This would be a great reference for some of us who like to travel and have the time off work. What is your favorite campground in your local state and why? Please include a website or location so people can find it.
Ours is Cherry Hill Park, in College Park, Maryland. While more than we normally spend on a campsite the convenience of getting into DC is well worth it. They have a bus right from the park to Metro and downtown. Nice spacious site and road noise not bad. Staff is friendly and helpful with any questions you have. We didn't get to see everything during our last trip so will come again and stay here at Cherry Hill. Not our typical campground, but a great one if you are looking to tour the DC area.
Here's the link:
http://www.cherryhillpark.com/index.cfm
We really like Big Meadows on sky line drive. http://www.visitshenandoah.com/
There are so many in PA. One of my favorite is Ohiopyle SP. The campground is nothing special but the surrounding area is awesome. It is located in the Laurel Mountains close to the Youghiogheny River which has some of the best white water rafting in PA. There are also two Frank Lloyd Wright homes, Falling Waters and Kentuck Knob. There is a natural water slide in the park that is lots of fun to cool off in the summer heat. If you like fly fishing there are lots and lots of streams to fish in. There is the Allegheny Passage Trail to hike and bike ride. Idelwild Amusement Park is not far away for the kids to have fun. You can also cool off by exploring the caves at Laurel Caverns. There is also lots of history hear as well for Fort Necessity National Battlefield where George Washington had his first battle. I am rambling on but it is fun place to go.
Here in NC our favorite SP is also our closest: Medoc Mountain SP. (If I can modify this tomorrow I'll put the URL here.)
It's not big, there's not tons of things to do and that's just fine by us.
When we go it's to get out of the house, hang out together, eat food cooked on the grill and hike their numerous trails.
All this and it's barely 15 miles from the house.
We love it.
I don't like to visit the same park too many times, since I like to try new places. I also like to get away from the DC area. To me, I like to be at least 1 hr from anywhere I might call home or visit regularly which for me means Northern VA and Montross, VA (Northern Neck).
That said, my two favorite parks at the moment are Chippokes Plantation State Park and Belle Isle State Park, both in VA.
Chippokes is nice because it's a nice park with a reasonable mount of things to do within the park boundaries, and you're close to Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, Busch Gardens and Water Country USA.
I haven't explored Belle Isle too much. It's a nice clean place with a newish bathhouse, there were lots of Geocaches, and it looks like it might be a pretty good place to Kayak when it's warmer. It was November when we went, so there wasn't a lot going on, and it was too cold (for me) to consider doing anything on the water.
[quote author=twstdpear link=topic=325.msg2046#msg2046 date=1294810767]
I don't like to visit the same park too many times, since I like to try new places. I also like to get away from the DC area. To me, I like to be at least 1 hr from anywhere I might call home or visit regularly which for me means Northern VA and Montross, VA (Northern Neck).
That said, my two favorite parks at the moment are Chippokes Plantation State Park and Belle Isle State Park, both in VA.
Chippokes is nice because it's a nice park with a reasonable mount of things to do within the park boundaries, and you're close to Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, Busch Gardens and Water Country USA.
I haven't explored Belle Isle too much. It's a nice clean place with a newish bathhouse, there were lots of Geocaches, and it looks like it might be a pretty good place to Kayak when it's warmer. It was November when we went, so there wasn't a lot going on, and it was too cold (for me) to consider doing anything on the water.
We've been to Belle Isle twice for geocaching but never camped, just day trips. Love the looks of the camping loop and hope to camp there someday.
There are several in the beautiful state of Virginia. Several of them make the list of top 100 campgrounds and parks in the entire nation. Some of my favorites, and by no means am I limited to these few, are:
Chippokes Plantation - http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/st...../chi.shtml
Belle isle - http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/st...../bel.shtml
Pohick Bay - http://www.nvrpa.org/park/pohick_bay
James River - http://www.dcr.virginia.gov/st...../jam.shtml
and so , so many others....
you can't go wrong with 90% of the state and national parks in Virginia... and of course there are few that I will not set foot at ... but that is another story.
I'm glad you brought up Cherry Hill, H2S. It looks like DW's Easter vacation is before everybody else's. We thought we were going to meet up with some folks in VA at one point. Timing's bad. Anyway, I'm waiting to hear from them about their military discount and if it applied to retirees. Regardless, I think DC's on our Easter break list. We never seem to have enough time there.
It would be impossible to pick my very favorite campground/campsite here in NC, it would be like picking one of your children as favorite. But what I can do is boil down to about five favorites. And they are all National Forest C/G's, without electrical hook-ups and getting your water from a central location rather than a water line to each site. A couple with hot showers, the rest without ... it's taking a bath in the river (which I have!), or doing the 5/gal bucket warm water bath (simular to the old helmet bathing (which we had a name for) when I was in the military. Another big factor about NFS C/G's is they are more spacious, usually more secluded and not as popular as the majority of campers require all the comfort amenities, and the site rent is much more reasonable.
For the most part camping and fishing go together for my outings. A few exceptions to be sure, but if it were not for the fishing I'd be a once-in-awhile camper, just to get out into nature and away from the usual. And along with the fishing aspect, National Forest C/G's go hand in hand as they most always are next to or close by rivers, streams, lakes. Here's a pic of a favorite in the Nanatahla National Forest, next to a gin clear stream where you can catch trout right out the camper door, or take the canoe down the road and launch it into a lake where this stream is emptying into and fish the mouth of that stream. Great place to be!
[img width=640 height=480]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h226/dww0825/DSCF0168-1.jpg[/img]
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