Best Glamping near Mount Solon, VA

Nice facilities (shower, bathrooms, garbage, etc.), but the campsites themselves leave a bit to be desired.

Pros: deer wander the grounds, making for some beautiful morning animal encounters. Seems to be family-friendly. Very fair quiet hours. Easy access to a number of great hiking trails! We had a blast hiking the Rose River trail and part of the AT for one whole day.

Cons: Uneven ground all over the reserved site made it so our tent had to be pitched at an angle. The fire pit was strange due to the grilles covering half of it (would prefer to have just had a simple pit instead). Also the firewood we were sold was abysmal; it sputtered and smoked instead of burning cleanly. This made cooking extremely frustrating, so I will be bringing my own (certified and labeled) firewood next time.

This was a great campground location to many, many National Park Trails. Our stay was during the last week of September. We met up with family who live in the area and got 3 sites hugging the AT. We pitched two large tents on our E178 site and a hammock in the trees just beyond our fire pit. My brother had a large tent on site E177 and it was just as nice. Our third site E176 was across the road from us flanked by travel trailer campers. That site had less privacy, but gave us a shorcut path to the running water bathroom. There was a sign in the bathroom that said it was ok to pour filter dishwater down the toilets, so we did that quite a bit to keep our campsites clean and safe from bears. My favorite sites were E177 and E178. They were a good size and distance from the other sites. We were close to the water pump and running water bathrooms. The pay showers were a bit of a walk from us, but they were clean. We liked having a nearby store, visitor's center, and gas station at this campground. In the evenings we went to the big meadow to watch the wildlife a few nights.Site E178 had great sunrise vistas through the trees. We positioned our chairs to face the valley and pretended there wasn't a packed campground full of families. It was actually pretty peaceful until the weekend which got rowdy at full capacity.The parking pad is level, on E178 but the grassy area was slightly sloped for our tents. I thought it was not too bad of a tradeoff for the view, but if you've ever slid down on your pad or cot a bit, you might not like it. My brother was at the adjoining site E177 and while his parking pad had a slight slope, he had a fairly level spot for his big tent.

There were bear lockers at each site (about 50 in x 34 in) and we never had any bears visit while we were there. The bear lockers were great for us since we were tent camping and our vehicle was a pickup truck, so we did not have to juggle messing with coolers/food in the truck cab. Deer came through the campground every morning right up to our tents, which was delightful, except it made me paranoid checking for ticks every night. I really enjoyed being right off the Appalachian Trail and enjoyed seeing a few through-hikers each day while we made campfire feasts.

We brought USDA wood and another camper gave us a few cords of USDA wood he brought from GA when he left. We did purchase one bundle from the campground and it was pretty green, so it burned smokey. The cost was about the same as it is at Lowes or anywhere else like that. We enjoyed multiple hikes and had a group with different hiking abilities, but there were many great Shendoah sites to see that we all could enjoy, including the group's dogs. Shenandoah is one of the few National Parks that allows dogs on most of the trails (leashed of course.) We had two dogs in our group and enjoyed seeing the other dogs in the campground. There was only one instance when we noticed someone bagged their dog poop on a trail, but left the poop in the bag. People!

Because of Covid-19, the ranger programs at this campground were cancelled. I would return again, but maybe choose dispersed camping for a better view and less people.

We camped here the last night of the season (Nov30) and shared the campground with a mix of tent campers, car/van campers, and a few larger units. The bathrooms were plentiful, heated, hot running water, and a utility sink available. Our site had some privacy and some extra due to about 50% occupancy. Showers and laundry were closed for the season but are centrally located near entrance area of campground. Elevation above 3000 feet and plenty of deer! It was an especially cold night hitting a low of 14F. Very happy for the nearby heated restrooms with hot running water.

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.