We recently went on our first boat in camping trip at Devils Fork State Park in South Carolina and became detectives to find the campsite we booked! We have camped quite a bit and this is something that we have never experienced before. Since we knew we had to beach the boat and hike to our site, we arrived a little early to scope things out. Noticed someone was still set up on what we thought was our site, but knew it wasn’t checkout time yet, so we hiked around a bit and went out on the boat to check out the lake.
When we arrived back at the campground after check out time, there was still someone set up on what we thought was our site; site 14. Site 14 and 15 are right next to each other and there was a group gathered on 15. Zach walked up and asked if anyone there was setup on 14. A guy raised his hand and Zach asked if he was getting ready to pack up, to which he said no, he was on site 16 and they were all getting ready to go back out on the lake.
Double Springs Boat In Campground Map
A little background here, each site has two markers; a wooden post with a plastic number on it at the corner of the tent pad and a metal hanging hook with sticker numbers on it. The wooden post at this site said 16 and conveniently the metal hanging hook numbers were covered, but when we had walked by earlier, I noticed that there was 14 on the hook. The guy on the site in question insisted that it was site 16 and that they had walked around, but not found any site 14. We had the map and based on that, were fairly certain that it was in fact our site he was on, but decided to walk the rest of the campground and find missing site 14.
After some hiking, we found site 16 or the new site “14”. Since this guy wanted to camp right next to his friends on site 15 and didn’t like the hike to site 16 that he had reserved, he took it upon himself to switch the plastic numbers on the wooden posts at the two sites and tried to keep the sticker numbers at his “new” site covered.
All of this now put us in pickle! Do we confront this guy and demand the site we reserved back? Which would mean we spend at least one night camping right next to his probably angry friends. Do we suck it up and take site 16 which is definitely more of a climb and would likely mean we have to set up camp twice because someone else may be on that site tomorrow? Ultimately, we decided to let the park deal with it.
We had tried a couple phone numbers, but ended up boating over to the office and letting them know what was going on. Upon explaining our situation, the rangers were super helpful. They tried to call the people on both site 14 and 15, but they had turned their phones off. There happened to be one site available at the campground for both our nights, so they switched our reservation to site 25, which was slightly better than 16 and meant that we could somewhat avoid everyone at 14 and 15, if we needed to. They also graciously refunded our money since we were having to deal with all this craziness and let us know that they would be going over to the campground later in the afternoon to talk with the group and most likely asking them to leave.
Now that everything was figured out, it was time to unload the boat. Unfortunately, there was no good place to beach the boat near our new site. Some sites have a sand beach nearby and some have very rocky coastline, so with our fiberglass boat, that wasn’t an option. (I will do another blog with information on which sites are good for boats and which ones are good for those paddling across the lake.)
This meant we were beaching in our original spot near site 14 that was quite a bit of a hike to the trail and not close to site 25. We did bring a wagon with us that helped a bit, but we quickly determined that we packed too much, even when we tried to pack light. Next time, one backpack each, along with a cooler and bag of food is all we are allowing haha!
Overall, it was a great weekend and if you are an adventurous camper at all, I highly recommend doing this at least once. We were able to take the boat to waterfalls, anchor and swim to them. If you are paddling to the campground, you can also schedule waterfall boat tours that leave out of Devils Fork State Park, so you would still be able to see the waterfalls that are further out on the lake. Lake Jocassee also has much less boat traffic than the lakes we are used to (Lake Norman and Lake Wylie) because the only boat access for the lake is at the State Park.
Once we were able to take our detective hats off, this camping experience led to a much need relaxing weekend for both of us!
If you are looking to visit Double Springs Campground at Devils Fork State Park, visit Boat In Campground at Devils Fork State Park to get an idea of what sites you might want to reserve!
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