Best Tent Camping near Athens, OH

We loved the location of Campbell Coves to Old Man’s Cave and hiking trails. We do a family trip to the area every fall and this will be our go-to location. We've already booked for fall 2021. We stayed in one of the rustic cabins. With other family members bringing their RVs. The bathroom facilities were some of the nicest and cleanest we’ve experienced. My parents had an RV site overlooking the lake. I wouldn’t tent camp there. The tent sites were all in the same area with no division from each other. They are expanding and can’t wait to see those offerings.

This campground is managed by Hocking College and is about 10 minutes from Athens and Ohio University. There are many nice campsites, but there are also a lot that are steep, small and/or nothing but dirt. The lake is great for fishing, boating, swimming and they have a new water park featuring inflatable swing, slide and other features. The lifeguards are great and proactive about issues. Best deal going, after 5pm it's just $5 per swimmer. Our kids like it a lot. It is right off of a 4 lane highway, but noise is minimal. Athens has lots of places to eat, and many festivals occur at Lake Snowden, including the Paw Paw Festival. Get here early to find a good site. We have camped here in tents, a pop up and our travel trailer. Popular with local horse riders. Playground has a kid sized wooden train and a large tower/swing set. The shower house in the upper camping area is functional, but dated and usually messy, although they do clean it often.

Tent sites are on a steep uneven hill, we had site 4. Tent sites are super close, we can hear our neighbors perfectly as if they were talking to us. Only a few feet between each site. Map showed we would be right next to the lake, this is incorrect, lake is not accessible or even visible from campsite.

Tent camped on a non-electric site in early May.  Great campground.  Clean, relatively quiet, and great bathrooms.  The camp sites are right off one of the main trails in the park, so very easy to get out for a hike.

Enjoyed the campground, but the sites were very sloped and the rv sites were pretty close together. We stayed at one of the more spread out sites. I’d go again, but they should maybe make some tent pads for the tent sites.

many electric sites,usually busy, some rustic tent sites, 3 camper cabins in park. some shower houses . state park also offers cabins that sleep 6 with amenities also hike in campground in area.

Tent site was nice. We could make dinner and there weren’t any mosquitoes even though it was right above a swamp. It was a nice driving distance from Hocking Hills and a neat place to camp.

We live close to this park and frequent there, sometimes just day trips. Tent camping is great and just like most places there are a few sites that are the best. Park offers hiking trails from the camp sites to the beach area or packing up the swim gear and using the parking lot. The beach area is back water from the ohio river. It is a sandy rocky mixture. There are boat rentals during peak months. There is a frisbee golf course that is top notch. The only down side to this ohio state park, are the bathrooms; they are port a pot facilities that can be pretty raunchy.

If you tent camp they don’t allow access to the bathrooms other than a porta potty open to the public and no showers either. Kinda messed up. The fish were not biting for anyone. It’s part of a public park. The staff were excellent thought, and the price of $20 a night unbeatable. Cheapest to visit the Mothman

This was our first tent camping experience and over all went really well! Our particular site wasn’t very tent friendly and was overall a little awkward with the placement of hills and our fire pit, but I think that was a one off. We made it work and had a great time! The sites are close together so be aware if you aren’t fond of neighbors :) we will definitely be back!

We had a great time in the walk-in, non-electric section — easy to get to with its own dedicated parking. These sites had good space between them, but no real barriers from other tents, so just depends who’s staying near you!

The full electric sections were packed with RVs and trailers, looks like a fun place to be for a bit, but glad we weren’t tent camping between them all. Access to water sports and trails is great!

Lots of available places to tent camp or park an RV! There’s a nice little beach area along the lake. Several large pavilions. Playground for the kids. During the summer they set up large inflatable slides and create a makeshift lake waterpark! I camp here EVERY year during the Annual Pawpaw Festival in mid September. They have local art, music, beer, and all kinds of pawpaw products! Such a blast! Highly recommend!!!

The lake is clean and has beautiful scenery. The beach is very kid friendly. There is a playground there. The trails are great. They have options for length and scenic differences. Roads are well maintained. Campsites aren’t great for tent camping, but we still had fun. Campsites are close together. They are under trees though, which is a definite plus for me. Overall I thought there was a great vibe and it was a clean area.

My husband camped here in 2018 and plan on it again this year! Lake Hope has plenty of recreational opportunities for everyone and the campground is close by! The campground is quiet and well kept. We tent camp so we usually have a non-electric site so the area we stay is away from most of the RVs. Bathrooms and showers are maintained well. Not far from Hocking Hills State Park as well as other park areas. Plenty of opportunities for hiking, boating, and other activities.

Went there in October. No attendance around and not many campers. Sites are very bad for tent camping and not the bet for RV’s. Back ins are sort and most sites have no level ground even for the picnic table or fire ring. Showers were clean but cold. Vault toilets only and stuck to high Heaven. Not serviced well at all. Hiked the lake view trail, poorly maintained. The upper loop from the beach end is very hard to find and not marked at all. Even more disappointing than Hope Lake which has its own site problems for tents.

We booked our non-electric tent camp site online, the pictures of the set-up of sites online do not match at all the set-up in real life.  It took us an hour and a half to find our site because we arrived later (around 8pm) and no staff was available and no maps anywhere to be found explaining the set up of the campsites.  The original site we had booked could barely fit our single little tent (it's not a fancy double or anything like that), it was on an angle and the view we had thought we were going to get of the lake was nowhere to be found.  We switched sites the next morning only to find that every other site that had a smidge of privacy was on such an incline it literally made us dizzy to hang out there for very long.  We spent one night at the new site then left and stayed at a hotel for our third and final night of vacation because it was raining and torrents of water were flowing into our tent. The beach area had multiple notices about high bacteria content and warnings for swimming at your own risk (which we can understand this happens sometimes).  The bathrooms on the campsite we stayed in were atrocious!  I've never smelled anything so bad in my life and dirty, dirty, dirty! No showers were available in the grounds we stayed at but over by the beach area there was showers available - but you had to shower super quickly, the hot water was gone before you could even get your hair washed.  We rented a Kayak to go exploring (super fun as we had not done that before! and decently priced) but the area you have to Kayak in is so small!!  The lake is not really a lake but more of a pond.  Some of the staff (especially the lady manning the main office) were super friendly and nice, some of the staff (particularly the 'maintenance' staff) were rude and ignored you when you tried to speak with them.  The trails around the campsite were absolutely breathtaking - beautiful, serene and smelled like wildflowers surprisingly because they are used as horse-riding trails so lots and lots of horse manure along the paths.  We won't be going back to this campground for many of the reasons stated above but I do recommend that you check out the trails if you choose to stay here.