Kettletown State Park — Attraction in Southbury

I rented a space (lot 2) to camp with my husband and daughter. We ended up setting up camp an were very disappointed in the space in general. It was incredibly small! We had stayed at Black Rock last weekend and our space there was huge. But here we barely had space for our one tent. The only space for us was almost right on top of our campfire space. The campers on either side of us had to move their vehicles as well as their actual tents (which they had already staked down) over in order to not be right on top of us.

As we drove around the campground we noticed what should be 1 normal size camp site was generally split into 2 pretty poorly. Making it really difficult to have a space large enough for a tent. We weren't looking for much for accomodations, just somewhere we could set up camp, have a small fire, park our car and sleep for the night. But I have to admit we weren't too comfortable making a fire with how close our tent had to be to the pit. Also there is NO SWIMMING at the campground or even near by that is SAFE. The Housatonic River has HIGH ALGAE this summer (just like it has in the past!) making it unsafe to swim.

We also had a site that was on a slope, making it difficult to to even have a comfortable place in general. The bathrooms were atrocious. They were so bad. The men's room had no soap at all, most of the stalls on the men's side were also out of toilet paper. The women's bathroom had some soap, but not enough to get through the night let alone the weekend. The bathrooms in the women's area are very dirty, pee on the seats, toilet paper left on the seats, grounds were very nasty, one stall was duct taped closed and marked as "out of order". It was just overall gross. All of it.

I understand it's a state park and they don't charge much. But I have been to other state parks that take pride in what they have and this was terrible. I don't plan to return.

Due to a family emergency we ended up having to leave camp set up and go to the hospital for the night, so we didn't even end up using the accomodations we had paid for. We did manage to get back just in time to pack up before check out...

I am writing this review in reference to the camping site/experience only.

First: You can only make reservations for State Parks through a website now. The website isn't bad, but there are so many restrictions that make the camping experience less enjoyable/confusing. I was trying to make a reservation for a large church group, but could only reserve one plot of land at a time. Each plot's capacity is six people with three tents. We had an estimate of twelve people coming. I had to make another separate reservation with another name to make it work.

Second: The Campsite is not in the woods, the plots are too close to other camp sites, and some of the camp sites are on an extremely awkward slope.

Third: This camp site is very popular, and there was a lot of activity late into the night prohibiting our campers from sleeping. Around 12:30am we made a noise complaint to the State Park, but there was no one available to come due to budget cuts from the State. The noisy campers finally stopped their activity around 3:00am.

The bathrooms were in working order which is nice, and there is one shower on the male and female side. There is also two large dumpsters for camper's use, so all the trash can be nicely...

I stayed here for 3 nights and had most of the place to myself. First Connecticut certainly does not want out of state people staying at their campgrounds non resident pays 60% more then resident and all you get here is a patch of grass with picnic table and fire pit. No water or electric at site. You want any privacy you will not get it here nothing really separates one site from the next plus have to say they don't seem to clean up sites after someone leaves. I saw many fire pits filled with cans and trash and again I was the only one there and the park has only been opened two weeks for camping. The rangers on staff were very nice and the park itself had some great hiking trail and was a really pretty area. The bathrooms again clean but not, the one in upper loop is way nicer but they don't bother to clean out old soap left behind by others. Location is good if you want a inexpensive way to be somewhat close to NY but as a destination this place would not...