We stayed at Hard Labor Creek State Park in Rutledge, Georgia. (Campground Reviews listing.)
A nice quiet state park, but very unlevel sites, and no cell service.
Dates:
- Check in: 2024-04-21
- Check out: 2024-04-28
- 7 nights
Weather:
- Partly cloudy
- High temps 65-79°F, lows 42-61°F
- Negligible wind, gusts to 15 MPH
Noise:
- No road noise
- Distant occasional train noise
- Some neighbor noise
Site:
- #3, pull-through, gravel
- Didn’t need to disconnect toad, parked behind and in front of coach
- Extremely unlevel, high on passenger side and front; couldn’t use hydraulic leveling, had to use air leveling
- Gravel driveway about 230 feet long, though none of it flat
- No neighbor on passenger side, trees and grass about 270 feet to next driveway
- Trees and slope to driver-side neighbor about 35 feet wide
- Picnic table on gravel area about 35 feet wide by 10 feet deep
- Fire pit
- Lantern hook
- Clean site
Utilities:
- 50 amp power, conveniently located
- 30 PSI water, conveniently located
- Loose sewer connection, conveniently located (2 10-foot pipes needed)
Internet (in usage priority order):
- Starlink: 20-55 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up, 25 ms ping (obstructed, with frequent outages)
- Verizon: 7 Mbps down, 0.2 Mbps up, 140 ms ping (fairly unusable)
- AT&T: 0.3 Mbps down, 0.01 Mbps up, 80-150 ms ping (unusable)
- T-Mobile: no service
- Campground Wi-Fi: none (other than at trading post)
Amenities:
- Garbage dumpster by entrance
- Dump station
- Mini golf
- Walking paths
- Trading post
Our review on Campground Reviews:
Nice place to unplug
This was a nice, quiet state park amid hills and trees about an hour from Atlanta. There are many recreational activities in the park, and it would be a great place to get away from it all. However, if you’re working full-time from the road, you will have difficulties getting a signal. We have access to all three major carriers and Starlink. Cell service was negligible, and the heavy tree cover made Starlink very unreliable. The sites are nice and large but may be very unlevel. We had site 3, which was 230 feet long (not exaggerating), but none of it was flat. We tried multiple locations and angles but couldn’t make it work with the hydraulic leveling and eventually resorted to using air leveling, which isn’t ideal (it’s like living in a bouncy castle or being at sea). If you have a smaller camper and don’t have to work, this park would be perfect, but for us, it was kind of a mixed bag. We camped at Hard Labor Creek State Park in a Motorhome.
Tip for other campers: Madison is a cute little town about 20 minutes away. Definitely recommend “The Sinclair” for good coffee, croissants, and speedy WiFi….
Campground map:
An interactive map:
Our site was a very long pull-through, but extremely unlevel:
We put out our griddle, tables, and chairs, and enjoyed sitting outside on several days:
Utilities:
We were far to the left to try to find some level ground, unsuccessfully:
Entrance to the site:
When we tried to use our hydraulic jacks, one of the back tires was off the ground; not great, since they are the brakes on the coach:
So we ended up using air leveling instead of hydraulic, which isn’t as preferred as it is more wobbly, but at least we had that option (most motorhome and fiver RVs only have hydraulic jacks).
There was also no usable cell service, and Starlink was too obstructed for continuous streaming, so Jenn went to a coffee shop appropriately named “The Sinclair” to have a video chat meeting:
Trading post at the entrance of the campground:
Mini golf:
Playground:
Nature trail:
Picnic shelter:
Dump station:
Camper bathrooms:
Other sites:
A glimpse of a lake from the end of one of the camping loops:
The road by our site:
A nice campground, but I don’t think we’ll return, as lack of internet connectivity is a fatal problem for us, since we need it to do our work. If we did return, we’d pick a different site; the long pull-through was nice, but one of the back-ins might be more flat (though if you look at the pictures above, most seemed to have a slope).
