Hunting Island State Park Beach — Attraction in South Carolina

Mosquitos!!!!! I’ve seen others talking about the mosquitos, but we were still not prepared. Within minutes of arriving at the camp site we were swarmed. We sucked it up and set up camp anyway, hoping that if we built a fire they would leave us alone a little. Nope. All the bug spray and citronella in the world didn’t help. We threw all we had at the these mosquitos, but we ended up hiding out in our tent/car to keep from being eaten alive. We walked to the beach, and they were relentless for the entire walk and even kept attacking us for 50-100 yards onto the beach. I’ve never seen anything like it. There was no outside time at the campsite. We were either in the tent or being attacked by mosquitos. At any given time while outside, there would be 4-6 mosquitos on us. We spent the entire next day on the beach, and that was the silver lining of this trip for us. The beach is not over crowded, and it’s nice. My daughter had a blast. Once we were back at the camp site, we decided we couldn’t handle it anymore and packed up and left a day early. I would definitely recommend bringing a golf cart. There is also a place called Beaufort Carts that will deliver to you, but I would call in advance. Another issue I had with the campground was that I called twice to ask about golf cart rentals, and neither time did they tell me about this place. We could have had one delivered the day we got there, but we didn’t find out about this place until we had already arrived. The bugs didn’t bother us when we were on the cart driving. Below are a few pictures, but they really don’t portray how bad the bites were. All three of us easily had 70-80 bites, and I would say closer to 100 or more. The store is completely stocked with anything you might need, and the staff was friendly and helpful. The beach is really nice. We generally love tent camping (we prefer tent over camper/RV), but we will never return here in a tent. We may try an RV, but at that point I’d rather just rent a beach house and not have to deal with the mosquitos because the whole point of camping is being outside. That’s not possible here. I really can’t put into words...

The bath house (shower)near the beach has been been disabled. We choose our site because it was close to the bath house. During our stay (2 weeks) the men's side restroom was completely closed. The men's bath house closest to the camp store closed one of the restroom stalls. Golf carts were zooming everywhere including the beach. Many of the drivers were teenagers out for a ride. The campsites are not as roomy as they once were (or appear on Google maps). After they closed the beach front sites, it appears they have created new sites within the campground. There is no maintenance inside the campground as the grass and weeds were very high. After asking about the issue was told it was "natural grass" and would not be cut. When coming into the camp ground, the grass looks really high and junky. Campsite was not level and dips and ruts made for a rough time while trying to back up to connect the camper. When it rained, water did not run off and simply created huge puddles, making walking around a huge mess. The day we were leaving (early) one of the dump stations was closed. We sat in line about an hour at the only "working" one. Only to watch it over flow and leave puddles of waste on the ground. The trash dumpsters appeared to have been ransacked and trash was all over the ground and the smell was terrible. The day we arrived, our friends site had a microwave sitting on the ground! They had to go to camp store and ask for someone to remove it! Sad to see such a beautiful park be such a mess. We are going somewhere else next year. Hope the ranger realizes that people are not coming back and makes some major...

Visited Hunting Island state park this weekend for the first time and was greatly surprised at how run down the park is compared to other state parks. The roads are a mess. Potholes are everywhere, sometimes you are driving on pavement, gravel, and then dirt and then back to pavement. The facilities are way outdated and are no where near able to handle the number of people that use the park. Because of the limited number of bathrooms, porta potties are everywhere and are disgusting. The bathrooms that were there had a very limited number of stalls and one of those were out of order. Though I don’t blame the park for this, it is a nuisance with the number of mosquitos that are there. Deet bug spray is a requirement for this park! I didn’t waste time going to the pier as the website has noted that no fishing or crabbing is allowed at this time. The beach itself is nice and enjoyable. The lighthouse is very neat to see, walk up and see the view of everything around. Besides the light house, Huntington Beach and Myrtle Beach state parks have Hunting Island beat hands down. Way nicer facilities, beaches just as nice, and roads...