Best Tent Camping near Island Heights, NJ

Atsion Family Campground

Off US 206 and about 1/2 a mile up Atsion Road in New Jersey’s Wharton State Forest, you’ll find the Atsion Family Campground. The facility is run by the Dept of Environmental Protection and offers Tent, Trailer and Group Sites. There are also Cabins for rent as well, but only available during the summer months, After Memorial Day until October. AFC is one of several campgrounds in WSF and is the largest with 50 camping sites. Amenities include a handicapped accessible restroom/shower building, several drinking water spigots, and a waste dump for trailers. There are no electric hook ups and cell service is low, but manageable. Plenty of sun (shady too) so bring your solar powered generators and cell signal boosters if you need to stay connected. AFC is also pet friendly, so bring your 4 legged furry family members, after registering them with the camp site.

The individual sites are spacious with a pic-nick table and fire ring grill. Some sites have lake-side water access, so bring your canoes and kayaks and reserve these sites (4, 8, 10, 12, 20 and 22) early as they are popular. The ground is sandy and relatively level for easy camp set up. Some sites are close to a roadway, so you do get some car noise, and like all unmonitored camp sites, loud, unruly campers can be lurking among the pines. Be sure to get your fire wood from the guy that lives across the street from the campground entrance. 5 bucks, on the honor system, a good amount of wood, open 24/7.

Nearby is the Atsion Recreation Area, which offers fishing, walking, biking and horseback trails, a life guard monitored beach by the lake with restrooms and snacks (Summer Months). Only 15 minutes away, a quick drive, is Batso Village, an old iron and glass community from the late 1700s to early 1900s. NJ State Park Rangers are working hard keeping the area clean, rehabilitated, and educational center allowing you to walk through the old buildings and time as you image what life was like back then. Wharton SF is huge, over 122,000 acres of sandy terrain, towering pine trees, lakes/rivers and off roading trails!! Y’all should come and play in the Pine Barrens

I stayed at Cheesequake at the beginning of August and had a very positive experience.

Campsite

Campsites are fully shaded and include a picnic table, fire ring, and hook to hang food supplies from (away from wildlife). The site was well kept and clean - I didn't have to look hard to find a nice secluded space for my tent.

Each site is separated from its neighbors by a small (about 5-10 foot) forested area, and are deep enough that you can pitch your tent away from the road and have some privacy.

The park is bisected by the Garden State Parkway. While the campsite is fairly well protected from highway noise, you're still going to hear it at least a little.

Amenities

The bathroom and shower facility is older and has limited stalls, but I didn't have any issues with lines or finding time to use it. They're closed for about an hour in the early morning.

Potable water is available at the bathroom and showers.

The lake has a small beach and swimming area, and a concession stand. On Friday the beach was pretty quiet, it was closed on Saturday due to water conditions however.

Access

The park is about 2 miles from the nearest train station and can be accessed on foot, but it may be difficult with camping gear. I took the train to the station and a rideshare the rest of the way to the entrance. The campsite is about a mile from the park entrance so it's easier overall to drive, but not required. Bringing a bike to travel within the park would be a good idea.

I have stayed here many times over the years, usually for a long weekend.  Longer trips were spent there with my parents when I was a kid.   I prefer the south shore campsites to the north shore.  The sites on the south shore offer a little more privacy and aren't as crammed.  I'm particularly fond of the dog friendly loop, its a newer loop and the bathrooms are more modern than the others scattered around. 

We have also stayed in the camping shelters a few times and a cabin once.    The shelters offer no frills sleeping quarters with two bunks beds, so four beds and closet/pantry on both sides in the rear for food and gear, a wooden table in and pot belly stove for warmth or a one pot meal in the front room.  Bathrooms are in a separate building across the road and are shared with the other shelters occupants.  The exterior includes a fire pit, picnic table and a fire ring for larger meal prep.

The cabins are a two steps above the shelter with a full kitchen and bathroom with shower, but otherwise rustic, with three sets of bunk beds, a wooden table and two Adirondack chairs in front of a fire place.  The screened in porch at the rear of the cabin overlooks the lake and has plenty of room for camp chairs.   There is also a picnic table and a charcoal grill outside.

The beach is home to the cleanest, most wonderful lake I have ever set foot  in.  There are picnic tables and grills scattered all around the beach near the parking lot and it does get crowded in the summer months.  There is also a concession stand open in the summer months, serving light fare -- burgers, dogs, ice cream, soda & chips.

There are 20 tent sites spread across four loops. There is NO beach access. Some sites have shelters, others do not. Pay attention when reserving. All sites have a fire pit and picnic table. Sites are walk-in (only about¼ mile) and carts are available to haul gear. Two water spigots and bathrooms with flush toilets are also on-premise. No electric, hook-ups, or showers. The nearby beaches have outdoor shower facilities though. The racoons are fierce. They will eat through your tent. Use the bear lockers provided to store anything scented. 

Activities abound: hit the beaches for (non-motorized) water sports or sunbathing (Gunnison is the nude beach), learn about the military history of the area on an NPS tour, visit the oldest working lighthouse in the US, walk or bike the multi-use trails, go birding, and more! Nearby Hartshorne Woods Park (Monmouth County Park System) has great hiking and mountain bike trails too.

Wharton State Forest has a few primitive campgrounds, which is what I'm looking for. I try to stay away from campgrounds with electrical hookups, because the sound of generators is not exactly the serenity of nature I'm looking for.

This is a review for GOSHEN POND campground, which you can reserve online. Goshen Pond isn't actually a pond, but actually just a very wide, slow moving section of the Mullica River. It's kayakable and canoe-able, but very shallow and swampy, so it doesn't make for good swimming. The Pine Barrens has a fascinating ecology - the ground is very sandy and nutrient-poor, which means that it suits fast-growing pines which live a short life and then die. The constant decay of trees in the area causes the copious amounts of rivers in Wharton State Forest to have a signature brown color. Just want to point it out - it's still clean and lovely, but not very clear.

The benefits to this Pine Barren ecology is that it makes for almost perfect camping. The ground is always very soft and sandy, which makes for comfortable sleeping. It's noticeably NOT rocky. It also means that there's always plenty of kindling available for collecting.

The GOSHEN POND camping area is great. Each campsite has room for 1-2 tents, and a fire ring. I personally prefer some privacy when I camp, and some of the sites offer this and some don't. There are some sites that the reservation site lists as RV sites, but they are rarely used by RVs and are actually the most secluded, so I would recommend them for tent camping as well. Site 3 is nice and private, and site 7 has the best view and easiest access to the pond. Avoid the sites in the center circuit of the map - they're very close together.

GOSHEN POND campground is connected to two equestrian trails, which make for great hiking. In your plans, keep in mind that Wharton State Forest is very flat, so you'll likely be able to cover a lot of ground much more quickly than you would on mountainous terrain.

There is a parking area, and the sites are variable distances from those areas. The RV sites will allow you to pull up directly to your campsite, but the rest of the tent sites are short walks away. You certainly don't need to plan for a backpacking adventure, but keep in mind that you won't have immediate access to your car.

There is a water pump near the parking area, and pit toilets. There are no flushing toilets, which I prefer at a campsite.

In review, the pros to GOSHEN POND are:

1. Soft, flat sleeping surfaces
2. Easy access to hiking trails and a kayakable "pond" that connects to the Mullica River system.
3. Plenty of kindling in the area.
4. Quiet and remote-feeling.
5. Some sites are very private.
6. Dogs allowed.
7. Water available.

Some downsides to GOSHEN POND:

1. No picnic table at any site, nor seating around the ring. I recommend bringing camp chairs and either a cooler to be a food prep surface or a folding table.
2. MOSQUITOS. Holy crap. Goshen Pond is nearly stagnant, so it is a breeding ground for mosquitos. I came back looking like a leper. I'm going back this weekend, and am investing in some 97% deet bug repellent and a mosquito net for my campsite.
3. Soot. Don't know what this is about, but at campsite 3, where I stayed the last time, there was a ton of soot in the soil, which just stuck to everything. You would wash yourself, and then be black with soot moments later. We eventually just succumbed to the soot and allowed ourselves to be dirty, but it was an annoyance. In the pictures, you can see the effect of it on my (normally) white dog.

Overall, I will definitely be returning to Goshen Pond and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in a primitive campsite that truly feels like it's away from everything.

Flat ground, sand, dirt, moss, leaves. Enough space for 2-3 tents. Lots of trees for hammocks. Wheelchair accessible picnic table. Fire ring. First time I have seen roaches in the wild. Water spigot down the road a bit. Close campsites, no privacy. Close to the parkway, constant road noise. Okay bathrooms, flush toilets, sinks, showers, electric outlet. Payphone!? Playground. Campground sells firewood.

This campground was not my first choice. I would rather be in more secluded mountainous campsites. The upside to being so close to the parkway is that there are convenience stores nearby if you forget something. Campground sells firewood, they leave it outside the park office so you can pick it up whenever, Do they leave it out overnight? Would be great to know when I roll in after office hours Friday night straight from work. I was unnerved by the cockroaches, both in the bathrooms and at the campsites at night. I was afraid to bring them home, but they weren't evident when I packed up. My noisy neighbors were bothersome, until I realized I forgot my phone charging cord and they let me borrow one! Rained Friday during the day, so the ground was wet all weekend, but no puddles. Got a bit of a sunburn because I forgot cloudy days are deceptive. Otherwise, I had a nice time hanging out(literally, I love hammocks) at the campsite the whole weekend, journaling, reading, and listening to music.