Paul B. Johnson State Park Campground

We spent Christmas Holiday in this Beautiful Mississippi State Park,  we have family in the area so instead of Hotels we bring the motorhome down and spend the week here! The park is clean the lake is wonderful and the folks that manage the property are Great look forward to next year!!

Keith and Barbara

Merry Christmas

Paul B Johnson State Park in Mississippi is a great place to get away and enjoy the outdoors! They have a splash pad for the kids and a disc golf course! Definitely recommend! 

Paul B

We camped in the Primitive area and enjoyed it very much.  With areas fairly secluded but close enough to the rv'ers you have best of both seclusion and community. 

Paul B.

Easy to reserve a primitive spot. You can be up close and personal with your neighbors or tucked back into the woods by yourself. Showers, toilets, and washing facilities are available near by. Boating, swimming and fishing. All in all a good park for families or singles..

PBJ is a fun place for all

We camped on the lake. We enjoyed the large size of the park, he lake, and surroundings. Clos enough to town, but far enough out. The spots are a good size, but hold out for a lake spot!

Their “Camp store” doesn’t have much, just ice, Wood, and propane. Come prepared!

The lake is a good size with options for fishing or watersports.

Lakeside camping

We stayed here for a couple of nights and wished we could have stayed longer because there is so much to do.  The park is set amongst tall trees giving it that nice outdoorsy feel.  The weekend we were there in November was jammed packed but it seems to clear out during the week when kids go back to school.  There were lots of people aimlessly driving around in golf carts, kids running through our site, and plenty of loud music.  A weekday stay would be more out thing as some of the weekend campers were pretty obnoxious.

  

We were camping with some friends and we both have 45' RVs so we picked two side by side pull-thrus.  However, all those pull-thru sites were super close together and right on top of the people on each side of us.  We decided to go find other back-in sites and were glad we did because it gave us more room between sites and we had a great lake view.  Our site was level but not all in the park are.  All the utilities worked well and we were able to get tv over our antenna and our Verizon phone and internet worked great. 

  

We did a small amount of hiking on a very nice, easy trail.  We were only sorry we didn't have time to paddle in the lake and explore more of the park.

Great lake view, lots of recreational opportunities

We have heard great things about Paul B. Johnson for years, even before we began our own camping adventures. It was definitely a campground we were excited to check out, so we booked a long weekend getaway with the promise of beautiful spring weather. Unfortunately, our trip here was cut short due to a family emergency, but we were able to scope things out for future adventures. 

It was a bit of a trek from our home on a work night, so we arrived after dark at site 67. This campground does not lock up at night, so this was not a major issue. We entered the campground through what we later learned was a back entrance off of Geiger Lake Road, so we didn’t check in until the next morning at the visitor center. The sites were not well marked with numbers, so we had to drive around a time or two to locate our site (with me occasionally getting out of the truck to read the site numbers painted in yellow on the road). The main entrance to the park has a much “fancier” building than the back entrance and leads you to drive over a spillway (which is TOTALLY safe, so no worries). The roads in the campground are narrow, two-lane roads but are not conducive to two RVs passing one another. We had to get off of the road for others to pass. 

Our site was lakeside on a hill leading down to a pier that jutted into the lake. It also had a grill and wooden picnic table that was movable. Having full hook up was nice! However, the connections were quite spread out with the water pretty far back from the other connections at this site (we needed two water hoses). There was no dedicated fire ring but there was evidence of camp fires, so we just cleared a space and set up our chairs. However, some sites had a metal fire ring and concrete picnic tables. Lower numbered sites are older with newer sites being those in the 100s. The newer sites are more level and have concrete pads instead of asphalt pavement. However, the views aren’t nearly as nice. Site 16 is next to a pier that leads to an island (super cool but everyone can access that, so you’d lose privacy). Many sites have decks, but that really sacrifices “yard space” if that’s an important factor for you. Some sites we were interested in for our next visit included 71 and 84, but we really loved site 67 and would give it another go for a future visit. 

Camp Shelby is nearby, so you’ll hear various noises from that (not overly distracting but I wish I would have known before arriving). There is a splash pad, lake swimming, and several picnic areas near the visitor center that would be awesome for kids and families when the weather is warmer. There are so many species of birds if you enjoy bird watching like we do. We enjoyed watching geese and ducks on Geiger Lake in the morning. There’s also a nature trail that we didn’t get to check out. The views from our camper were beautiful at Paul B, and we would love to visit this campground again soon! 

Beauty to Behold at Paul B

We had site on the water, very relaxing. We rented canoes to canoe lake, ride bikes on paved roads, geocaching and hiking. Playgrounds for kids too. 

Nature

We had the good fortune of finding this gem as an overnight waypoint on a recent trip to Florida. We found an asphalt pad with full hookups overlooking Lake Geiger for our Sprinter Camper van. Friendly staff. Good value. Primitive sites were still closed. The park features the Lake set in a tall pine forest and was near capacity but did not feel crowded or loud. We were only sorry that we did not budget enough time to enjoy all this place has to offer. We will not make that mistake next time!

Pleasantly surprised 

We’ve camped here often and have always been happy. It gets crowded on popular weekends so book early. There is something for everyone. Park staff are second to none and quick to respond if a problem arises.

One of favorites

Went the weekend they opened in 2020 after a brief COVID shutdown. Full of families having a great time getting away. Really nice campground. We will return.

Family 

Please understand. This is my personal opinion.   Pads were mostly small with biggish drop off from steps to camper usable site. Not my favorite. Every COE site we have been to beats this.  

Personally , I will  not be stopping here again

We do Paul B. every spring &amp; fall for the weekend. Beautiful view of the lake from some campsites. Have a campfire every night. Bathrooms with hot shower available. Lake has some boat traffic, but not too bad. Great place to bring the kayaks. Overall A+ in my book!

Very nice campground

The park was rather large and nice camping spots. Located on a massive lake and two 18 hole disc golf courses.  We managed to make our way down the weekend of an ice storm and the park rangers made their rounds making sure everybody was okay and had plenty of firewood.

Friendly Staff and beautiful landscape

You can tell this was a good park in its hey day. Those days are gone. Staff are all very unorganized. People on golf carts speeding around sites are packed together (depending which area you're in). Doesn't look like the park had had proper maintenance in 15-20 years. 

Used to be a good park 

We have camped here in tents and in our travel trailer and this place is great for both!  Spots are spread out for the most part and have picnic tables, grills and some have fire rings.

The lake is nice in the summer for fishing and swimming, but if you’re looking for a large boating area this ain’t it. 

If you want to just get out and chill, then this is the spot. What we like about Paul B is that if you have a group of friends, you can probably get a bunch of spots in the same area and take over a section of the park and hang out all weekend nearby.

Easy to chill out and relax!

I did my first overnight camp to test out my gear and setup on my own. Hwy 49, the main road leading to the State Park is under construction, but I was still able to enter the park without issues. On the day I went you had to use the honor system and paid $17.00 for primitive tent camping. As I rode through the park, I took note of how clean it was and had restrooms sprinkled about along with dumpsters. I explored the primitive area before deciding on a spot. I picked a spot that had a clear view of the lake to take advantage of the wind coming off the lake. I cooked up dinner and collected some wood laying on the ground and made a campfire, in the fire ring that was made by the Boy Scouts, it was marked with their troop number. After the fire died down, I went inside the tent to dose off. I was awoken to some banging noise and men talking. I assumed that they were setting up their camp a few spots from me. They finally calmed down and I went back to sleep. In the morning I tore down camp and packed it up on my bike but before riding off I went to see what the deal was with the banging last night, to find that the men were actually striping wire and left a huge mess. On the way out I spotted a grounds worker and told them about the incident. It must have been a big deal, because I saw 3 Law enforcement vehicles headed that way on the way out of the park.

Clean and beautiful camp ground

Some sites are level &amp; others not so much but not bad. Some areas of the park have recently been upgraded while others are def’ly do for renovation. Ask before reserving if this matters to you.

Beautiful setting on the lake.

Beautiful, peaceful lake. We were only there for one night passing thru. Only saw people fishing on the lake so I don’t know if they allow any other water activities. We never used the (or even saw) the bathhouse so I can’t report on that. This is an older park. It could use a little TLC but over all you can tell it’s pretty well kept as far as maintenance goes. Grass is maintained and everything looks very neat and cared for. We had a beautiful lakefront spot and look forward to coming back for a longer visit. 

Serene 

Ok so I just tent camped here this past weekend in June. When I got to my campsite there was still trash everywhere. Mainly charcoal coals dumped next to the picnic table loaded with cigarettes. There was no fire ring so you could basically start a fire anywhere which I thought was strange. My neighbors were fine but there are no rules on what people can do. Trucks with boat trails were all over the place and most halfway on the road. I was fine driving around but I couldn’t imagine pulling a trailer through it.  No camp store so that was a bummer. The registration office was so old and smelly I didn’t want to be in there. Not that there was much to it. The bathrooms were ok. Not dirty but old and hot. 
What I did like was the night sky. I saw lots of stars. Riding my bike around. Lots of roads for cruising.  If you have a boat air Jets skis you would like this better. It just wasn’t for me. 