Goose Creek State Park

Unfortunately, we were only able to stay for one day this trip. This campground is incredible. The surroundings are beautiful and the areas nature is on full display. Being relatively new to the camping world, I have a limited amount of experience to pull from. This is the second state campground I’ve visited. The first was pleasant and left me with very little to complain about. Goose Creek has left me with nothing to be unhappy with. Full hookups seem to be a pipe dream with state campgrounds generally, but not here. Power, water, and sewer. The site I stayed in is one of the largest I’ve experienced, and it offers a nice amount of privacy. Each site is divided by the natural brush. The sites are deep and widen to include plenty of cleared gravel space to enjoy. I can’t speak highly enough of the campground. I’d like to also add that the staff and camp host were both incredibly friendly. We went to visit the visitor center close to closing time and the ranger on duty kept the building open for us to visit. I didn’t catch his name unfortunately or I would give him a huge shoutout. It isn’t a huge museum but my family enjoyed our time there. My Verizon service is low but seems to be of fairly good quality. I may be beating a dead bush but this place is great. Can’t wait to visit again.

This was our first stay in a North Carolina State Park. Massive sites that are mostly gravel for the RV sites. Full hook ups. Very clean everywhere. About 8 miles of trails of which all are pretty wide and clear. No trash on the trails just beautiful nature. Lots of wildlife if you take the time to look. Very friendly staff and Rangers on site. We booked our reservations on line and when we arrived we just went to our site and set up. No check ins necessary. There is a wonderful little museum in the welcome center with all the local wildlife represented. This is a park geared toward nature appreciation. We had a great time here and went on most of the trails. This is one of the best kept state park we have been to.

It's a warm, dry December and we are the only campers here, other than the camphost. Loving the trails that our young kids can hike or ride their bikes on, just off of our campsite. The roads leading to the campground have no traffic, again perfect for riding bikes with young kids for miles.
Swan Quarter is only an hour away, where you can take the ferry to Ocracoke Island, with 16 miles of protected seashore.
Bathrooms are brand new, clean.
Sites exposed, getting full sun, which is wonderful for winter.
Love this campground, would highly recommend.

We stayed in the RV side of the park on a one night stop while traveling to the Outer Banks Campsites are clearly marked - laid out with landscaping timbers- heavy gravel - picnic tables and fire pits are sitting on gravel so you are never sitting in mud / dirt - there had been very hard rain for several days including the day we arrived and only a small amount of standing water - we had good cell reception but Verizon and AT&T - most importantly the trees were cut back with no overhangs

we will be back another time when we can spend more than one night. We did not use the bathhouse facilities so I cannot review those areas

I LOVED this campground! In late December, it was so quiet and peaceful. The sunsets and moonrises every day were unreal and the scenery was beautiful. With the the cooler weather, we appreciated the lack of shade and it made our trailer just warm enough for comfort. The boardwalk is still broken, but I thought up to that point it's still a nice enough walk through the marsh to go. The other hiking trails were peaceful and pretty as well. Dale and Lorretta are wonderful camp hosts, very helpful and friendly (the park rangers too). Lots of space in between the sites and the bathrooms are high-quality with hot water showers. Our site was level and we appreciated the amount of space available for backing in.

There's not a ton in the surrounding area, so this is the perfect place to just relax and unwind away from others (good in Covid times). We had two Verizon bars, but that was still enough to stream movies.

This hidden gem of a state park features 20'ish RV spaces, a handful of cabins, and tent sites which are located in a different section of the park. You can tell the RV/cabin section of the campground is relatively new, as the bathhouse and cabins all look like they were just built this past year.

Among the pluses of staying here is the fact your neighbors are not right on top of you. Site 14, which is where we were located, had at least 100' on the port side between us and the neighboring site, and at least a football field on the starboard side. I don't recall many parks with this much space between them in my travels, and this site probably was the widest. Most sites, however, had at least 75' in between them.

The only true drawback with the sites themselves is that a number of them are sloped, but not horribly. Be prepared to throw an extra block under your front stabilizers in most cases.

Firewood is sold on site for $5/bundle, and is somewhat green so be prepared to spend some time getting a fire going if you use their wood.

Being here off-season is such a blessing, as you really feel like you have the entire park, including the trail system (~8 miles of hiking/singletrack) to yourself. One Monday afternoon I encountered more deer (3) than people (1, the park ranger).

If you're looking for river access, you have it in the primitive sites but the RV sites it's a bit of a hike. You can either drive to the end of the park and hike a couple hundred yards, or hike/bike from the RV sites but it's 2-3 miles.

One thing which isn't mentioned, do not hike the boardwalk trail. There are no signs however the boardwalk is out about 3/4 mile into the hike, with no options but to turn around and hike down the main road to another trail. In talking to the ranger, it didn't sound like this was going to be addressed anytime soon.

Bandwidth Speeds (a.k.a. bring an antenna):
AT&T (Pepwave modem with XPOL external antenna 20' in the air): 30-50mbps down, 5-10mbps up
Verizon (iPhone 11): .5 mbps down, .5mbps up (virtually non-existent)