Norris Dam State Park — Attraction in Rocky Top

Stayed here during their “infrastructure updates”. When I booked our site at the West Campground it said “they do not anticipate much direct impact on campers overall park experience other than delayed arrival times to the park due to temporary road closures in active construction zones that may occur”. Totally fine with that I booked our site as we have stayed there before. Boy was our overall camp experience definitely impacted. They should have thought twice about keeping certain sites open to make money during this update. We got to our site and there was a black retention wall where we previously had our tent last year. Ok, so we put the tent on the other side of the site but because our tent is so big it kind of crept into the site next to us. Luckily no one stayed next to us the entire week we were there. But we woke up one morning to shin deep water entering our tent. The wall they put up was holding all the water in the site. Our fire pit completely underwater. My husband slipped down the stairs because they were so moldy and unkept and hurt his neck and back. Then the road was not just temporarily closed, they kept us up top with no warning for over two hours and no one in the campground could leave. The ranger who blocked us in didn’t even have the courtesy to get out of his vehicle to explain what was going on. We used the loop to throw trash away and he just blocked us in at the trash can. I had to get out of my car and walk up to him to ask if he was shutting the road down because he just moved his truck up and blocked us in while we were throwing away trash. We went with not having power that day as well. We also got harassed by the camp host who claimed our dog got out at night when my dog doesn’t leave my side and sleeps in bed right next to me. Come to find out someone there had a dog similar to mine they kept tied to a tree. There was a booger on the wall in the bathroom the entire week we were there. Bathroom drains had mold all over them. Place has gone down hill and we definitely...

Beautiful park. Terrible maintenance and engineering. Stayed in west campground. Both E & W are tight and steep for long trailers but doable depending on the site you choose. Watch your turns... Like other TVA parks we've been to, they were designed decades ago and no one has bothered to consider that trailers and fifth wheels are huge now. For example, with the last two we've been to, neither dump station was accessible for long trailers unless you want to fall off the road and possibly damage axles. 2 of 3 had dump elevation too high. One at E CG was totally inop with no sign, another at W had a dumpster placed right in the way at exit, and a huge rut where trailers attempted to exit anyway and damaged the road with their U-bolts. Who knows how the trailers fared. Seriously TVA, that's your level of engineering? You can afford to have dozens of trucks driving around all day long doing nothing but no one notices these errors? Not a single one of those thousands of truck trips bothered to bring ONE truckload of gravel to fill in the ruts as a temporary measure? No thanks. Little chance we could have used any of them without damage. Turning radius would have jackknifed my truck on two. Even the west campground entrance was designed so poorly that it's amazing to me that no one has even lifted a finger to fix it. One day of work. Everywhere I looked I saw deficiencies not present at any other parks we've been to. Curbs on tight corners, grades out of spec, etc. Some areas were ok and we did enjoy our stay, but... time to up your game, TVA. Fix your problems. Spend some money and get it right, you're making plenty...

We stayed at the west campground recently for a weekend getaway on 2/9 - 2/12/24, and the overall campground is nice. However there were some things here that need to be addressed. The bathhouse “showed” a clean schedule that appeared to have been signed off at 8:00 each day we were there. However, there was no evidence that they had been cleaned. Each time we used them to shower each day, the floor was always dirty with trash of leaves and debris from outside, hair on the wall and also on the shelf you put your items on at the shower. I know particularly there was evidence of feces on the side wall of one of the toilets and it was there until the day we left. They are heated with mini splits but there is a mildew/stale/pee smell that comes out of them when they are running. I would recommend cleaning the air filters often and also the coils on the inside handlers. We NEVER saw the camp host the entire time we were there, never greeted or anything. The only time we saw the camp host was when we were leaving and we were at the dump station and he drove by. He didn’t wave at us or anything. The grounds at this campground needs attention. Leaves and sticks and limbs laying around. Fire pits not cleaned out. I’m not sure if the camp host even do anything hardly but stay in their rv. Would we return here again, most likely so as the overall state park is nice and a good choice to go camping outside the Knoxville area. We’ve been camp host before and our moto and outlook of a campground is a little different in keeping it cleaned up, bathrooms cleaned...