Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Sandstone, WV

It seems everyone in West Virginia seeks a riverfront spot to place their RV so they can enjoy fishing, tubing, boating, and rafting. Berry’s is a campground that will let you have your own piece of the action. I stopped here in search of a place to relocate to, but the office was closed and I couldn’t get to the website due to poor Verizon coverage. Check-in is later in the day and there is a number on the door to call for information, but per their website, all reservations are made online. 

There were a couple of families camping there and enjoying the fishing when I visited on my way back from Sandstone Falls(part of New River Gorge National Park). The sites occupy prime riverfront location. They are, however, across the street from the camp office/store and bathroom facilities. They offer water/electric/sewer and are partially grasss, some gravel and limited shade. A fire ring and picnic table are supplied. Sites 16-19 are grouped at one end and 2 are closer to the road than the river, so you have a few more neighbors, but less campground traffic. Midweek, late April, only a few campsites were occupied.

The aforementioned falls are a nice place to visit. Waterdawg a few miles down the road is owned by them and will meet your outdoor equipment needs and offer tubing, kayaking or fishing tours. Fast food restaurants, a Kroger, and the ubiquitous dollar stores are in Hinton.  I wouldn’t make this my base if I wanted to explore the entire New River Gorge National Park, but if I were looking for river adventures and fishing, this would be an option.

You’ve struck gold here at Bull Falls Campground if you’re looking to get away from it all, discover solitude in the heart of West Virginia’s lush, verdant nature garden of Eden. Bull Falls Campground in the Bluestone Wildlife Management Area is along the western banks of the New River, far flung from all of the other nearby campgrounds you’ll find sprinkled up and down and around this river basin. 

This is a fantastic spot for you to bring all your water toys from snorkeling and innertubes to fishing, kayaking and anything else that you want to submerge in this slow moving, tranquil snake-like river. At this campground, there’s about 20 sites or so – very small and not crowded and is open to tent campers as well as campers, trailers and even RV’s.  Campfires and pets are both allowed and there’s plenty of picnic tables.

Nearby there’s about 4-5 really great hiking trails. Insider’s tip? Right off campsite#14, there’s a great opening that will take you down one of the longer hiking trails, which after about 1 mile or so you’ll come to a small little inlet, perfect for inflating an innertube and floating in isolation with your Bluetooth speaker playing some nice jazz with plenty of coozie-hugging beers from your floating cooler. Also, there’s some really great bird watching in these parts, so bring your binoculars.

Happy Camping!

We stayed for a week.  We wanted to be near New River Gorge National Park and the interstate.  Booking was a little strange, there's no website or confirmation.  You pay by check in a lockbox.  But there was plenty of room and everything worked out fine. 

Starlink access was excellent as there is not a single tree to obstruct the view!  The views are nice, the bathrooms were clean and all of the amenities worked normal.

Summer Wind was inexpensive compared to some other places we stopped in West Virginia.  Highly recommend the Sandstone Visitors Center in the national park, and a visit to Hinton.  All in all it was a great stay!

Just a wonderful small RV park in rural West Virginia. We needed to stay overnight and Ann was terrific in finding us a spot to stay in. Great hospitality and reasonable prices for the spots. Absolutely gorgeous views across the pastures and hills. As we were leaving in the morning Ann mentioned we should come down the road to her little shop in the adjacent lot to the RV park. It was a Saturday and we were just driving another 4 hours so we stopped down there. Cute little shop, fresh strawberry jam canned. It was almost lunch so we (Me, wife, and our five kids) had pulled pork sandwiches, hot dogs, and soda pop. Some of the best pulled pork and slaw I've had! Can't speak highly enough of this little RV park

    Tawney Farm is part of a growing trend of agrotourism in West Virginia where farmers allow visitors to camp on their land.

    The proximity to the Gauley River makes this primitive campground an ideal place for kayakers to stay during the whitewater season in September and October.  That's when the meadows and hills around Tawney Farm will be filled with tent campers ready to ride the rapids.

     James and Susan Tawney are the perfect hosts because they're super nice and sincerely interested in talking about their sheep farm, the history of Panther Mountain, and the best places to swim, fish and kayak on the Gauley River.

    I enjoyed a couple nights of "glamping" when I stayed at the Tawney Farm "Nut House," appropriately named because James crafted it from recycled wood, including cherry, beechnut and black walnut. 

    The primitive cabin has electricity, a full-sized roll-away bed and a futon.  There's no bathroom or running water, so I used the clean port-a-potties and community propane-heated shower and had access to a fire pit and charcoal grill.

     Great hospitality!  James prepped my fire pit with free wood and Susan made sure I had plenty of charcoal, then loaned me BBQ tools so I could grill my dinner without scorching my hands.  

     The Wild and Woolly Primitive Campground includes a group area where guests can cook, wash their dishes, and hangout.  There's a small store with raw wool crafts, fresh farm eggs and black walnuts, plus and a stage for live music during the peak season.

     I wanted to make sure I got some nice photos of their sheep, so James and Susan brought the flock down for a closer look and encouraged some young guests to pet them.

     The access road to Tawney Farm is gravel with a tree growing in the middle, so take caution at night.  The nearby roads leading to the Gauley River National Recreation Area are in good shape but a little nerve-wracking because they're so narrow there's not much room to get out of the way when you come face-to-face with tour buses shuttling paddlers to and from the Gauley River.

     I checked out Mason Branch and Woods Ferry where I enjoyed some nice hiking, paddling and swimming.  Since it was summer, the kayakers I spotted were using "rubber duckies" so they could negotiate the rocky river without getting stuck.

     Mason Branch has an unmarked, unmaintained trail near the parking lot where you can see a couple of nice waterfalls.  There's a trail to the left of the lower falls that takes you to a higher waterfall the locals call "Janie's Hole."  The story I heard is Janie was a young lady who died after she either fell or jumped from the top of this falls.

     There's another interesting local story about the nearby Summersville Lake.  This crystal clear lake was created when an earthen dam was built that covered the small farming community of Gad with water.  My 98-year old mom says no one wanted to call it the "Gad Dam" because it sounded like they were using the Lord's name in vane, so they settled on the next closest town and named it the Summersville Dam.  Water released from this lake in the fall is what creates the world-class whitewater on the Gauley River.