Rockport State Park — Attraction in Hideout

Despite the fact that my group's trip was cut short due to people suffering from their severe allergies, we had a wonderful time! We were staying at the Cottonwood camp loop which is just inside the entrance to the park. We had thought that it would be noisy due to the highway being next to us, but there was very little traffic noise. We also chose a campsite that was next to the host of the loop which we realize until the day before we left. His name is Chuck and he was a fantastic host to have. He is quite easy to talk to and he levels with you. My group, being the millennials and Gen Z youth that we are, came ill-prepared, but Chuck saved the day! He helped us start a fire shortly after our arrival and even gave us extra firewood when we were nearing depletion. We had a few chairs fall over because of the wind while we were gone and Chuck picked them up and folded them for us, and left us this note:

Howdy neighbors,

Strong gust of wind came by and blew a couple of your chairs into the bonfire. Went ahead and folded all of them for you and stacked them by the picnic table so it wouldn't happen again! Have a great time camping!

He made us feel welcome and we were grateful for his assistance. Now on to the camp activities. I would highly recommend that if you stay here, that you bring a boat, paddle boards, jet skis, or something to that effect. While my group enjoyed ourselves, we were limited in what we could do due to a lack of equipment. That being said, with Park City being close by you can also view the many artisan shops and art galleries that the city has to offer, which is what we did for part of our stay and we had fun. I will definitely be coming back again at some point, but I will be better prepared and if I can I'd like to camp near...

The park is really nice and clean but there's an overly aggressive DNR ranger patrolling the area. We found out his name is Eric Bradshaw and he's the DNR park manager. We were camping at the Hawthorne group site and the ranger came burning through the campground with kids playing. My 3 year old nephew was playing with a Frisbee and had thrown it and started running to retrieve it right towards the path where Eric came burning through in his DNR truck. Even though my nephew was heading towards the driver's side of Eric's truck and in pain view of Eric, Eric didn't even slow down because he was dead set on ticketing one the members of our group for an extremely friendly dog being off leash by accident. You would think by the way he drove through our site that there was a life threatening situation going down. No there wasn't one, but instead, Eric was causing a life threatening situation by being extremely irresponsible and driving excessively fast and bouncing (I'm seriously not exaggerating this fact!!!) his truck through our camp with toddlers present. Someone like this shouldn't be in this position if they have such a power and ego mentality that overshadows any thoughts of safety. Our experience with Eric was the most dangerous thing we dealt with...

This review is for the Twin Coves Campground.

Campfire pit, picnic table, and sun shelter were all nice and well maintained. Campground was generally quite clean. The campground toilets and water were easily accessible too. And, that is about all the positives for the 2-star review.

The website states that "Dirt area will accommodate any size tent." There is not a flat space the size of a paper towel in this campground. Prepare yourself to sleep on a weed covered slope full of rodent created pot-holes. Quiet time hours and maximum number of campers and cars per space are not enforced in any way either. Seems like the locals know this and have decided this campground is a good spot to party loudly into the early AM hours as well. This is problematic in this campground where there is only about 20 feet of space between camp sites. This could be at least 4-star campground with some help of a skid-steer excavator and the presence of a competent campground host. Too bad such a great public resource with so much potential is so completely poorly managed. Any reviews above a 2-star on here must be giving extra stars for the natural beauty of the place and have nothing to do with the actual facilities or shoddy...