Fort McAllister State Park

My husband and I stayed here a few days and really enjoyed it. We are camping in our converted 4Runner. Top 10 for favorite places we have camped. This place felt a little confusing at first, but wasn’t too hard to figure out. Thought it would be nice to share some info to make your stay more smooth.

-we made our reservation online. Booked a tent site because it looked like a standard site. Wasn’t sure if it was going to work out, but went for it. (Site was perfect for tent, suv, or van camping. Has table and level parking) Had no issues.

-pay booth with human when coming into park. Let them know you are camping or have reservations. (We arrived after 5pm, after hours, so used self service box and paid our $5 a day fee for the states park. Hung tag in car)

-if arriving during business hours (8am-5pm) you stop at the ranger building, after the booth, to check in. If after hrs, walk up to building where there are envelopes on wall with your last name. Open envelope and the pass code for the gate will be on your camping tag that you hang at your site. You will need to go back to the office the next day before 10am to check in officially. Also let them know that you paid the $5 parks fee and they will give you an official camping hang tag and site tag… lol (We didn’t read our packet until the next morning after we hiked, so we had no idea we had to check in in addition to the host driving around and checking our tag. Wasn’t an issue. We just stopped by and everything was cool) felt silly.

-tons of raccoons, opossums, and armadillos. A host let us know there were also baby raccoons right now and we will most likely see them running around during the day, so don’t be worried. Also, don’t leave any food unattended no matter what! Even if you run to the bathroom or step away from the table to go to your car to grab something. Was lighting the fire with my back turned to table and a raccoon tried to grab a box of spaghetti.

-firewood at pay station was damp/not seasoned. 10 for $5. Bring firewood from store if you want a fire.

-use bug spray.

Fort McAllister is a very nice state park south of Savannah. The sites are level, mostly private, easy to get in and out of. A few premium sites offer full hook ups but most are water & electric. There are many tent sites as well. There is a convenient dump station in the park. Bath houses are convenient and clean.
This is a quiet park; over one mile from the access road and the park is most surrounded by water.
Savannah is a 40 minute drive, mainly because there is no "direct" route into the city because of the park's location on the water.

The pros- Park was clean and well laid out. Sites were private and level. Ours was a pull through which is always nice. We were on the back loop (50) and it was quiet and shady. The sites as you enter do have full hookups we noticed (ours did not), but as far as privacy goes they didn’t have much being on the main thru street. Lots of wildlife. Saw tons of deer that will stroll right through your site, not the least but afraid of you. Also saw a family of raccoons that visited us one evening while sitting around the fire. I walked the nature trail that’s near the campground and it was okay. The fishing pier that campers can use is nice. Beautiful sunrises down there.

The cons- Gnats and mosquitoes! They really need to do a spraying for these. Anytime you are outside bug spray MUST be used, so we spent three days being sticky basically. Also, a minor complaint about fees. They do charge you a “parking fee” of $5. I think this is the only park where we’ve been charged a parking fee ON TOP of our site fee that we’ve already paid when making the reservation. You’d think they could just tack that on to a reservation fee and call it good. Also, the fort that’s on site is NOT free to campers. It’s $10 each to even visit the museum or walk around the area. They should make that free to campers, or at the very least give them a discount. One day we visited St Simon’s island (an hour south) and toured Fort Frederica and it was free. It’s a much larger museum and fort area and we loved it. But, at $20 for the both of us to see the fort here just wasn’t worth it to us.

It’s an hour+ drive north into savannah, and that was a fun day, as well as a fun day with the hour drive south to the Golden Isles area. All in all, we enjoyed our few days here, just leaving with a few bug bites.

This is a very pretty and flat state park. Beautiful canopy of Oaks and Spanish Moss. There’s not much to do within the park itself once you tour the fort. There are two short hiking trails and water access. The water access is great and most of the campers seem to have their own boats and were there for fishing and boating. The park also rent kayaks and canoes. We were pleasantly surprised by how pretty it was. The bathrooms were serviceable, but old and a little bit dirty. Bugs were bad but not unmanageable. Make sure to visit Fish Tales restaurant outside the park. Great water views and really good hush puppies and she crab soup.

We were not prepared for how awesome this place would be. We truly felt like we were camping in the jungle, there were beautiful old trees with Spanish moss everywhere. The wildlife alone is worth the stay. We enjoyed the nature trails and saw plenty of armadillos, opossums, and countless birds. We enjoyed kayaking the estuaries but make sure you get a tide table and a map, I could see it getting really tough to paddle against the tide in some of these areas and it would be easy to get lost. There's plenty to do here at the campground but it's also a great place to visit Savannah.
The sites are well laid out and give ample privacy. There are plenty of trees but our 13' tall Rosie did just fine, we brushed several branches and some Spanish moss but nothing that would damage our roof or AC units. The campground layout is logical and easy to navigate. There is only one dump station spot so if you're checking out on a Sunday I could see it getting backed up. When we left on a Tuesday there was one person waiting after we dumped.

We stayed here April 2022 and enjoyed the quiet spacious sites. Lots of wildlife - deer; raccoons; armadillo; possums visited us daily. Location is about 1 hour to Savannah; Tybee; about 1 1/2 to Jekyll Island. We enjoyed the quiet and hiked a few trails nearby. About 20 min off 95. We prefer Tybee over this location as the gnats were a nuisance and had to smoke them out daily. Limited verizon cell, but functional with a booster.

We camped here in a 40' motorhome in November 2021.
We chose this park for it's proximity to Savannah, but were pleasantly surprised to discover how much we enjoyed the park itself and the town of Richmond Hill GA.
The campground is primitive in a good way, the roads are narrow and the trees are overgrown, the sites are mostly sand. Watch for tree root speed bumps on the way in. It feels like you're in nature, not at an RV park. Beautiful docks for sunrise views.
Firewood available on site, self-serve. Most sites have water and electricity (30 amp), though some have full-hookups (for an additional fee). Pull-through dump station available on way out of park.
We loved biking within the park.
The historic site and museum are very interesting and definitely worth checking out.
Nearby grocery stores, restaurants, etc all within 10-15 min in Richmond Hill.
Savannah is about 30 minutes away.

This park has beautiful access to the marsh on both sides and it great for sunrise and sunset. There is a lot of wild life; we saw deer (who were very tame), raccoons, opossum bats and lots of birds

Some of the sites are kind of close but laid out in different configurations. Some have full hook ups, some don’t, but the dump site is close and convenient We had water and electric.

Some of the sites have gravel and some, like ours are bare sand / dirt. That was a down side as we kept tracking it into our camper, despite our best efforts.

Our site also had a lot of roots to back over but we liked how it was kind of tucked in off the camp road.

Cell service was ok for AT&T and T mobile. A booster would be a plus for working folks with video call needs.

Over all a great place. We loved the feel of being in nature but still only about 40 mins from Savannah.