Tims Ford State Park — Attraction in Winchester

Let me start by saying that whoever designed Fairview Campground for Tims Ford State Park obviously never camped in their life. When visitors arrive for the first time at this Campground this is what they're up against. Driving down the main entrance to the campground, sites in their teens on the right hand side sights in their 50s 60s and 70s are on the left hand side with no signage whatsoever at the entrance to this camping section indicating where the other campsites are located. There seems to be no logical effort made in assigning site numbers. One camping section is located just to the right before you turn into the main Campground but absolutely no numbers are indicated at the entrance to this section as to what those sites are. Sites 30 through 33 are beautiful sights along the edge of the lake that were sculptured out of a hill and reinforced with landscape timbers that are about 3 ft tall. The campfires at these sites are above this wall with no steps for access to them which forces campers to walk all the way around to get up to the camp fire area. A few more landscape timbers as steps would have made a world of difference. The coup de gras is their dump station area. If more than one person is in line at the dump station it blocks all traffic around the circle where the dump station is located. And to make matters worse instead of continuing out of the park in a logical manner after you have dumped like is the case in about 95% of all other parks we have visited, you have to Circle that same area again because of their one-way pattern and get behind everybody else that are in line blocking the road waiting to dump. When we were leaving we stopped at site 72 the host site to inform them that the pump handle at our site had splintered in several pieces and needed to be repaired. Instead of taking charge of that issue and informing maintenance they wanted us to go up and stop on our way out and inform the front office of the issue when they could have very easily called them. Why are they hosts if they do not want to help out even if they were not officially on duty at that time. They finally very reluctantly agreed to contact maintenance. And finally the entrance Road from the gate down to the campground is so narrow that when two of today's larger RVs such as a fifth wheel and a Class A opposed each other in opposite directions one of them is forced over into the ditch in order to get around. It's a shame that such a lovely Campground has so many issues that definitely detract from one's enjoyment. I would love to hear park Management's response to...

Campsites are extremely small. We have a truck camper and a boat. We could not park the two side by side in the campsite with room to walk between the two, so you can imagine how difficult it was to get them in there. We had the camper parked off the pad too. The other side of the pad had a 14” drop off so there was no wiggle room. In fact, the straw that broke the camel’s back was when our boat trailer fell off the ledge.

The only dealing we had with the park host was when the campground was nearly empty and we were trying to leave and they rode through and stopped to tell us we were in the way of traffic. 🤷‍♀️

I enjoyed the trails, while my son and husband fished. I went out occasionally in the boat, and we just did not catch many fish. The boat traffic on the lake was horrendous. We ended up leaving early to head on out to bigger and better places.

If you are just tent camping or have a teardrop camper, it would be fine. If you are kayaking, hiking, or water skiing, you would enjoy it. It was the most beautiful hell on earth for us though, and we could not wait to get out of there.

Park Rangers were writing tickets like crazy, but dogs were able to roam free. I reported one roaming dog to a ranger, and he said it was a stray and that they were trying to get it acclimated to people. People just walked around with their large dogs off a leash, and dogs were barking at each other...

This is now one of our favorite state parks. We stayed in the cabins for a few nights in June and we really enjoyed our stay. The cabin was so nice and unique. We really loved it, and we loved the decks that we were able to sit out on and somewhat see the lake. The cabins are down a pretty steep hill, and you all park in a shared lot and then carry your stuff down, so that was not fun, especially because of how hot it was. It being on a hill also meant the fire pit and grill were slanted, so there was not a great area to just sit and hang out outside besides on the deck. We didn't really mind it that much though. The park has a play ground and miles of walking trails and a nature center. The visitor center also has quite a bit of gifts and souvenirs. We were very bummed that the pool is no longer there and now you must drive at least 15 minutes to get to the beach area in the campground or go into Winchester to their swimming pool. It bums me out that a lot of state parks just don't prioritize pools or swimming areas. That's actually a huge factor for us since we have kids, we want a place to swim. During the day, it would be very hot. The parking lot reached 110 one day. But the evenings had cooled down decently that it was much more bearable to go walk. There are several different trails of all lengths, so if you want just a short walk or a long hike, there...