McDowell Campground — Hotel in Tega Cay

This place is great! Lots of hiking trails and beautiful lake views along the trails. Bath house has 8 individual bathrooms (sink, toilet, & shower all to yourself). Only a few RV sites, but lots of tent sites. Of the 13 RV sites, only two have full hookups (the rest have to use the dump station). In the showers you cannot control the water temperature. You push a button on the wall and you get water for about 10 to 15 seconds then it shuts off until you press it again. Water temp is set...some showers you get warm water and others are hot. Two ADA showers have a detachable shower hose while the others are a fixed head. Some give you a solid stream and one in particular is like a mist with cold water.

Cell phone reception is hit and miss. No wi-fi throughout the campground or Preserve either.

RV sites are NOT level. You will need Leveling blocks! They sell them at the office if you don't have a set or two. We have a small rig and parked it backward in the site so the tongue jack wouldn't be nearly totally extended. All sites are pull throughs and slope down.

The campground is gated and will require a code to get in. At night there is another gate that you have to get through by the office before arriving at the primary gate to enter the campground area. I have seen a police vehicle drive through the campground every night just patrolling the area.

Firewood and ice are available at the office during business hours. Firewood is $5 & ice is $2.Preserve. (UPDATE: wood is now $7 and ice is now $3)

We will definitely come back here whenever we are in the area if a site is available!

UPDATE: We are back! Only difference I noticed so far is that the one shower head that used to give a cold temperature mist is now a solid stream. That's a plus.

They are strict with their check-in time of 3 pm. We got here about an hour early and they would not let us go in to set up. They said we could park the rig by the office and go for a hike for an hour or go to the lake and hang out since our rig was small enough to take into the park.

Again, we had to park our rig backward in the site so the front end wouldn't be so high up and unstable. No big deal 😀

UPDATE AGAIN: This is now our 4th time staying here in the past 18 months. The 3rd time, we stayed in another area for smaller RV's, but the water connection was too far for our 50-foot house, so we didn't have constant water.

This time we are back at RV-06 site, right by the bathrooms. This is our favorite site here.

Bicycles are NOT allowed to be ridden on any of the hiking trails. You can only ride them on the...

It is a very cozy wooded campground with small, close together sites. Some, like our site R3, are labeled as rv sites but are very steep and un-level. We had to add 4 lego blocks on one side to level. From front to back, we were off by almost 20 inches. Our trailer tongue was inches off the ground to make the trailer level.

There is no alcohol or tobacco allowed. No Tiki torches either. Fire rings are in all the sites.

The bathrooms are individual single rooms you don't have to share with a toilet, sink, and shower all to yourself.

Firewood is 5 bucks and ice is 2 dollars. They are sold at the campground entrance.

There are multiple trails that intersect. Some head down to the lake and offer great views of the lake and the million dollar homes dotting the shoreline. Others wind around hilly wooded dirt and gravel paths.

There are lots of tent sites if that is your thing. Some are walk in while others are drive in.

There are 2 playgrounds for the kids. On the Saturday we were there in early May, they were in high demand. They were quit noise during the day. Something to keep in mind.

A short drive gets you to gas, grocery, and restaurants.

Lastly, we had 5g cell service on Verizon...

This is the best campground you'll probably ever stay at. It has everything nearby from hiking, to fishing, to kayaking. The sites are set just far enough away from your neighbor to not be distracted and they are all nestled in the nature and don't feel like some pre-paved, touristy, truck stop. Despite all this natural feel, you can easily walk to the main bathroom area that has showers and even has washers and dryers. The sites themselves have electric and water pumps as well. I'm speaking from someone who has hammock and tent camped there multiple times and not as an RV person. Ice and wood are available. The only complaint I have about the place is the tent pads are swore lots of gravel and its really hard to get any stakes through it and horrible on the back and you'll rip your tent bottom up if you're not prepared fro this with a ground sheet. Other than that the place rocks and has a gated code to get in so you're secure...