Mayberry Campground

We are here at Mayberry Campground in Mt. Airy, NC. This is the birth place of Andy Griffith and the inspiration for the town of Mayberry. Mt. Airy is in the very NW corner of the NC mountains. We will be having a separate video on the are but will focus more on the campground for this video. The land that the campground owned was originally part of a farm in which the legendary siamese twins Eng and Chang Bunker had once owned. There is actually a house still here that one of their many children built. The house is usually able to be toured, but it was not available during our stay. The owner of the campground is actually a decendent of the famous siamese twins. To me after seeing these guys on Ripley's and such it's more interesting than the whole Mayberry theme.

The campground is a very large campground with 139 sites. As with a lot of large RV parks there are pros and cons to this. A lot of the sites are relatively small, but we have noted some of the better sites and we will let you know about those in a few minutes. The campground is very close to Mt. Airy and all of the attractions there. They do have some ammenities such as a small laundromat in a small shed type building next to the office. I think this is great and a lot more parks should take note of this. It's not a big expensive building and it adds a lot of value for people that are staying more than a couple of days. There is cable, but our cable never came through very clear. Cable is not available in sites 108-139. I'm not used to having cable, so it wasn't a big deal for me and I didn't even complain to the office about it, but I did try a second coax cable without any better results. There are also a couple of playgrounds around for the kids to play on as well as a couple of "fish'in holes" as they call them for catch and release fishing.

Cell service and internet connection can be very spotty. When we first arrived it appeared that AT&T was king. I talked to Bill, with Nursing your Travel Bug and he said their AT&T hotspot was working great. The wifi service as well as the Verizon service wasn't that great for most of our stay. Verizon had 4 bars, but was only getting the same 1-2 mgb download speed as the wifi. However, after everyone started leaving the wifi speed increased to 8-10 mgb down so I think it was just an issue with congestion. I thought the same would be true with the verizon, but it never seemed to pick up speed and even though I had full bars there were a lot of times that I couldn't even connect to do a speed test.

All in all, Mayberry campround is what I would consider a good value. They do have discounts for AAA, Good Sam, Military, and Passport America. The full price fee at this time is $38 per night which for this type of park I feel is acceptable. They also have golf cart rentals available.

So the sites that I recommend here are sites 108, 31, 16, 17, 5, 4, 36, 12, 56,53, 54, 126, 128, 127, 64, 95, 39, 37, 117, 87, 44. There aren't any horrible sites that I would avoid, it's more about just having more/less space so all of the sites here seemed to have a little more personal space.

In my opinion, this park should be advertised as an RV Park for self-contained campers only. The park was well groomed and very beautiful. The staff was friendly and pleasant. Location was great. Did not like the full sun with no shade or trees. We have a teardrop camper and this park was not our idea of camping. Had one shower stall and 2 toilets in the women’s bathroom and the same in the men’s. Our site did not have a picnic table or fire pit. Had reservations for two night, but left after the first night. Gave it 4 stars because I honestly can’t rate it from as an RV owner - maybe they like camping in a parking lot?

Very clean campground. Approach off of I-74 & Rt 601 are several 2-lane residential-type roads, but fine for big rigs. The campground is like a bowl, center sites are in a valley, outer rings and loops are up on slopes. Sites and roads are gravel, in very good shape. The only noisy sites, due to I-74 proximity are on the newest loop, 129-139.
If you are on the outer loops, and higher up, you will have a view of the blue ridge mountains and a very nice breeze. Sites are all in sun, no mature trees.
There are two beautiful playgrounds and two new pavilions. A small camp office/store and next door to that is a small laundry-just the bare essentials. No pool & be prepared to amuse yourself, this isn’t a resort with activities. There are many seasonal campers who all take pride in their property - the campground really is pretty. Campground has Wifi but wasn’t very fast. We were in a no-cable loop, other sites DO have cable. OTA was PBS and not much else. Verizon was spotty, ATT better. Lots of chain stores and restaurants in the area.

We were here in 2020 when COVID started, and all of Mt Airy attractions were closed. We came back this year and because we had our vaccine shots were pleased to be able to socialize (cautiously), eat out a few times, and stroll around Mt. Airy downtown. The town is cute and really proud of it’s connection to the Andy Griffiths Show. If you also have fond memories of Andy and Opie, don’t miss a visit. We enjoyed seeing the black and white police cruisers giving tours down the main streets.

Speaking of main streets - we ate our way through the town - having a unique meal at Snappy Lunch, moonshine ice-cream at Hillbilly Ice Cream, penny candy from Opie’s Candy store, and Bear Creek fudge. Didn’t eat it all at once - but wanted to support the area businesses after the pandemic shutdown.

If you want to get some exercise - there is a wonderful creekside shady paved bike trail along Ararat Creek. We started at Riverside Park and did the roundtrip ride - 13.5 miles. Also, don’t miss the Pilot Mountain State Park with a number of trails and beautiful overlook at the top of Little Pinnacle. If you hike the 3.7 mile Grindstone Trail from the Visitor Center parking lot it is an elevation gain of 1,280 ft. The trail isn’t difficult, but it’s steep and there are switchbacks. You can hike back down to the parking lot, walk down the paved road, or buy a shuttle ticket and take it round trip or one way. Shuttles run every 30 minutes.

Sites are close together. Some Interstate noise. No shade. Wifi didn’t work.
Sites kept clean. Nice lakes. Funnel cake vendor on site.
My biggest pieve was the sites can hold water in low spots. Needs more gravel would solve.
Overall a nice park for visiting Mt. Airy which was great.
There is a nice steak house 8 miles from park in Dobson.

We have never been to Mt. Airy and were pleasantly surprised with the Town and area. This campground was very easy to get to, and was extremely clean. We loved our site #72. I would definitely stay here again and would request site numbers 71-83. We had a nice breeze coming up from the pond and the view was amazing. There are several community fire pits but you can request a fire ring and they will deliver it to your site. The staff was very friendly and easy to work with.

Stayed at local private owned RV park Mayberry Campground, near Mt Airy, NC the boyhood home of TV star Andy Griffith. The park is well maintained and hookup were in good order to include water, elec of 20-30-50 amp outlets, sewer plugs and local cable connection all close by site.

All the road and sites are gravel but not a bad deal. the sites are mostly level and there is a bit of space between spots at least in our pull through row of site #69.

Wifi was ok at time and not ok at times depending on time of day.

T-mobile service was good for use with data or voice.

The town of Mt Airy also know as Mayberry RFD is quite the tourist attraction especially on Main St with the barber shop, general store and other well known sites made famous by the 1960's TV show "The Andy Griffith Show". On the weekends it common to see vintage chev, dodges cruise around the town which was set in the 1960's on the show.

There are lots of restaurants, gas stations, a new Starbucks and other places to get stuff as needed.

Be careful with GPS as one couple in our Airstream group was directed to a wrong area. The campground is right off the Interstate 74 and Hwy 601 exit 11, less than like 6 blocks at most. be sure to do google sat view to see the campground.

There is only one bath house on the property and it is at the check in office, womens in front and mens in back. The mens part had 2 toilets and one shower stall which I did not use but heard the water was nice and hot. !! there was also a sink area for shaving etc. (posting pictures)

Since you are close to the I-74 hwy there is some noise but not bad depending on your site. During our stay it was mostly hot so AC was running. One night it get cool enough to open windows and have fans on and still did not notice much noise.

Most privately owned RV parks are like parking lots where you can touch your neighbor and have little to no privacy. This park has a beautiful layout with sites scattered on the small hills throughout the property. No trees or bushes for privacy but spaced out enough to not hear every word from your neighbor.

They allow two nights at the Passport America price, so we paid $16/night + tax. We had both T-mobile and Verizon service. The guest WiFi worked well enough to stream movies, but that could be because we were pretty close to the main office.

Sites are well groomed and level. One shower in each restroom. Showers are free, clean, and hot! Could hear the highway but didn’t bother us.

It’s Andy Griffith Show themed but not over the top. The family history of this park is wild and worth checking out.