Best Tent Camping near Clarence J. Brown Dam and Reservoir, OH

tent camping two nights. very well run park. great facilities

Great place to visit has three parks in one John Bryant and Glen Helen nature preserve and Clifton Gorge are some of the best hiking trails in south west Ohio. Camp sites are great for tent camping with a few RV spots. You can visit the near by historical town of Yellow Springs.

There's a great backpacking trail that's challenging and an easy middle meeting place for friends/family from Columbus and Cincinnati that can meet in Dayton Metroparks/Five Rivers - Germantown and take on the TVT challenge, beautiful hike through hilly terrain, and great spots of overlooks. Bring your pack and hiking poles and take advantage of trekking into the forest. Vault toliet, away from busy/crowded campsites and surrounded by nature. Access to a river for water source (bring your filter system) camp in a tent or hammock.

While the tent spots did not have a lot of shade, the sites are close to the lake and make for some wonderful sunsets. All of the staff we encountered were friendly and helpful and all in all it was a great stay. We rented bikes from the camp store and swam at the beach which was conveniently close to the tent sites. Lots of fun and 10/10 would return again. I'm excited to come back and see how the young trees they have growing in the tent sites take off.

This campsite would have been perfect if not for the bathrooms littered with bugs, insects, and spiders. Otherwise, the campsite was quiet, the tent sites were nicely spaced out, and the bathrooms were easily accessible.

Great tent sites on mowed lawn under old growth trees. Our night’s rest was interrupted multiple times with airport noise—airplanes and helicopters. Note that at this time (COVID) you cannot just pull in and occupy a site. You must call in for a reservation.

State parts are usually good parks, but Indian Lake was our favorite of the summer. A large lake, and large campground. Lots of trailer and tent camping, complete with a beach, boat dock and commissary. The campground had an ice cream stand and showed a movie on Saturday evening for kids in their amphitheater. We will definitely return!

Stopped here during a road trip with a friend. Very family friendly. Tent sites were nice and flat, felt a little cramped though. Bathrooms were clean. The lake was very nice, clear, and refreshing. Flet good to be close to it! Easy to find the campsites and pretty affordable.

This is a huge campground! I tent camped by myself--felt very safe.  Happened to be next to the park host. No choice of where to locate my large tent.  Showers/bathrooms were OK--older facilities.  Wish this park had a laundry facility--another Ohio park I recently stayed at had a fairly new shower facility that included a laundry facility!  Did not appreciate the waste management company emptying the dumpsters at 4:00 AM!!!  There is a huge, lakeside beach that was just packed with people (no social distancing) and there was trash everywhere--not enough dumpsters.  Near to shopping (Polaris), if you are interested.  Will try to get a lakeside site next time.

Our experience with Indian Lake was tough, unfortunately we suffered a pretty severe thunderstorm while we were tent camping, it looked like a tsunami coming in. Despite the weather, our experience was still not the greatest one, the trail was confusing and we were eaten alive by mosquitos, even with bug spray. It also was not a very long hike, just a confusing one. The campground had cut down most of the tree coverage, and it was like we were camping with our neighbors. This may be a great family friendly park with a beach and kid activities, but we dont have kids and prefer a more quiet and secluded atmosphere. We will not be returning.

We arrived three hours after check in started and headed straight to the camp office to check in. Our tent site was ready right away and the kind lady at the desk helped us get DRY firewood and helped us locate our spot. Our campground was clean and mostly quiet. About a 2 min walk and you can walk along the lake on a trail, we caught the most gorgeous sunset. Overall a very nice and clean campground. The only complaint if I had to give one was the daddy long legs in the bathrooms. But they are not harmful at all and don’t really get in the way, but if you are not a spider person they may deter you.

Had a great time here. My only complaint is that the sites are very close together and there are few trees for privacy in the actual campsites, Also very little shade for this reason. For the most part the tent sites are grass, with a place to pull in. The site I stayed at was relatively close to the pit toilets and a water spigot, but also close to a bunch of RV sites, so I wouldn't say it was all that quiet. It was easy to access walking trails along a river, and also really close to Yellow Springs, which is a great little town (that I totally did not expect to find, who knew!) Cheap firewood and camp store at the entrance.

We had three walk-in sites to choose from on Memorial Weekend. We chose Site 113 in non-electric. It was a huge site with big trees for shade. Great for tent camping and it worked well for out camper. You have to pull in with a camper to be able to walk out onto your site. It’s a little backwards, but we only have 19ft camper so it worked for us. Plus we weren’t planning on driving anywhere so we didn’t have to worry about moving our truck. The bathroom/showers were not far and were nice and clean. For a holiday weekend it was nice and quiet. If your a bird watcher take your binoculars. Lots of robins, cardinals, red winged blackbirds and a few orioles. We drove though electric on our way out and the sites were much closer than where we were. We loved it and plan on going back.

I've stayed here in the past and Cowan Lake does not disappoint. The B site campground is all non-electric tent camping, and far enough away from the larger RV pads that it's a quiet little campsite! Also, these sites are super close to the bathrooms on the beach, which were very clean during our stay. I was incredibly impressed, because the beach gets pretty busy during the day. The beach itself was clean (for a lakeside beach- there are geese, it's Ohio) and the lake was gorgeous! I will say, the only MILD annoyance is that some of the other campers would drive to the parking lot in front of our campsite and park there into the evening hours to fish or head down to the docks. I'm an early riser, so the headlights and car doors slamming were mildly annoying after about 10p. Not enough to make me choose a different campsite, but worth noting. We rented a tandem kayak and explored the lake, and the equipment was all in good condition. The Commisary is pretty limited but they do have a small kitchen and ice cream, as well as the basics like firewood and ice, as well as the boat rentals. Overall, one of my favorite lakeside campgrounds!

Cowan Lake State Park - A friend and I were able to kayak on the lake the night of a Friday the 13th moon. It was beautiful. Sadly, no pictures as I do not have a water proof camera. The next day we also went out for another paddle under the bright sun.  The boat ramp and parking lot is easy to use and has a good layout.  They do have some tent sites close to the boat ramp area and you can see the lake from those tent sites. 

Our campsite did not have any trees but they have planted a lot of new trees. I assume this due the previous trees having to be cut down due to Emerald Ash borer damage. Our campsite didn't have any shade but others did so you really have to pick wisely. 

The trails here are easy and short.  I loved the informational boxes and tags that they had on the trees or plants.  This is helpful if you have little ones with you or if you are like me and just like to learn about the animals/plants on the trail. 

The park also had a lending library and walking stick lending program. I thought these were simple but memorable features for this park. 

Our campsite was close to two different bathroom structures.  One right behind our site was toilets only. This did mean that sometimes folks would walk on the edge or through the camp site at times.  The other bathroom structure was further down the road and it had both toilets and showers.  The larger bathroom had an ADA shower in it as well. 

The camp store was well stocked and you could rent bikes from the store. These bikes were often all over the campground so be extra careful when driving in the park.  They do have the orange flag but as they are low to the ground it is hard to see them at times. 

The cabins here have both a fire ring and grill. This isn't the case at all Ohio State parks so it was a nice surprise.  They also have a porch that is screened in with a view of the lake. You are not able to walk down to the lake from the cabin but it is a lovely view. 

For those who want to "Walk-On" camp please take a look at the photo of the neon yellow paper as how the park approaches this will be different in the future. 

**Not all photos or videos uploading so some information may be missing. I will try to upload again later.

Visited twice in May 2021 (sites 54 & 39) bookending our camping roundtrip from Virginia to Kansas and this was one of the worst places we stayed. We lived in Dayton for a number of years and Yellow Springs is one of our favorite places. That being said, we were quite disappointed at the set up.

There is no privacy between campsites, at all. If someone on one end of the campground is having a party, everyone in the campground is going to be up all night (our first night). On our last night there, we (and the poor family with young kids in a tent 15 feet away) were audibly assaulted by a very amorous and inebriated couple in a tent until the wee hours. With no trees between sites, you have no buffer and good god what I would have given for a buffer.

Pit toilets have those heavy doors that help keep things less buggy (positive) but because they are on a raised area in the middle of an almost treeless campground, the clang of them shutting echoes throughout the night.

No showers.

No dedicated tent-pads. We were car-top camping so I can't speak to ground conditions for tent camping but do know our two spots would have put us on some sort of slope. (Unless we set up a tent right next to the road on 54).

Like I said, it wasn't bad. Definitely wasn't great.

Only weekend stays and it ends in wintertime. I’m sure it’s pretty and all, but it’s hard to find legit, free dispersed camping in Ohio! Oh well, rest stops always work for car camping.

We went camping in June during the strawberry Moon. We are tent campers, we booked site 185. But once we got there we discovered that the site was slopped down from the pad and not a great place to tent camp. So, we had to find another site. They were booked so we had to cut our vacation short because the only site open for us was reserved for the following weekend. Bummer! There are not alot of spaces for us tent campers no matter where we go. We have to at the least have electric hook ups cause my better half has a CPap he has to sleep wearing. They did have a few premative sites for tent campers. Camp is very well maintained and they are having some construction done on many sites to make them bigger, full hook ups and even Handicap accessable. Great place to ride a bike, or hike or just go for a walk. The shower houses and restrooms were recently redone and in great shape! Though the shower heads could use a changing. Weekends were a bit crowded, but by sunday night the place was cleared out and the rest of the week was quiet and relaxed. Over all a great week. Friendly and helpful staff too. the only issue I had was the state of the Beach, trashed(People there didn't seem to care about throwing their trash around. Shame on them! Also,the sand was so compacted it felt like concrete. Not the best beach. Fishing, well. It seems we didn't have the low down on good fishing spots. All of the public fishing spots were of course taken and along the dam so not great. Lodge is beautiful, and they are doing some construction there. I did not like the food. Guess I am too picky, but when my salad comes out warm and my chicken is cold I do have an issue with that. Didn't seem like they were taking food safety too seriously.

Autumn is the best time to camp in Ohio. Lots of small bathrooms. Lake access. Only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was due to the fact there was no quick reentry. Had to wait for rvs in front of me to register.

We stayed here for free for 10 days as a part of a promotion that came with the purchase of our rig. Not sure about normal pricing though, as this campground is owned by Venture Out Resorts and they are a timeshare company (we had to sit for a hour long "pitch" to get our free days). They have 50amp, full hookup, pull through sites (and we saw 40+ ft rigs there) to tent camping to cabin rentals. The campground was clean (shower houses always looked great) and grounds were maintained. Amenities include an indoor pool, hot tub and sauna (close at 10p), but we did not partake because it was so overridden by children, chlorine, and no open windows - didn't seem worth any effort whatsoever in the July heat. The amenities we did checkout (close nightly at 8p) included their new 18 hole mini golf course, small arcade (4 games and pinball was broken 😢), loaner bikes, and water toys (we liked the paddle bikes). The company recently bought the property, so you can see what they inherited vs what it will probably eventually be like based off their sister properties (they recently added the putt putt and a big jungle gym) so it could evolve more as time passes. Regardless, in its current state as active 30 somethings, we were pretty bored. No hiking, significant highway noise, yes a couple big ponds, but a truck stop and truck storage is behind both - so no views. Most of the campers we saw were elderly or had young kids. I'd say if you fall into a category where you want to sit beside your rig all day or want your kids entertained (playgrounds, kids programming - it was luau week so they had a Moana movie night and other kid activities), go on and book a longer stay. If you're only looking for a spot to stay overnight by the highway, do it! It is simple to pull in and have full hookups to take advantage of but a 10 day stay is too long if you're paying. Other things to know: Walmart, Aldi, Lowes, and several automotive chain stores are at max 5 min away, which made grabbing some needed supplies super easy. That said truck stop above was very convenient to get into to fuel up our rig too. Fun fact: Neil Armstrong was born in Wapakoneta and the Armstrong Air & Space Museum is also a max 5 min drive away if you want to get your inner astronaut fix.

Cabin A, . Check-in time is 2pm and check out is 12pm. Please remember to bring your own linens, Morgan's does not supply sheets for the cabins. There are 2 twin mattresses and 1 full size mattress. **Helpful information from their reservation email. 

They have 4 cabins in our area which would be nice to get another family to join us.  Then each family has their own cabin to retire to at the end of the day. 

https://www.morganscanoe.com/ This site is close to King's Island and Fort Ancient. It also was next to a bike trail.  Close to the Little Miami Bike Trail this was easy to walk on with my friend and her two little ones.  The trail was paved which was a huge help for those of us who were extra short and didn't always attend to their surroundings when walking. 

We were a little nervous as the cabin is so close the river. This is part of the charm but when you have a 3 year old in your group then it is smart to keep an extra sharp eye on the kiddo as the river is a huge draw.  We enjoyed being able to be close to the river and then being inside with a floor/door which a tent wouldn't have given us that extra security.  We had plenty of space for my friend, her two kids, and me. 

The cabin didn't have heat and I tend to get cold easily.  For the average person in the summer and spring you will be fine. I needed to layer up. We had two little ones so during the day instead of the usual King's Island we went to Entertainment Junction. https://entertrainmentjunction.com/ and I was also able to get a Groupon to reduce the cost. 

Price:$60.00/night for 2 Adults and up to 3 kids(3-16 years of age) 2-night minimum  required for weekends and 3-night required for holiday weekends.  The cabins weren't on top of each other. I felt that this was a better deal than some other local cabin prices and the atmosphere was better as well .

The tent sites which I explored on my walks are huge. A great camp site to have a bunch of friends meet up and camp at as it is so close to Cincinnati. This camp site, is far enough to get away but close enough.  This means that everyone can easily get there after work. We didn't want a long car drive with two little ones and this was a great way to start exposing them to camping in our "backyard". 

The prices equal the local state parks but the sites are bigger.  The area has huge trees and grassy areas to put your tents up without feeling like your neighbors are right in your space.

Alum Creek is just beautiful, nice sites, most of them are at least partially shaded, lots of woods, hiking trails, the lake, it is what I think of when I think of State Park campground camping in Ohio. There are a couple problems. 1. Only ONE little dump station. This is a big campground, so if you're leaving Sunday, you better get up at the crack of dawn to get to the station, otherwise be prepared to wait in a long long line of RV's. We by-passed the long line and stopped at a different State Park campground on the way home and paid 10.00 to use their dump station. 2. They never answer their phone at the campground office. I mean NEVER. If you have a question you will just have to deal with the reserveamerica people who really know nothing other than what they read on the campground website. So basically you know as much as they do. It's maddening. We will go back, but it's a 2 hour drive so it won't be anytime soon.