Piney Campground

For my first time camping and first time at piney I felt as if I was at home and so friendly and the store was clean and the camping sites were absolutely beautiful and the general appearance was overall good

We came here in mid November 2021 and stayed for a week. I was disappointed with the campground. The bathrooms were clean, but are in bad need of updates, as are the shower facilities. Showers were luke warm, some had non-functioning heaters in them, and a lot of rust and broken shelving. The sites are level, but are not picked up routinely; we had to clean our site of discarded bottle caps, hygiene items, etc. when we arrived. The laundry facilities are outside- and some machines didn’t work. At one point (probably due to seasonal reasons) they removed all the washing machines. No notice posted. The views are nice, but the lake/river effect wind coming in during winter is punishing and forces you inside most of the time anyway. Trails on the property are overgrown, and the one loop by the ranger station has two bridges that look like they have been destroyed for years- no one is doing any maintenance on them. I expected to do some route finding due to fall, but this was really bad. The surrounding area makes up for it, nice things to see, lots of history, nice trails and mountain bike spots. But you have to drive about 40 minutes minimum from the campground to get to the MTB trails, and about the same to get to a town (Murray, Ky) that has everything. The USFS runs this place, and they seemed helpful, but they need to step it up in the maintenance department here. The playground for kids is missing swings, the trash in some receptacles is full. Furthermore; they have some long-term residents that have sites that look like they are running a swap meet out of them. I don’t think that should be allowed in a park like this.

This is a really nice campground that has sites you can reserve along with first come first serve sites. If you are staying near the end of October I would definitely call to see if they have any availability because they do a Halloween weekend where they give out prizes for decorating your campsite and for a decorated golf cart parade (see video). It was a nice little surprise but we got lucky, they only had 2 available sites left!  We were lucky enough to get a site that does not have water or electric but were able to move after the big weekend to a spot with those amenities. 

The bathrooms were nice and kept clean. There are 4 shower rooms on the opposite side of the bathhouse that were nice enough and kept pretty clean. They also have laundry at 3 of the bathhouses. They only take quarters, the shop and the front don't keep a ton of quarters so I would suggest you bring some with you. 

The area has plenty of outdoor activities to do and is also pretty close to Fort Donelson, a drive through experience of the battle during the Civil War.