Barnwell State Park Campground

This is a typical state park, not exciting, but mostly quiet.

The road going into the campground is horrible if you are towing a camper and full of potholes but is manageable. We are tent campers, so this didn’t affect us.

We tent camped in site #1, and the park was full this weekend. There are only 25 spots here, so it fills regularly. Our site was mostly level.

We did have a group of about 10,000 scouts camp right behind us in the group site. This never bothers us, it’s always good to see kids out in nature. They were mostly quiet for such a large group.

The bathroom / shower house is centrally located in the middle of the loop that the campground is arranged into. It was clean and had plenty of hot water.

They do lock the gate at night, so if you are arriving late, call for the code to the lock on the gate. We made it before the gate closed, but the ranger did call us while on the road (we live about 2 hrs away) to see if we needed the code.

Nothing much to do here as far as we saw, but that’s why we camped here this time. Just sat and read while enjoying the weather.

Overall good experience with this campground. The ranger was super sweet and helpful. We enjoyed the trails, and they were nice and easy to get through and just long enough to feel like you got a bit of hiking in. They offer rentals for John boats, paddle boats, and kayaks for a very reasonable cost. We rented two paddle boats and had a blast (it was exhausting though). There is wifi at the office and meeting building, which came in handy for communication since cell service was spotty at best.

The sites are kind of on the smaller side and close, so if you are bringing a large camper it might be a challenge. There were lots of campers, so it's definitely doable though. We were in a tent so the pad size was perfect for us. The pad is mostly sand over clay, rather than gravel, which was great with the tent. The sites have power and water. Lots of trees, so it's perfect if you have hammocks. They also sell fire wood on site, if you need it.

My only minor complaints were the bathrooms, office hours, and wasps. The bathrooms are clean and fully functional but oddly proportioned so the showers and stalls are really cramped but the sink area is huge. The office is only open a couple hours a day, which was understandable but inconvenient. There were a lot of wasps around the fishing pier and the boats. Didn't have any problems with them in other areas or at the camp site, so that was good at least.

All in all, the trip was very enjoyable and we look forward to going back to Barnwell as well as making our way through the other state parks.