Prince Gallitzin State Park — Attraction in White Township

Review is for the campground. Extremely overcrowded, overpriced, unrelaxing campground. Renting a site for 3 days on Memorial Day weekend was $90 and some change.

To be expected, Memorial Day weekend was busy. I have camped many times on Memorial Day weekend and have never experienced what I did this past holiday weekend. The campground is huge and has dog-friendly sections – however, there is no privacy between campsites. That being said – across the road from us was an extremely loud, large, disrespectful group of individuals. They seem to have rented out multiple campsites but gathered during the day at the one across the road from me. They had multiple dogs – one being a beagle – that would bark incessantly throughout the day which would trigger all the other dogs in the campground to also bark.

I spent Saturday morning at the lake and came back to take a nap around 1pm. I was woken up by the beagle (across the street) barking non-stop for 15-20 minutes. There was no control over that animal. Fast forward to around check-in time (3pm) my site was visited by a DCNR Ranger who threatened to kick me and my group out of the campground because there were complaints of dogs barking. Instead of investigating the 15-20+ people across the street from me and their dogs – they came to my campsite (literally a group of women) and demanded to “speak to the owner of the campsite” as if they were expecting a man to come out and speak with them. The DCNR Ranger was accusatory, rude, and attempted to intimidate us all while turning a blind eye to every other nuisance in the campground. Mind you – my dogs were extremely well behaved and as quiet as any other dog could be that is surrounded by so much stimulation.

It appears that I was an easy target to blame because 1) my dogs were barking at a stranger (park ranger) who entered the campsite (that I paid $90 for) and 2) I was camping in a tent and could not put my dogs into a RV like every other person at the campground. When an unfamiliar person enters a space that is occupied by me and my family/friends – my dog will bark – most dogs will bark. The park ranger must have just assumed (again, instead of investigating) that MY dogs were the problem because they barked when he got out of his vehicle and approached my campsite in a hostile manner. After we were threatened with getting kicked out – the family across from us continued their loud nonsense.

The family across from my campsite had many small, toddler aged (5 years or less) children who were all unsupervised. I witnessed these kids push each other off of their bike/scooter/wheeled toy which caused screaming and crying, run away from the campsite, enter other sites, all while the parents didn’t even look their direction. I even saw a kid push one kid off a bike and then smash their helmet into their head. Kids were left screaming and crying most of the time and when the parents did notice their kids were missing, all I heard was them YELL their name and threaten them. I felt bad for the children. They would ‘get in trouble’ with their parents and then within 5-10 minutes continue their escapades of terrorizing the street with their screams and cries.

At some point a group of sport bikes came through the campground and were REVVING their engine. Where are the repercussions of that? “Quiet hours” were non-existent as I could hear multiple sites continuing to party even after designated quiet hours.

As one review previously mentioned about the campground – it’s a Walmart.

So happy that I spent $90 and 72 hours of my time being...

I had been going to Prince Gallitzin for 27 years. My grandfather and I would go annually for a two week stay. I haven't been going because it's not the same. There's a different feel about it. There was a time when deer, squirrels, chipmunks ,even raccoons would come right up to you to pet. The camp once had life gaurds. There used to be fires going all through the night. There were people of all age groups having fun- together. You didn't have to use inside of a library voice in the outdoors. I had a girl friend from New York City as a guest and they nearly ordered us to leave for talking past the absurd 9 pm curfew. I'd recommend ear plugs and eyes covers. Some people like to be active at night. There wasn't such a grotesque sense of self entitlement from the staff back then. People including staff weren't so offstandish. I blame the tension and deterioration of the enjoyable social camping dynamic through the recent years on unreasonable regulations, prudent people and polocies, along with some odd ball characters that happened to have filled a position. The boating fees are overpriced. If you rented a boat every day for a week you could buy a few of your own. $10 for a kayak for a day would be reasonable. I would buy stuff at the camp store if everything wasn't so price gouged. There are town stores just a few miles away. I leave wood for my neighbors and my neighbors sometimes have left wood for me but those people on the quads that sell firewood try steal it nearly the minute someone checks out. That's a disgrace. They want to 'clean' up your wood but don't want to clean up the fire pits. How charming. There also used to be a nice wooden walking bridge crossing the beaver marsh from muskrat beach to headache hill. Management dessimated the beautiful scenery. Just hope you have decent down to earth neighbors when you go as well as reasonable...

This is one of Pa's larger state park campgrounds. There is a nice beach area with a playground. The camp store is stocked and even sells ice cream pizza and some other hot items. Sites are a nice size and most are wooded. There is an awesome bike track called humps and bumps for the kids ride on. There is also a nice hiking tail along the lake with several places cleared to swim and put a kayak in A few complaints that led to a 4 instead of 5 star. Bathhouses are starting to show their age and they need to be cleaned better. Lots of dirt and spider webs that you can tell have been there for a while General landscaping around public areas could be upkept better. And just a word of caution. They do advertise and offer Wi-Fi for a nominal fee ($20 a week). We figured it would just be nice to have so we weren't running up data and kids could occasionally stream a show at night. Well, service was almost nonexistent. I would rather them not offer the service. (And yes, I know I am camping and internet shouldn't even be a concern. It doesn't bother me not having it, just don't offer a product that isn't functioning well. There may be people who travel and work and be relying on the Wi-Fi that...