Paris Mountain State Park Campground

I did a quick overnight here, as is custom when I travel for work, and it was spectacular. I stayed at Trailside Camp Site #2, which is one of their remote, primitive sites at the North Lake and all I can say is wow. The views were spectacular, and watching the full moon come up over the mountain was something I will never forget.

The site itself was spartan, as is expected in a primitive site but it did have a fire ring and a picnic table. Site 2 is right on the lake, with plenty of dead wood to get a fire going. The hike in is about 2ish miles of moderately difficult trails, with some amazing views along the way, including a walk across the North Lake dam. The hike was well worth it though.

Scenic campground, quiet, nice people. Free firewood was nice with a donation. Though $38 a night and more than the other state parks surrounding south Carolina such as NC, AL, GA, MS. Bathroom was clean and showers were nice. Level campspots!

Nice relaxing camping spot. The tent pad on site 24 was kinda small but all the others looked plenty large enough. Was not expecting the campground to be sold out this time of year so I would definitely recommend reserving a spot far in advance. The price was a little expensive but there’s a lot to do in the state park.

The campground is well maintained, but the sites are on top of each other. That being said, access to hiking and downtown Greenville is nice. Someone has been burning plastic upwind of us for two days. Not nice!

Very welcoming when we got to the park, and good directions to get to our site. As others have said, the road is quite twisty, but we did not have any problems pulling our 34 ft travel trailer. Our site, number 36, was level, but a few of the sites appeared to be not so much. Quiet while we were here, and great hiking nearby. We will come again

Paris Mountain State Park

Very well maintained, very old CCC built camp near Greenville, SC.

On my way in I thought my gps had taken me astray again! But Paris Mountain Stare Park is literally in the back of a neighborhood in Greenville. Quite a cool little park complete with 4 lakes, back country camping and CCC architecture. The roads are skinny and the campground a bit small. The sites are mixed with pull throughs, back in and tent only. Mostly unlevel, some very unlevel . Surprisingly there are a few sites that will hold a long, big camper. If you pick a middle site you will see your neighbors a lot. Two old , mostly maintained showerhouses.

We arrived on a Thursday, so not that busy this late in the summer/autumn. The campground half filled for the weekend. Could have been due to weather coming in. Lake Placid is the first lake you see when you enter the park. The park office and gift shop are located in the old CCC building. There’s a sand beach, canoe and paddle boats rentals and a very nice bike maintenance station in one of the pavilions.

Lots of trails that are sort of marked. We mostly frequented the trails near the campground and Lake Placid. Watch out for bikers , they use most of the trails.

Overall I will visit again , it’s a quaint , busy State Park, worth the drive.

This is our fav state park. It has pull thru and back in sites, and a lot of tent sites. The ada site is NOT flat and a trip hazard. The hiking trails are beautiful. There's mountain biking trails also on the weekend.

Really nice and comfortable. Very quiet and peaceful considering how close the city is. Lots to do. VERY clean restrooms. Can't wait to go back

Great mountain biking in the middle of Greenville County! Several small lakes originally built for Greenville's water supply have awesome stone works. CCC history still in use. Camp Buckhorn feels like a miniature Cades Cove from the Smokies. Also just minutes from Greenville's foodie scene if you get tired of hot dogs and s'mores.

Campground is 40 sites with 15 sites being tent only and not big rig friendly on most.Very quiet and peaceful.Lots of hiking and some fishing ponds.Some mountain bike areas.Greenville has much to see and do also.

All well except narrow roads leading to site.

Initially, I was not impressed with Paris Mountain State Park. I was told to take a picture of the state park map at the kiosk unless I wanted to buy a park map. Things got better after that, however. There is a variety of sites from which to choose, and most of them are level. There were a few tent campers, but most sites were filled with RVs and travel trailers. Although we didn’t have sewer hookup(and didn’t really need it for a teardrop camper), there were electric and water hookups. This is to be expected at a state park. There was also lots of shade, something I have come to expect at a state park. I sometimes take it for granted until I have stayed at other campgrounds that have very little shade. I also didn’t feel as if I were“on top of” the next campsite since there was plenty of space between most of the campsites, but not all campsites are equal. There is a swimming beach… and it was open. Not too many campgrounds have opened their swimming pools or beaches since the pandemic, so I was happy to see this. At the swimming beach, there are peddle boats and perhaps(I’m not sure) a place to rent kayaks. It was during the middle of the week, so I don’t know if the empty kayak racks were because of this or if they really don’t have kayak/canoe rentals. As far as other activities, there were hiking trails, a volleyball net, and a playground. The trail I liked most was the one beside the lake, which led to the dam. There are plenty of picnic tables for day use, but the bath rooms were being renovated. Fortunately, the ones at the campground were fully functional. Overall, I enjoyed Paris Mountain State Park and I would highly recommend it.

Great spot. Clean bathrooms and fire pits. Very friendly camp host that has/had firewood available to guests. With a recommended donation box. Would def come back here again

Paris Mountain is a jewell in the Greenville SC area. Nice wooded clean sites. Great biking and hiking trails.

When making reservations pay attention to the details of the sites, because many aren't level and the road is curvy.

Easy hiking trail. Swimming beach and boat rental.

Easy hike around the lake. Nice camp center and beach.

Clean woodsy campground with nice sized sites. 5 min back in and I am new. Asphalt pads. My site was E/W level. No sewer. 30 amp site for us with water.

Nice clear and quiet night at the Ground Cedar primitive site. It's worth the 1.5 mile hike to primitive sites if you don't like camping on top of someone else. No power or running water but there was a small stream 30 ft from the site so getting water to filter was a breeze. There is also a lake right by the site. The next nearest site was about half a mile away and didn't hear another camper all night. Definitely would recommend this site.

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.

State Park with decent bath and shower facilities. Lots of space between sites.

Spaces tend to be a little uneven, especially the pull through spots.

Great hikes or bike rides all over the place.

Great hiking trails and easy access campsites. Mountain lake was a little small for kayaking, but we had fun.

This review starts with the wonky reservation system. If you look at several campsites, it thinks you want to reserve all of them. Even if you de-select campsites, it still thinks you want to reserve all of them! And then, it didn’t like the apostrophe in our last name. I took that out but then it made me wait for two minutes before I could continue with the reservation. Ugh. We were also not happy that there was a two-night minimum on the weekends. 

Now for the campground. This is a fairly small campground with only 40 sites. It was full on the first Friday in November but there was no host (and we did not see a Ranger throughout our stay). There would be free firewood (donations encouraged) if a host or ranger were present, so no firewood for us.    

Many of the sites are NOT level but the website does indicate this during the reservation process. Fifteen have tent pads, but others do not and would be more suitable for RVs. The driveways are paved but some are crumbling, and pieces of pavement are tripping hazards. All the sites have electric and water. There are two comfort stations that were very clean and the showers (no additional cost) looked reasonable. There is a pack-in, pack-out policy and therefore there is only one dumpster across from the park office, which is quite a distance from the campground, and you are asked to bring your trash there nightly (the distance from the campground makes this challenging if you do not have another vehicle). 

There are some nice hiking trails, but they are not on the map that you are given upon check-in. There is a map posted by the camp office, again quite a distance from the campground. This park is also good for mountain bikers, although they are not allowed to use the trails on Saturdays. Dogs are allowed if kept on a leash. Alcohol can only be consumed if out of public sight. 

You will hear trains. Many trains. Loud trains. All throughout the night😊

There is a beach and boat rental in season, which looks very nice, but we stayed there out of season, so this was not available.

This campground won’t blow you away or anything but it’s a good campground that you’ll enjoy. Nice wooded coverage, walking and hiking trails, plus a few lakes to fish. Bath houses are probably the cleanest I’ve seen in all the campgrounds I’ve been too. The only reason I wouldn’t give it 5 stars is because the sites are pretty close to each other and you can hear aircraft traffic from the airport close by. I recommend sites 22,23,25 if you are tent camping.

Campground Review: 

Paris Mountain State Park is just a short drive outside of Greenville, SC, but seems a world away. It is beautiful in all seasons. The campground is a typical state campground. Water, electric, fire ring, and picnic table were at our site. We stayed at #39 which was fine for our needs. If you had any sort of rig, we would NOT recommend this spot. The concrete was in poor shape and would make for a leveling nightmare. We voted we’d stay in #40 next time. It was a pull through with a creek running by the fire ring. The shower house was perfectly adequate and clean. Their reservation system was easy. We enjoyed all of the hiking options and the swimming area in the park. 

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Product Review: 

As Rangers for The Dyrt, we get to test products from time to time– today we tested Banner & Oak apparel www.bannerandoak.com. We loved their trucker hats. They were breathable, and held their shape under the sweat from a hard hike. We felt they were very attractive as well. As a long torso’d and arm’d couple, we both noticed right away and appreciated the length of the shirts themselves and the length of the sleeves on the long-sleeved shirt. There is nothing worse than washing shirts and having to stretch the heck out of them to try to get them back to looking presentable. We have no fear our Banner & Oak short and long-sleeved shirts will not give us this trouble. They worked well under our packs and we didn’t find ourselves needing to pull down our shirt every few mins or so. As a larger busted woman, however, their Women’s Large ran a bit small in the chest. I normally wear a Large which gives me some room to move around, but I wish I would have ordered my shirt in a XL. It is a tight fit. All in all, we really liked Banner & Oak’s apparel, in style, cut (mostly), and comfort. The shirt material is super soft and we could see ourselves ordering more from their site.

We had a great time staying here. Some of the sights were rather inclined, but they listed this on the website when booking(it's on a mountain after all). The areas between most of the sites was spacious, we were able to hang 2 hammocks to chill in. The Bathhouses had been remodeled and were kept clean while we were there. (There wasn't hand soap at the sinks that was a little weird for me).  The Large trash bins were located back down across from the Park Center, as was the play ground. It would have been more convenient for campers to have these things closer but were convenient for day use visitors. The park center is a gorgeous stone/log cabin type building with a long porch facing the Swimming area. There are Adirondack chairs on the porch, then between the porch and the lake are wooden lounge chairs and benches to relax on while taking a break from swimming or hanging out. There are miles of trails and streams to explore. We had a lovely time and plan to visit again soon.

We were at site 29, ADA. It was horrendous. We overlooked the women’s restrooms, which was very poor taste! At night, when the lights were turned on..... distasteful. More importantly, this ADA site was extremely dangerous! The site was so unsafe. I fell twice getting out of our rv, b/c the site was more mountainous than the mountains! I couldn’t leave my rv for two days! Restrooms were clogged and filthy. You had to walk a mile to the front to thrown your trash out! Really! Unfortunately, will never return. Below are pix.

We stayed here for a week and found this to be one of the quietest parks we have stayed out and used it for a base camp to hike Jones gap and table rock. The bathhouse was clean and there are lots of trails and a big pond.lots of bicycles riding around the park.

Paris mountain is a personal favorite of mine and take any chance to go. This is a great dog friendly park with clean trails, plenty of parking, and friendly staff. Now is the time to go as it is less crowded and and the leaves are changing color.

We love this State park and campground. We go there for day picnics, hiking, group activities, or just a family cook out. The campground is very peaceful and quiet.

We loved our stay at this campground. It was one that once we got settled we wished we were staying longer! The road through the park back to the campground is pretty narrow at some points - we don't know how we would have managed if we had met another RV! We have a 31' Class A and we managed fine, but I did hear some people with larger trailers having a harder time. We were in Site 31 and were able to get level with no issues. The park has a lot of trails and scenery and is a great place for riding a bike. All in all, pretty campground that is super peaceful! The staff were all very helpful and the bathrooms were clean too. I would definitely return to this great spot!