Lumber River State Park Chalk Banks — Attraction in Raeford

A descent little park. Very clean picnic area, and friendly rangers. Theain park area is super clean and manicured. Heading to the water, there is a fence on the left which probably is some kind of limit, but a well beaten path and no sign, so it's a question. Head along down stream and there is a path that starts out well marked, and gradually becomes very narrow and undefined due to fallen trees across the established path. You come to a canoe in camping area, again, very clean, and no campers were there, but also no signs saying it was the limit of the standard park. Walking on road wide paths was nice, and shaded most of the way, and several water taps were there, but I found one that worked, and let a trickle out, the other 3 were not in working order. Nice place though brackish water like there was in Florida, a lot of people fishing (15?) Everyone was having a good time it seemed. The ranger said camping was very reasonable, I may check it out one day, maybe that's where all of the maps...

Campsites in good condition with groomed tent pads, new picnic tables, fire ring, and lantern post. The sites have lots of space between them and some feel pretty secluded with a significant offset from the campground road. The campground is semi-primitive, no showers and just a single pit toilet but that is not an issue when one is prepared. Nice trails that include a pond, flood plain and adjoining forest. The river is the star of the show and the paddle from the park down to the Wagram Boating Access area is beautiful and easy to navigate thanks to a lot of effort that has been put into clearing the downed trees from Hurricane Matthew. Was able to paddle up river about a half mile from the park's put-in before encountering a difficult blockage. Staff was very friendly and made a point of checking with us to make sure...

Park Rangers are creepy af. They were blocking the road having a conversation as we were driving around the park looking at everything as it was our first time here. We then went and park a location on the other side of the park and as we are walking the park ranger is driving to the trail in his truck behind us, stops in front of us, gets out and starts looking around. We turned around because we are in nature…we wanted privacy and silence not to have to walk around a big truck. As soon as we turned around he got back in his truck and then followed us back out, then pulled his car around on the other side of the road facing us and just sits there. We then noticed another park ranger was parked behind us but was hidden in the trees a bit. That was too much for us so we left. Extremely...