Lake Powhatan Recreation Area & Campground — Hotel in Fletcher

We stayed on sites 12 and 13 for the week of July 4th. I picked this campsite over Campfire Lodgings (our previous year campsite) because it had a lake to cool down. That was a big mistake. Campfire Lodgings has beautiful views and the grounds and staff couldn't have been friendlier. The only issue was this year I was going with 12 people, many of them teens, and I wanted to make sure they had water access to cool down.

Arrival at Lake Powhatan was uneventful but I did notice that it was extremely busy at check in and somewhat tricky to locate. We arrived at our campsite and it was fine. The sites are all 20' to 30' from each other and clean.

Some important facts you should know:

The camp hosts are horrendous. Within the first hour we had the camp host stop by our camp sites 6 times admonishing us for perceived infractions. The camp hosts cruise up and down the loop in golf carts looking to yell at campers. We started to realize this was more like a prison camp than a campground. My 73 year old mother was offended, my children were offended and frankly by the end of day one of our six day stay our trip was tainted. They are seriously that aggressive.

We were told that cars had to be backed into the sites so the hang tags were visible. The second visit was to let us know that only 2 tents were allowed per site. The third visit we were told nothing with a bottom (tent), etc) could be placed outside of the marked camp site areas. Fourth visit was to fix a broken pump valve. The fifth visit was to tell us only 4 vehicles were allowed between the two camp sites. The sixth visit was to let us know that a vehicle that we were unloading was parked on the side of the road and needed to be moved immediately. Please keep in mind that this was within the first 60 minutes of our visit.

The camp host stopped at least another dozen times during our stay. We actually devised a bird call to warn our fellow campers when the camp host tried to sneak up on camp sites in their electric golf cart. Quiet hours are strictly, STRICTLY enforced between the hours of 10 pm - 7 am. It doesn't matter if your child is frightened and cries out. Any noise will get you a warning letting you know that you will be kicked out of the campgrounds and it is your final warning. The exact quote, "THIS IS YOUR FRIENDLY WARNING! IF I COME BACK YOU WILL BE KICKED OUT!" We all went to bed at 10:05 because we were afraid that we would be kicked out. Some of the people that we were camping with had driven 15 hours to get to the site and had to go directly to bed.

Other things to note: the lake is more a pond. The area they have roped off to swim is roughly 200' by 30'. The bottom is 6" of mud and the beach area is covered in geese droppings. If you are looking for an area to swim and cool off I would recommend bring your own tubes or camping at Mount Pisgah Campgrounds which has beautiful, clean mountain pools to swim (albeit slightly colder water).

From our campsite the lake was roughly 1/3 of a mile away.

I was also saddened why I asked a Park Ranger if my family could fish on July 4th without a fishing license. I was under the impression that on July 4th people are allowed to fish without a license. I was told that I would have to buy licenses for anyone over 16 that wished to fish. I went down to KMART and spend $79.00 on three fishing licenses. When I had internet access, I check the law and we were allowed to fish without a license on the 4th and the Ranger was simply not aware of the fact. "The N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission reminds anglers and would-be anglers of all ages that July 4 is “free fishing day” in North Carolina."

The loop they we stayed on had two showers and two bathrooms. The facilities were clean but you often had to wait to use...

The camping spots here are fantastic! They don't have the normal tent pad areas instead the whole site area is a place you can set up your tent (as long as you stay within the campsite borders). So if you have irregular or large size tent then these sites are perfect! I recommend camping on the inner circle if you can so you have a trail to the showers/bathroom. If not, you have to walk all the way around as there does not seem to be any other trail to get there. This is not a dead quiet after 10pm campground and I liked that. Yes it got quieter, but I did not feel the entrapment of having to be whisper quiet. No body came by to bother us or inspect anything which was nice (I have had that happen at other campgrounds). My largest complaint, and the reason this is a 3 and not 5 star review, is that you must be out of the campground by 12pm. Not just your site, but the entire location or you will be charged. I have had other campgrounds allow you to go swimming, use the restrooms/showers, hike the trails, etc as long as you were off your campsite by the allotted time. When I went to go ask about swimming and where to park they told me that it was past 12pm (it was 12:06 to be exact) and my parking pass was no good after 12pm (nothing states this on their brochure or the pass, it simply states the date it will expire). They told me that I would have to pay $2 a person to go swimming, even though I had paid for a few days of camping and never went swimming once. It was something I wanted to save until the end. We also pack up our site and use the showers at the end too. It's just something we like to do and we're shocked that you are literally considered trespassing at 12:01pm on the ENTIRE location. They need to stress this on check in that you can not swim or shower or park or hike after your allotted check out time. Even hotels let you use a facility after the checkout time as long as you are out of the rooms. Again I have stayed at quiet a few campgrounds and they have ALL allowed swimming and hiking after, just as long as you are off your site. And though this did not happen to me, my friends decided to stay behind because they really wanted to go for a swim so they paid the money to stay. They got to the beach and it started to thunder and though they had only been there for a few minutes (enough time to change and no swimming) they were not given a refund. Two minutes, no swimming and kicked off the beach (for a very understandable reason) but not to be even given a refund of any kind is very low brow in my opinion. There are no showers or any water to wash the sand off your feet there and they were told that on top of not getting a refund they would have to pay more to use the showers. Mind you they also paid for camping for two days so in my opinion you have paid your dues to be able to at least shower the sand off after paying $6 to literally get out of your car and back in. Sadly, we will not be returning, the sites are awesome but I can't see why someone would go through that much trouble to make you feel like trespassers after a weekend of...

First off, I want to start by saying my wife and I are regular campers who have stayed at state campgrounds for years and NEVER had an issue. Please do yourself the favor and stay far away from this place...where do I even start? ok...My wife and I had made reservations here a few months back and our site was for an electric hookup only (no water). I called the office and asked if they could set us up in a site with full hookup (water and electric) I was told on the phone that those sites were "first come first serve" and that if I were to get there early enough, they would put us on a "waiting list" and if someone checked out, then we could be in line for one of the full hookup sites. I took a day off of work and traveled all the way out to Asheville and got to the campground early with the intent of getting put on a waiting list. As soon as we pulled into the campground, I asked to get put on this infamous waiting list, only to be told that a waiting list did not exist (in a very rude manner). I explained that the lady on the phone told me that and he did not seem to care. We went about and checked into our reserved site and while I was setting up, a guy circled our site at least 4 times within about 5 minutes as if he was spying on us. very strange....he finally stopped and yelled over to us" are you sure you wanna stay in this loop? There's trouble on this loop" I laughed and shrugged it off (I should have taken him very seriously at this point). The next day, my wife and I had gone hiking and checked out Asheville for the day with our two small dogs. We got back to camp around 4 pm and decided we were going to run our and grab a bite to eat (while leaving the dogs behind in the camper) I get a phone call no more than 15 minutes after we had been gone from a lady at the campground saying that our dogs have been "barking all day" kind of funny, considering our dogs hadn't even been at the camp all day! she went on to tell me that we needed to return ASAP and that it was campground policy that you are to not leave your pets unattended at ANY time. Later that afternoon I saw our busy body neighbors ( who to later find out were the assistant managers of the campground) were patrolling the campground on their golf cart and what do ya know? They left their dogs in their camper UNATTENDED and BARKING. I think its funny how the rules only apply to some people. There were at least 3 different guys patrolling the campground at ALL hours of the day just looking to complain about something. The sites were VERY close together, so if you are looking for privacy, this is certainly not the...