RangerCanaan Loop Road Dispersed
A remote loop route with about 10 dispersed, free campsites
This swath of land, sandwiched between two state parks(Canaan Valley State Park to the south& Blackwater Falls State Park to the north) is managed by the US Forest Service. The nearest town is Davis, WV.
There is just one dirt road running through it, the first few miles of which are fairly tame: navigable by most standard cars and medium or smaller sized RVs. The further back in you go, the rougher the road gets until it is truly just a jeeps-only type of road. But the good news is that all of the camping sites take place before you get to that rough part.
And this is TRULY dispersed camping, with most of the camp spots being a good half-mile from each other! The one downside, if you are into privacy, is that all of the sites are RIGHT NEXT to that dirt road, so others will be driving past your site. The good news is that it is not a heavily trafficked road, used primarily just by the other campers in the 10 available spots, by the occasional hunter, and by the even-less-frequent off-roader, hoping to challenge their vehicle on the rough stuff several miles in.
This is all free camping, and all primitive. There are no restroom facilities, no showers, no electrical, no water supply.
The campsites themselves are mostly surrounded by forest, making even the smallest of them quite beautiful. They vary in size from being little more than a 20 foot driveway to back an RV up to those sites that are significantly larger with room enough for more than one vehicle and perhaps a couple or three tents.
While this loop road region has very few activities itself, you are just a few miles from the two state parks and from private facilities offering horseback riding, skiing, snowboarding, swimming, and more.
The loop road region itself has MANY trails for hiking or mountain biking (possibly horseback riding— I saw no signage either for or against it), and one trail that is specifically marked as a cross country ski route. Although, from what I can see, several of the trails could work for cross-country skiing, as even the road itself could right after a storm.
While the area is at a fairly high altitude, around 3000 feet, it seems to be built on a kind of high altitude plateau, so the road itself is not that hilly, nor are the camping sites. I don't know for sure if it's a year-round site, but I can tell you that I was camping there in December, no problem. I do understand that the road is minimally maintained, so it might be impossible or difficult to access during very snowy weather.
