Barnwell State Park Campground

This campground is a breath of fresh air and my new favorite campground. The park is clean and so are the bathrooms! The sites are spacious and if you get site 11 during the week, you might be the only ones in a large section of the camp.  The cheaper sites (the non-"full service" ones) still have electricity and water.  The bugs seem to be under control here, too.

  

There are at least 8 geocaches, a self-led park BINGO, a swimming beach, paddleboat rentals, fishing ponds stocked with catfish, and a tackle loaner program. Note that the park office is only open from 11a-noon and 4-5p. The rangers are super-friendly.

  

If you get a chance to go to nearby Blackville, make sure to dine at Miller's Bread-Basket, an Amish-Mennonite restaurant with a Southern touch.

The perfect place to relax during the hot SC summer

great little park 29 sites, very friendly host amd rangers. lakes are very well stocked only down fall is most sites are sand. be sure  to read site info to be sure your rig fits. trails are very well maintained. bathrooms very clean

nice park

I’ll put my gripe first and get it out of the way. Site 16 was awful to get into. Two trees are only about 10 feet apart and once you clear those you have to jackknife and nearly scrape your tow vehicle on a tree just to get close enough to the utility pedestals and to have some space on the door/awning side. The site slopes by the utilities and I had to get onto 4 leveling blocks and was still slightly off kilter. Ok. Gripe over. The rangers and crew were friendly and amazing! The park (during the week, late May) was pretty sparse with only 7-8 of the 25 sites occupied. Come Friday it fills up (and group near me noisy).. the park is beautiful, but small. Has a really nice fishing pier and beautiful hike around the lake. The two towns on either side (Blackville and Barnwell) are just enough for supplies. Overall a great and affordable place to visit!

Overall great little park 

Overall good experience with this campground.  The ranger was super sweet and helpful.  We enjoyed the trails, and they were nice and easy to get through and just long enough to feel like you got a bit of hiking in.  They offer rentals for John boats, paddle boats, and kayaks for a very reasonable cost.  We rented two paddle boats and had a blast (it was exhausting though).  There is wifi at the office and meeting building, which came in handy for communication since cell service was spotty at best.

The sites are kind of on the smaller side and close, so if you are bringing a large camper it might be a challenge.  There were lots of campers, so it's definitely doable though.  We were in a tent so the pad size was perfect for us.  The pad is mostly sand over clay, rather than gravel, which was great with the tent.  The sites have power and water.  Lots of trees, so it's perfect if you have hammocks.  They also sell fire wood on site, if you need it.  

My only minor complaints were the bathrooms, office hours, and wasps.  The bathrooms are clean and fully functional but oddly proportioned so the showers and stalls are really cramped but the sink area is huge.  The office is only open a couple hours a day, which was understandable but inconvenient.  There were a lot of wasps around the fishing pier and the boats.  Didn't have any problems with them in other areas or at the camp site, so that was good at least.

All in all, the trip was very enjoyable and we look forward to going back to Barnwell  as well as making our way through the other state parks.

Great Value Camping Spot

This is a typical state park, not exciting, but mostly quiet. 

The road going into the campground is horrible if you are towing a camper and full of potholes but is manageable. We are tent campers, so this didn’t affect us. 

We tent camped in site #1, and the park was full this weekend. There are only 25 spots here, so it fills regularly. Our site was mostly level. 

We did have a group of about 10,000 scouts camp right behind us in the group site. This never bothers us, it’s always good to see kids out in nature. They were mostly quiet for such a large group. 

The bathroom / shower house is centrally located in the middle of the loop that the campground is arranged into. It was clean and had plenty of hot water. 

They do lock the gate at night, so if you are arriving late, call for the code to the lock on the gate. We made it before the gate closed, but the ranger did call us while on the road (we live about 2 hrs away) to see if we needed the code. 

Nothing much to do here as far as we saw, but that’s why we camped here this time. Just sat and read while enjoying the weather. 

March 19-21 2021

Great trip overall, camp sites were nice and tidy, restroom and shower facility's we're well stocked and clean, camp host had firewood. Trails were nice, some of the boards on the boardwalk area were getting soft. No lake view from campsite.