Best Tent Camping near Paul Smiths, NY

Another KOA that’s reliably good. Very big, very full campground, but the tent sites are nicely dispersed

Great campsite!

Lots of tent sites and 2 lean-to.

2 privy.

Near the river and a huge falls too.

Campsite is FREE (but entry is 10$ day)

Beautiful destination! Take a walk up the path next to the chasm. So relaxing listening to the water falls. Great place to watch the sunset! Make sure you bring a light jacket in the summer, the evenings can still get chilly from time to time. If you are camping here in the fall, check out Rulfs orchard for some apple picking. Fillion's diner is amazing and super reasonable pricing. 

You can rent a cabin if you don't want to camp in a tent. Nice way to stay away from mosquitoes and black flies. Tons of activities to do here: hiking, biking, walking, disc golf, etc.

This site has good tent sites that are separate from RV area and rental cabins. Very reasonable rates and friendly staff, also showers on site tho they're a bit rustic. Great experience; if you tent, try to grab a spot on the outer ring for a quieter time, larger space and better views

Adirondacks scenery, camping along the lake. Trail access from campground. Swim & boat on site. Modern but basic state park. Some tent sites nicely private. Close to rt 87, convenient stop on the way to or from Canada from NYC.

If you like history this is a great spot to camp, when exploring.  Just don't expect privacy. That said the views are wonderful.  The sites all have fire rings, tent sites don't have anything else.  RV sites do offer full hookups.  The access into the site is paved.  There is a trash house and bathhouse on the grounds.

Rollins Pond was the perfect tent-camping campground for our first trip to the Adirondacks. It was generally quiet Memorial Day weekend, and we were able to snag a lakeside site with plenty of trees and space for our tent, SUV, and more. The campground is hilly, so we drove to the nearby showers and garbage. The only drawbacks were the campground’s boathouse doesn’t open until June/July, which was not mentioned on the website, so we weren’t able to rent kayaks to use on the pond. There are no dishwashing sinks at the bathrooms.

Spent 3 days, 2 nights here from a Wednesday-Friday. Very large and busy campground, close to Lake Placid and other cool activities to take in. Pros- hot showers, convenient laundromat, you are guided to your site by staff on golf carts. Cons- tent sites aren’t given much privacy, on the days we stayed we were put very close to the main building when we requested a spot near the back away from the busy area, kids allowed to run and yelling and screaming WELL after quiet hours.

Cranberry Lake is a fantastic place to get away from it all. It really has so much to offer. Many of the sites offer quite a bit of privacy from your neighbor, and are laid out nicely for tent camping. We go there to kayak so it’s also nice that there are a lot of water front sites. If hiking is your thing, there’s a nice trail right within the campground. It’s not a terribly long hike, but it takes you up to a spectacular view of the lake and islands. Bonus points for the campground being within 30 minutes of two breweries (Tupper Lake) 👍🏻

The grounds: This place looks like the place to be, great facilities (with real flush toilets near the beach), and great grassy sites which met of are in the shade! Very close to many different things (Montreal, Burlington, Lake Placid) and the beach is very clean and beautiful. There is a pump station for RVs but a lot of tent camping as well.

The Belt: This belt is great, I love croaky belts in general, they are colorful and very sturdy. The design is great and they keep the pants up or give a splash of color to my outfits (when I wear them a little higher up. The colors are so pretty with the blues and are interesting to look at. Love that there are no holes, so it will not rip overtime. 5 out of 5 for sure!

50 sites, full hookup ($40), water& electric ($35) and tent ($??). Has the feel of an RV park with three rows of sites plus some more (I think the tent sites) closer to the road. Not much separation between sites. The lucky ones get beachfront sites with unobstructed views; we were in the second row. The beach was closed for the season when we were there; the campground is open May- September and an on-site caretaker is there the entire five months. Gorgeous sunsets. Coin-operated showers($1 for approximately 15 minutes)– did not use so cannot say how they were. Playground. Clean restroom but the women's only had one operable stall. Although there was a hot water spigot, I was not able to coax any hot(or even warm) water out of it. No defined quiet hours but it was very quiet by 8:30 pm.

This campground is lovely! The tent sites are spacious and feel somewhat private considering how large the campground is. The bathrooms are well maintained and kept clean. The showers don’t run out of hot water, which is an issue common to many other campgrounds I’ve stayed at. The staff are responsive and accommodating. There is a small restaurant on-site in the lodge and while their menu is simple they take care to accommodate guests. I have a severe food allergy and they made sure my food was made safely. The only downsides I’d give are the price and the size of the campground - just because it’s so large it does feel a little less private than staying at one of the smaller family owned places around. It’s still wonderful though and I would book again without hesitation.

There’s no explaining the views around here. The mountains are beautiful, Lake Placid is beautiful, and this campsite is amazing. It’s pretty secluded, and from what others have said.. yes, beware of the roads coming in. 40MPH is too fast for these torn up roads. The campsite itself is great. They have cabins, lean-tos, and tent sites. My boyfriend and I braved the 12° nights and pitched a tent. There were a lot of campers, but the sites are spaced out and people were very respectful of noise/lights/other campers. I was bummed out to see no wildlife, but we did see a moose print on the hike up Mount Marcy!! (Unfortunately I only made it about 3/4 of the way and had to come back down. Not in amazing shape, but working on it 😂)

This is really one of my favorite spots. The Adirondack Loj is warm and inviting. The facilities are clean and well kept. I will FOR SURE be visiting again soon.

We travel in a 17-foot camper van, but no one ever believes that we are no bigger than a standard cargo van and can easily fit in a regular size parking space. Upon arrival at Ausable Chasm, we were told we had to take a site with water and electric since we had a camper van. These sites were $13 more per night and we really did not need the hookups. We were finally able to convince the staff that we could take a standard tent site, which was more than big enough. 

The road through the campground is dirt and rutted but the speed limit is 5 mph, so it wasn’t that bad, but it would be a mess if it was raining. 

Bathrooms and shower rooms are individual rooms, but the doors are not labeled so it’s a game of “what’s behind door number 1?”  There was no light in the shower room that I looked at so a night shower would be out of the question. The bathrooms were clean and had soap, paper towels, a garbage receptacle, and a mirror in each. 

Lots of ant hills throughout the campground so be cautious where you set up a tent. Each site has a picnic table and a fire ring. Large and nice-looking playground, pool, volleyball net, disc golf and mountain biking/hiking trails. It also looked like there were cross country ski trails but not sure if the campground or cabins would be open in the winter. 

Biggest advantage is that Ausable Chasm(a separate business) is directly across the street from the campground and it is very close to the ferry that will take you to Burlington, VT, our next destination.

Campground Review: Lakeshore camping! Beautiful little peninsula where you can watch the sunrise/set. Lovely in autumn. Good birding, water activities, sunsets, geology/gorge, short easy forest hikes, beach walking, all the good stuff you expect from this part of New York. Most of the site is off limits because of wildlife preserve, still a lot to explore. Good as base camp for a few days in the area. Get the tents sites near the lake! Popular for day use area (picnics, birthday parties, etc). Stay here and you can say you camped in Peru! (Lots of upstate NY towns are named for countries.)

Gear Review: As a The Dyrt Ranger I receive products to test and review. I won the Crazy Creek Air Chair Plus in a campground review contest in June 2016. I had been thinking of purchasing both a camp chair (for camping) and an air mattress (for camping & backpacking), as on my last few trips I got pretty sick of sitting on my closed-cell foam mat and a recent knee injury was making me rethink my open-cell foam ultralight sleeping pad. Well, this Crazy Creek Air Chair Plus does both and does them both well. It starts out as a camp chair (adjustable angle, typical back height) and flips open to a full size air pad made by Klymit. Sounds great right? I flew to NY for a whirlwind family/business/camping trip soon after receiving the chair and had ample opportunities to try it sleeping on friends’ floors and in tents. The chair portion was super comfortable, way better than any simple camp chairs I’d used. I was nervous about sitting on more rugged surfaces (I’m just paranoid about inflatables!) but so far so good. You can also flip open the bed part while you're sitting and have an extended leg rest to protect against hot sand or dirt. The conversion to the sleeping pad was simple. It inflates fairly easily, but at high altitude after a long day of hiking you might be a little annoyed puffing it all up. Sleeping on it was great: my knee and back were happier than with my open-cell foam mats (similar to the typical Thermarest). The one issue I had was that there’s a big dip/joint where the mattress flips out in the conversion from chair to bed---it’s not really that intrusive but I guess my side-sleeping and height (5’4”) conspired to annoy me a bit. Also the R value is very low (it’s not insulting) just like every other air pad but in the summer that’s fine with me. All the other aspects of sleeping on it were similar to other pads I’ve used (it’s kind of narrow, your bag will slide around a bit, etc). Doesn’t pack down too small & isn’t ultralight, but you could remove the chair aspect to help with that. In sleeping mode it’s 20” wide, 70” long, 2.5” thick, 2 lb 13 oz (according to packaging). So while this is my very first camp chair and air mattress, I’m really happy with it after 7 nights sleeping on it and many hours in the chair. It’s not gimmicky at all!

PS: Can you tell I’m way more picky about gear than campsites? :)