Lake Barkley State Resort Park

If you’ve seen the movie you will have a better understanding. There is a lodge, camping, stables, beach, marina, and a whole lot more. This is the ideal campground if you have kids and are looking for a lot to do in a weekend. Huge lake offers great fishing.

The campground is not huge but does offer water and sewer hookups. They have 2 shower houses located for a 5 min walk from any site. Hiking and a boat ramp within the campground make it easily accessible. Sites are narrow and I do mean narrow but long. If you have a small group easy to reserve a couple sites. Amongst all the state closures this campground was open and that is how we came upon it.

We have stayed in the cabins and they have two or three bedrooms and fireplaces so if you have someone in the family that doesn’t like the outdoors they can be in a cabin or go to the lodge.

Campground host was amazing helping us out. The sites along the water are narrow but come with a very nice view. The sites on the interior are a bit bigger bc of their “backyard”. Really there isn’t a bad spot in this campground.

The shower houses also have laundry which is a nice luxury.

We've camped and stayed in the lodge and both are not horrible but....This place is a diamond in the rough, and you should focus on the rough aspect. When we pulled up to the lodge it was awe inspiring. We registered in a lovely lobby, and drove to the parking lot by our room. This is where things changed. We carried our bags to the rustic covered walkway, and fought our way through swarms of nats to get to our room. The woodwork is in poor shape, and the metal brackets are rusting. Spider webs and mud dauber nests are all over. We stayed in a ground level room. There is no elevator, so we carried our bags down the stairs. The room is late 60s decor, and kinda funky, but a little worn, furthermore, it was not particularly clean. We called the front desk, and the desk clerk came down personally to vacuum the room, and was as pleasant as can be when she did. The adjoining room next door can be heard through the wall. The dining room is somewhat better cared for, and the food was good. Every staff member has been pleasant and engaging, and the views are amazing. With a good housekeeping manager, a good grounds crew, some maintenance catch up, and spraying for bugs this lodge would be simply fantastic. As it is, it is a tolerable, interesting place to stay with a very nice group of people in contact with the customer. If you choose to stay here, opt for the second floor room and preferably the marina side. It seems less buggy.

Pros:

Secluded campground

Beautiful area

Cons:

You're camping basically in a ravine.

No fire pit

We had site 15 and my in-laws had site 16 over Labor Day weekend 2018.

It took us over an hour to try and level our pop-up camper because the site was so steep. Our neighbors had the same problem. We took the advice of a fellow camper on here and brought an extension cord and we were so glad we did, I think my in-laws ended up needing it.

When we arrived I was disappointed to find that we didn't have a firepit, only an old grill that had a hole in the bottom, rendering it useless. Luckily my in-laws had a firepit so we had our fires over there. We do most of our cooking in cast iron over the fire, so a fire pit is a huge requirement for us. Our site was so steep it was hard for our two young children to walk and play on our site (4yo and 1.5yo) so we spent most of the time at their site anyway. The campsite we were on just wasn't that great for small children, but wouldn't be bad if you were in a tent without small children. Site 16 was great though.

Saturday night, we could hear a drunken group of about 20 with their speakers blasting music across the campground, so loud we couldn't hear each other talking around the campfire. I'm not normally one to complain about music at a campground, but this was overkill and was well into after quiet hours. Every so often you could tell that they were told to turn it down, but it only lasted a few minutes before it was cranked up again. It shut down probably around mid-night, but with two small kids it made for a long night.

The bathrooms were decent, one toilet would shoot water out of the top when you flushed. I didn't use the showers but they looked clean for a campground shower.

The LBL area is what made the trip worth it. We basically used the campground as a base camp to explore the area, which is a beautiful. We saw several deer within the park. The bison and elk prarie is a must see, the kids loved it. We drove to the Golden Pond visitors center and spent several hours at the Homeplace Living history village. Since it was Labor Day weekend they had a lot of events going on. We're now planning another trip back to the LBL area, just not at the same campground.