The best camping near
Sayles Village , NORTH CAROLINA

My wife and I stayed at the shelter while doing a backpacking loop in the smokies. We started at Newfound gap and followed the AT north towards Charlie's Bunion then headed down to the shelter at the split. The views along the ridge are incredible and this is some of the best hiking in the area. I highly recommend this loop and the distance works out nicely for a single night. The shelter itself is nothing too special but has all the amenities of the shelters in the area. There is a bear cable set up so you can hang your gear and multiple fire pits along with a fireplace in the shelter itself for very cold nights. Normally you are required to stay within the shelter but due to COVID concerns, you are temporarily allowed to set up a tent in the area surrounding the shelter. This was a nice option and there were already several established sites. Overall it's not as nice a view as you get staying up on the ridge but it's a quieter area with more privacy and will probably have more space available if you need to book last minute.

Paris mountain is a beautiful setting. Lots of bikers use the park. The campground is nice except lots of the spots are not level. The sites are nice otherwise. Bathhouse is nice and clean. Several easy hiking trails around which we did with our older dogs. They did fine and loved it. No sewer hookup but a dump station available. The area is so beautiful that I would definitely use this park Again.

Beautiful spot next to the river. The downside was the bathrooms/showers were really gross. Otherwise it was a good campground.

We camped here back in August and had a blast! We brought our two dogs and they also had a great time. This site is very dog friendly (obviously), with many sites having their own fenced in yards. We opted for a site without a fence, which we regretted once we got there. The gravel at our site was painful for our dog’s feet and they had a hard time walking on it. The dog parks made up for this! There are multiple large dog parks located at the campground. The restrooms were awesome, but are single person use only. We felt like we were the only ones using them (that’s how well maintained they were). Campsites are close together but we didn’t mind. The staff was great, they helped us find our site and even helped us back our camper in. There was power and water hookup at each site. There is tons of stuff to do around the area too. Chimney Rock and Lake Lure are right around the corner and SO FUN.

My husband and I, along with our 2 dogs, stayed at Rutledge Lake RV Resort for 1 night in our Mercedes Sprinter campervan. We prefer to make our reservations online, and found it a bit odd that they actually use a third party booking site that only submits a request to book so we didn't have a confirmed booking until mid-morning the day of our arrival. They also don't offer guaranteed site numbers so you don't know your site until you arrive. In addition, we found out after we arrived that due to the temps we were not supposed to use the water connections. We found it to be to be an extremely expensive reservation, especially given the inability to use the hookups we had purchased. For reference, we paid$68 for one night and had just completed a 4 night stay at another park for$74 total. While the lake was pretty, the sites are very narrow and there is zero privacy. There's also a fair bit of road noise as well. There don't seem to be a ton of great options in the Asheville area and since we needed WiFi in the morning for my husband's work meeting, we opted to stay here, but we wouldn't choose to stay here again in the future. For campers that like lots of amenities, perhaps this is a great fit, but it just wasn't worth it for us. I think it's also worth mentioning that in trying to use the key card the automatic gate dropped on the front of our vehicle, and then in order to park close enough to the hookups my husband hit a post when opening the driver's door.

My husband and I have been camping in the Smokies and surrounding areas for years. This is our favorite spot. Much quieter than the other campgrounds in the park. Several wonderful hikes right out of the campground.

Park is ok for overnight stay, if traveling, the best thing about the park was the riverside sites. Interstate traffic was loud, WiFi wasn’t strong enough to connect to, no amenities other than the bath houses (we didn’t use) & walking trail that apparently ran along most of the length of the road,sites were muddy (due to all the rain) when you come off the interstate you have to make a extremely hard right to get into park, not possible with a big rig…had to go up to the office/shop and turn around.

…each season offers a different experience. We take kayaks in Spring and Summer.

We didn’t know what to expect when we reserved our campsite at Mama Gertie’s but we were blown away! We stayed in the upper campground which required a drive up a steep road from the lower to upper sites - but it was absolutely worth the trip. Stunning views of the Blue Ridge and Smoky Mountains plus great facilities. There is a bathhouse and laundry facility in the center of the upper campground plus full hookups at each site. There are a number of pull through sites that also get their own porch and porch swing right on the edge of the mountain. We had a back-in site with great views of the mountains. Still our overall favorite campground - and the city of Asheville is a blast too.

Be prepared for an encyclopedia of reading all the rules. I found the yurts and cabins to be way too close together for any type of privacy. Maybe they have it set up that way for big groups to come in at once? But it was so noisy with kids and dogs echoing in the valley, and we could even hear the neighboring cabins talking while sitting around their campfire. I suppose if I was there with a group of close friends it would be okay but it seems with all the land they have that they could have given each person more privacy in their spaces. One more thing that may help is we hiked all of the trails and noticed in several places there were 3-4 inch protrusions where small trees where cut down but not cut all the way back to the ground and I almost sprained my ankle. They all did spray paint some of the roots and had the trails nice and cleared but the exposed ends of the small trees throughout the trail are a real hazard. I’m super fit and have good eyesight and hike a lot so I was able to dodge many of them but I’m sure the kids and the older adults may get hurt. Other than the close proximity of the cabins/yurts/RVs and the exposed tree stubs I think they have a great concept (for large group events) and we enjoyed our stay. One more thing the shower handle falls off in the small yurt.