Montebello Resort

We spent five days here over Memorial Day weekend, the campsite itself is nicely wooded, has a well-supplied store with very friendly staff, a stocked trout pond, and has a nice small lake. The trout pond is a nice touch you can fish without a license, and you pay for what you catch, we enjoyed fresh trout for dinner during our stay, and from what I saw, anybody with a hook can catch one. We watched them restock the pond in the morning before the holiday weekend. The other lake on the property is a nice place to walk, the campsite provides kayaks and paddle boats as well, at no charge. We had a site on the permitter, which was nice, as the interior sites are really on top of one another, we were just a few sites off the lake, but backing up to the woods certainly gave us a little more privacy. The sites are rather small and close to one another, and definitely showing signs of age from the washed-away, uneven gravel pads, to some other aging amenities. We noticed serval sites loaded with perhaps a dozen people, often blasting music (during the day and not during quiet hours, but still…) really living it up, not the fault of the campground, but it did seem a little unregulated and overrun with multiple vehicles in the roads etc. There is a central restroom facility, just the one, for the entire campground, and the men's room was 2 stalls and a urinal with 2 showers, it was cleaned daily, although not what I'd call spotless, and the woman's room apparently had some plumbing issues the weekend we were there. The location of the campground is remote with zero cell coverage or wifi, and other than the store on-site, there isn't much outside of a few hiking trails, within 30 minutes.  Roughly 45 minutes away are from some breweries and wineries. I think we would have enjoyed this campground a little more had it not been as busy, the older facility couldn't really keep up with the crowd.

This is a wonderfully priced spot nestled in the middle of some great outdoor adventure opportunities.

We stayed in the mountain view cabin lower level with our two dogs. The upstairs neighbors were probably as quiet as they could be but you could still hear them walking around and using the plumbing.

The trout pond is not what they make it out to be on the website. It's a very small pond with zero shade at the entrance of the resort. It is not catch and release, it is catch and keep, whatever you catch, you pay for power pound.

The lake in the back has some primitive tent sites that looked nice. The rest of the campground looked very tight. The walk-in sites were next to an idyllic little stream with less crowding.

Firewood is available at the camp store but the store closes at 6pm so make sure you stock up on check in. We were able to collect kindling and some decent sized pieces from downed trees in the area next to the cabin.

Overall it was a lovely place to stay as a hub for a lot of attractions in this part of GWNF.

This was a nice little campground, and my friends and I had a great time here. Originally I picked this place because most of the other campgrounds in the area were already booked up. We went in the middle of October when the leaves were changing in Virginia. It was a good place to stay overall. We stayed in one of the "primitive" campsites with no water or electric hook ups. For these you park at a small parking lot and walk a few hundred feet or so to the campsites.  The sites in this area were pretty close together, some closer than others. We stayed at site 7, which was a little closer to some other campers than I would have liked. It was flat and grassy and the woods were very nice though.  There were also some rv sites in the campground, which also seemed a little close together. 

I wold say the best thing about this place is how close it is to stuff. Crab tree falls and spy rock are both really nice hikes right in the area.  Bold rock hard cidery is about 40 minutes from the campground. All around a really awesome area with plenty to do.  I would recommend it.