Camping at Hungry Mother State Park with 3 Dogs

Dogs in the Aliner

Hungry Mother State Park

5/7 Stars for Hungry Mother State Park

The drive to Hungry Mother State Park was a relief because the sun had FINALLY-FINALLY-come out. We were in the middle of a 1.5 week trip through West Virginia and Virginia and it had not.stopped.raining. If you are familiar with that wet dog smell, and if you have ever been cooped into your camper with said wet dogs, you know that some sun is needed to roast away that smell from all of your belongings. We were getting desperate.

We were also looking forward to Hungry Mother State Park because I had rented an electric site. Hallelujah. We had been using our solar panel for energy, but the panel only creates enough energy to run the fan and nothing else really. (Now that I think about it, the solar panel has kind of been crap, not even keeping the batter charged through the night and now I am wondering if it IS just a piece of crap or if I don't know what I am doing with it. Problems for later, I guess.) At Hungry Mother, we'd be able to hike the dogs in the morning and them let them siesta in a nice, cool, air-conditioned camper.

This is a huge campground, so when we pulled in, we had to take a few seconds to organize ourselves and figure out which campground we were registered for (Burson). Finally digging up that information, we were able to check-in early and head to our site.

The cool part was the the campground was next to a huge lake AND a little mountainside, but, unfortunately, the campground looked like it was an old carnival parking lot that had been converted into a campground. The sites were okay sized but there were no trees between the sites and very little buffer between you and the sites around you. Also, the sites were NOT CHEAP. So, for all that, I felt a little disappointed. Luckily some of the people around us had cancelled their reservations so we had a bit more space.

The GOOD NEWS was that our site was nice and flat--SO FLAT, that my husband thought I should take a stab at backing up the camper. (I cannot back up the camper and every attempt ends in a fight and with my yelling OH MY GOD YOUR DIRECTIONS DON'T EVEN MAKE SENSE! WHICH WAY IS THE 'OTHER WAY'?!?!) So he must've been feeling pretty confident in that moment when we saw how level the site was, but he dropped that notion about two minutes into my attempt, took over, and parked the camper himself. Whoops. It was a good try.

No sooner did we set up the camper and take out every sheet and towel in existence, did clouds roll in and open up on us. I shit you not. Our stuff was soaked all over again and our neighbors all got a good laugh. Once the storm passed, we took the dogs out for a walk around the lake. Unfortunately, it was a pretty lake and was pretty popular, and Cheeze was not up to the task of so many dog crossings. We walked out for about a mile but then turned around and headed back to the campground. When we got there, a swarm of kids came at us asking to pet the dogs. We always say no, but kids and humans being as they are, someone always just makes a go of it. anyway. Hands or toddlers coming at him set Cheeze off, so here he was barking AGAIN, and we had to juke this way and that to get him out of there. Once we made it through the child obstacle course, we huddled up in the camper for a pre-dinner rest and realized that this was probably not a campground that would be very relaxing for us. We planned a hike for the morning, made some dinner, and decided that, for everyone's sake, we would leave a day early due to the busyness of the campground.

The morning hike was a good one and took us up to a small summit with a view of the main lake. We sat there for a while to take it all in and hope we could visit again sometime, but maybe in a cabin. We only saw two other dogs and one family with kids. We headed back down the the campground, packed up, and decided to drive all the way home instead of hitting the one other campground that I had planned. It has been a long trip-close to two weeks- and we were all pretty smelly, stressed, and ready to get back to all the luxuries in life.

Overall, the bathrooms at Hungry Mother were nice and the hiking was awesome, but there were too many kids and dogs and too much noise for this to be a great spot for the dogs. This is a great campground for families with little kids.

Hungry Mother State Park: 5/7

	Car camping accessible
	Decent space at site
	6-8 ft. wide/emptyish walking trails accessible from campground.
	Rangers enforcing leash requirements.
	Site cleaned prior to arrival.
	Quiet/lack of busyness
	Fire pit on site

We hope to visit again some day by booking a cabin near the park. If you ever camp at Hungry Mother State Park with your dogs, please drop us a comment below and let us know how it went.