekend reservations. D loop is set up with water electric and sewer, all new including several spaces just dug out less than 2weeks ago. We were assigned a space in A loop (best for tents or small TT) that we couldn’t possibly fit in finally was able to change to a space we could squeeze into for a couple days of dry camping and now we’re back in D loop were we can barely fit the rv and car has to be crosswise. This campground is apparently owned and run by Montgomery County MD. It is galling to pay so much money for a site to be shuffled around and put into unfit spaces. Weekends are noisy way past 10 pm with kids etc. plus the interstate traffic noise. On the plus side it is wooded and sites are not too close together. On the minus side the bathrooms are horrifically dirty. They have some sort of excuse but that just isn’t good enough. The shower curtains are moldy vinyl that could be replaced for a few bucks each. The fixtures are moldy also and live and dead spiders and insects inhabit the corners. The only place to put your dry clothes and towels is on a questionable bench about 10 feet from the shower stall and closed off from the sink area by a dirty shower curtain that doesn’t go all the way across so basically you have to run around naked in sight of anyone that comes in. Each loop has only 2 showers plus the privacy issue. We are only here because we have family business to attend to.

we visited in June 2017 at which time this park only had primitive sites or electric sites. the price is expensive for a state park. while the sites were a nice size, the amenities are limited by amount and by time. jumping pillow and pedal cars are only open at certain hours. there is no swimming pool or lake. this campground is very close to DC and lots of shopping and Clarksburg upscale outlets.

we stayed here in july of 2017 and july of 2016 to go to dc cause its only a few min drive to the metro stop they have jump pellow for the kids and peddle cars very fun nice wooded sights just with they had full hookups only electric

Great campground. A bit pricey, but has a full hookup loop. Other loops are tent only. Wonderful bath house. Lots of stuff to do.

This is a good regional campground with activities for kids on special days. Took our grand daughter there for her first camping trip and she loved the bouncing strawberry and the hikes. She was 3 or 4 at the time. Family stays there when coming into town as it’s convenient (but, also one one in the area). We also regularly hike with a group in and around this park as the trails are good and well maintained.

Little Bennett is a great little park in Montgomery County. It's easy to access, has nice facilities, and has some good trails to explore as well.

It's a great place for families to camp together- there are playgrounds and picnic areas that make it a little easier to keep everyone happy and entertained. It's not a place for hardcore wilderness campers, but it's a solid place to spend a night and roast some marshmallows!

Nice grounds and tent pad. Ample camp site size. Just right next to a neighborhood