Campground Reviews

I needed a two-night stop between Falls Lake, NC and Elizabethton, TN, so Fort Hamby fit the bill nicely. That it is also a USACE (Army Corps of Engineers) campground was a plus, since it gives seniors a serious discount on the daily rate. And it was only 15 minutes from Wilkesboro, where I could stock up and find some supplies at the hardware store that I needed.

After a bit of drama finding my campsite, which involved a couple of wrong turns and a serious amount of backing out of a campsite that I thought was the road, I finally found my site.

I made a quick trip into town for groceries but walked out of the Walmart after seeing at least half the people in there weren’t wearing masks or had them below their noses (what is up with the whole “below the nose” thing?). I knew I could also get groceries at my next stop because I’d been to Elizabethton a month before and the mask-wearing was close to 99% at that Walmart. The Lowe’s hardware store was better, mostly masked so I found the stuff I needed, did self-checkout (one less person to be in contact with) and scooted back home.

The fall colors were starting to show here, but mostly yellows and browns. Still, it was pretty and I enjoyed strolling the campground roads and checking out the north side of W. Scott Kerr Lake. (I stayed on the south side of that lake earlier this year, at Warrior Creek, also a USACE site).

The contrast between green trees and fallen leaves was accented by the late afternoon sun.

If I had to choose between Warrior Creek and Fort Hamby, I might choose this one, for two reasons: closer to town for shopping/stocking up and better cell signal. But if you really want to get away from it all, including no connectivity, Warrior Creek would be the smart call.

Fort Hamby Campground (USACE)

• Site 6 (water/electric) was a nice little pull-through with a view of the forest out my front door. The 34 sites here are in two loops, so pay close attention to the map or you’ll be circling the campground hunting for your spot like I did. Sites 21, 24, and 25 have the most privacy. Reserve at the recreation.gov site.
• Services: electric/water, dump station (unpaved), bath houses with showers and toilets. No recycling
• Decent ATT and Verizon signals.
• Groceries: 10 minutes to Wilkesboro and several, including Walmart. Closest as station is 5 minutes from campground. Wilkesboro also has Lowe’s Hardware, Goodwill, and a passel of fast food restaurants.

Y’all wear a mask!

Betsy Price, Mayor of Fort Worth, TX

The whole of Falls Lake State Recreation Area in North Carolina encompasses three separate campgrounds. This is a review of the Rolling View campground, east of Durham and north of Raleigh.

It was a lovely drive down from Longwood campground to Falls River, all back roads with very little traffic. The only hiccup came when I was shopping at Walmart and my watch dinged to remind me I had a concall in 15 minutes. Oops, I thought that call was an hour later. So I sat in the parking lot of the Walmart and did my call. To be honest, not my first time doing a call from a Walmart parking lot!

The whole point of me camping at Falls Lake was to be close to Durham, where my shiny new truck cap was slated to arrive from the factory sometime between September 21st and October 5th. It made its local appearance on the 28th, so I had it installed on October 2. Definitely worth all the hassle of delays and alternate arrangements I had to make to pull it off because it makes storage that much easier to have the extra height.

While at Falls Lake, I was still rehabbing my wonky knee and cranky shoulders, so I didn’t do much hiking and zero kayaking, although that big old lake right next to me tried really hard to be persuasive.

Instead, I hung out with friends, socially distancing with masks. One friend, last seen in Lancaster, PA, was down in Raleigh, so we had a fun meetup at an outdoor coffee shop and then I got to experience the joy of Raleigh’s Saturday afternoon traffic. But instead of that photo, here’s one of the blue sky and a cool building.

Another friend came by to visit and brought a “new to me” zero gravity chair she had found next to a dumpster at her RV park (a time-honored place to put stuff you don’t need when you’re camping). It was in pretty good shape, so now I have another chair trying out for a place in my collection.

And to complete the trifecta of friends, I met up Monday night with an old running buddy who used to live in Austin, Texas but now calls Raleigh home, We figured we last met up face to face in San Diego in 2014, so it was good to catch up. We did risk a bit of contact, giving each other a hug because he’s one of my favorite people and I couldn’t imagine NOT hugging him, even in the middle of a pandemic.

After almost a week of hanging out, resting up, and socializing more than I have in months, it was time to pack up, hitch up, and hit the road. Next time, I’m hoping to explore more of Falls Lake, from kayaking to hiking, and, if the pandemic ever ends, checking out Durham and Raleigh.

Rolling View Campground (NC State Parks)

• Site 24 (water/electric) had a little path down to the lake, which I quite enjoyed. The reservation site said this was a tent site, which I didn’t realize when I was reserving it. Turns out, no problem, it was a pull-through spot with a short flight of stairs down to the campfire and picnic table. Plenty of room for a tent or shelter down there as well. A loop is smaller, and therefore quieter than B loop. C loop has no services. Reserve at the NC Parks ReserveAmerica website.
• Services: electric/water, two lanes at the dump station, bath houses with showers and toilets. Plastic recycling only
• Decent ATT signal. Didn’t even try Verizon since I had used that a lot already this month.
• Groceries: 15 minutes to the Food Lion on Route 98. Because the campground is close to both Raleigh and Durham, there’s tons of shopping options, from groceries to malls and even a Whole Foods.

The universe will always send us little reminders of its chaos and power. Certainty is a complete illusion.

Gary John Bishop

One of the best kept secrets in camping is that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (or USACE, as my friend, Francis, pointed out) has a whole network of campgrounds, mostly located near or on reservoirs created by dam projects they’ve run. Almost all of them feature big sites, electric and water hookups, and easy access to watersports. I’ve camped in USACE campgrounds from Idaho to Virginia and every single one of them has been a nice experience. For those interested, you can make reservations at them through the recreation.gov website.

I bring this up because last week my campground was indeed a USACE spot, next to the W. Kerr Scott Reservoir (not to be confused with Kerr Lake farther east along the VA/NC border). There are actually three USACE campgrounds around the reservoir, but this one, Warrior Creek, was the only one that had a Saturday night opening. That was my only requirement, to be honest. I had gotten canceled out of my original five nights at Pisgah campground near Asheville, so I needed a Saturday spot PRONTO because August camping is cutthroat when it comes to weekend reservations.

I arrived Saturday mid-day, and got a little surprise. The spot described as “shady” was actually shady only in the early morning and late afternoon. In between, the sun was merciless, beating down on my tin can of a trailer with a vengeance. I survived one hot afternoon and then switched sites on Sunday to a shady little spot across the road. It was definitely worth the packing up and hitching up to move 200 yards!

There’s always surprises in the vagabond life, some pleasant, like a shady site, and some not so pleasant, like a slight case of food poisoning. Let’s just say it will be a long time before I buy another onion… I was kind of wiped out most of the week, so although there was a nice boat ramp and kayak potential, I didn’t engage in paddling at this stop.

The other surprise was the heat and humidity. Coming down from the cool mountains back to semi-flatlands country had not been my original plan. Daily highs here at Warrior Creek were in the low 90s and I was not thrilled with this development. But, sometimes, the vagabond has to go where there’s room, not where there are cooler temps.

I did fit in some short trail hikes and took full advantage of the paved roads to get my morning constiutional in before I started feeling nauseous and feeling the heat and humidity.

At the end of the loop was a bit of water that made for some nice views. Not sure if it was some of the reservoir or a separate lake, but it was enjoyable regardless.

With only five nights here, I didn’t actually take a lot of photos. But I did have a favorite one…

Warrior Creek USACE Campground

• Site 30, then site 24. Mostly level, loose rock surfacing. The campground has two RV-specific loops, from #22 on up. Site 53 and then 54 would be my choices in the one loop. Site 25 is definitely the first prize spot in the other loop. Reserve through recreation.gov website.
• Services: electric/water, two dump stations, one bath house in the upper loop, vault toilets in both loops.
• Cell service: Verizon (two bars without any antenna), ATT (none, not even voice).
• Groceries: All the stores are in Wilkesboro, about a 15 minute drive east.
• Boat launch in the campground.

Improvisation is the power of spontaneous observation.

Wyatt Pringle

I love Asheville as a place to visit. It’s got all the big-name stores, an independent bookseller, some fun shops to wander around downtown, and  ton of great restaurants. When I booked Powhatan for a week, I was thinking of all these things. I definitely wasn’t thinking of how it would be to visit when COVID-19 was in the picture. But here we are…

So I mostly hiked around, took photos, and read books. I did get to Barnes and Noble for a brief sojourn into normalcy, if everyone wearing masks and working hard to stay 6 feet apart is normal. I guess it is these days. Less normal was the restriction against campground visitors, so I had to improvise to meet up with a few friends in the area. Lunch at a local park, dinner at their house, it all worked out okay.

This time, my fourth at Powhatan, I was on Site 43 in the lakeside loop. Technically, the loop isn’t really lakeside at all, it’s about a five minute walk to the actual lake but this is the loop closest to the lake so maybe that’s what they meant.

My site was, to put it politely, seriously sloped. And it was narrow. So narrow that if I had backed in, my front door would be less than 2 feet from the wall of bushes and trees that defined the edge of the campsite. So this became one of those times I was really happy to have my little Caravan Mover on the Alto. It lets me drive the trailer anywhere I want, and putting it sideways was what worked best for this challenging site. Check out the number of plastic stabilizer pads (those orange things under the trailer wheel) that I had to use to get “level enough” that the water would drain out of the sink and shower!

This was also the first test for the new Gazelle shelter I bought a few months ago. It’s lighter and slightly smaller than my previous Clam shelter, so it fits down the side of the truck bed perfectly. Just as easy to set up and take down as the Clam, so I’m pretty happy with it.

One of the best things about being at Powhatan was the cooler temperatures. I actually wore a sweatshirt for about ten minutes of one morning walk, which felt wonderful. Fog also gave things a different look and discouraged swimmers from showing up too early in the day. Yes, there is a swimming beach and it was quite popular with both kids and mountain bikers.

The other end of the lake has a beautiful waterfall going over the concrete dam, and I was quite obsessed with the contrast of streaming water and still lake. My morning walks usually took me on the Lakeside trail loop so I’d take a few minutes and stand above the waterfall trying to get a good shot.

One of the challenges of being a full-timer is getting physical mail delivered. I enrolled in Medicare last month and the card arrived in the mail at my box in Tallahassee. I had it forwarded to my friend, Holly, who lived close enough to Asheville to come up for lunch twice. The first time, she delivered the card. The second time, she brought her laminator and generator and fired them up to provide me with a nicely laminated Medicare card. Doesn’t everyone keep a generator in their pickup? I know I do, and Holly does too 🙂

While this time around at Powhatan was definitely different thanks to the pandemic, I still enjoyed my week. Cool temps, some good thunderstorms, excellent hiking trails, and lots of photography opportunities. What’s not to like about all that?

Lake Powhatan Campground (recreation.gov)

• Site 43. Not at all level any way I tried, but I managed. All sites in the Lakeside loop have full hookups, but you may need more than 1 hose to reach the sewer hookup.
• Services: electric/water/sewer, dump station, individual toilets and showers.
• Cell service: Verizon (very weak, required hotspot and Weboost antenna), ATT (none)
• Groceries: Ingles 10 minutes up Hwy 191. Lots of stores in Asheville!
• Boat launch on French Broad River down Hwy 191. (I didn’t go, just noticed it was there.)

I have not quite come to terms with the brevity that people crave as they dash through life, flitting from one thing to another. 

Mala Naidoo