Pomme de Terre State Park

Note!! This park has 2 campgrounds- they are 15 minutes apart. I suggest picking one and putting the name of the campground into gps not the state park.

Hermitage Campground
Flat, lots of grassy areas to walk around in, better for big rigs, more open.
I went here first but didn’t go through each loop so can’t comment.
Main reason: no water at all in off season

Pittsburg Campground
Overall very hilly, tight to maneuver around trees, better for smaller rigs. Very wooded.
Off season water is off except for spigot across from check in station. No trash bins or dumpster at all. And all bathroom/shower facilities and laundry are closed. It’s only electric for services for $15.

dump station by the 400 loop.
Only one modern shower/bathhouse for the entire campground located near loop 400. It’s a hike if you are in any other loop. Looks like some outhouse buildings scattered through the loops but they were locked so I can’t comment.

Loop 100- w/e sites close together, flat, easy to navigate
Loop 200- basic (no services) and electric only. The hardest to maneuver into. Good water view sites.
Loop 300- basic and electric. similar to 200 but easier to maneuver- just watch trees with slides. 308 and 311 were my favorite sites for levelness, awesome water view, and no tree to block slides or awning.
Loop 400- basic and electric. barely visible water through the trees and closest spots are actually yurts. Easy to navigate.

Sites are mostly asphalt, a few gravel, level-ish, outdated picnic tables.

Very quiet. Peaceful. Weird thing: it’s entirely wooded- but not a single squirrel or deer, very few birds, 4 armadillos. Eerily quiet- no frogs or insects noises. Just was odd to have woods be so dead. Except so-many-flies!!! Plague of flies.

Both campgrounds were FCFS in off season and there is a self pay station at the entrance/ for Pittsburg just note that it’s a really far walk if you’re in 300 or 400 loops to get to the entrance.

Cell service at site 304 as follows (Verizon was better in 200 loop and spots elsewhere in the park)
Verizon: 1 bar, 5.78 down 0.08 up
ATT: 56.1 down, 17.5 up

Lake Pomme De Terre State Park was a stop through for us on our way to South Dakota. We needed somewhere to stop for a week that had decent cell phone coverage for us to work, and wasn't crazy expensive. This checked both of those boxes. From what I understand, there are two different campgrounds: Hermitage and Pittsburg. We stated at Pittsburg. Pittsburg had 4 loops. The two loops closest to the lake were electric only - no water or sewer at sites. But there were two water spigots on each loop, from what I could tell. The other two loops had water and electric only - no sewer. We stayed on the w/e loop, as it was a couple bucks cheaper even though not lake front. There was a dump station, but kind of difficult to navigate with low hanging trees and a very small and sharp turn around in a bigger rig, so we just opted to use the waste tank rather than scraping our camper on trees.

Amenities: Each loop had a vaulted toilet. But there was a main bathhouse that had regular toilets and showers. Which I believe are turned off November - March but did have one or two frost free spigots that remained on all year long. There were washer and dryers at the bathhouse which we used and they worked great.

Cell Service/Internet: I had 3 bars of LTE on my Verizon cell phone. Worked all week taking Zoom calls with avg. download speed of 20mbs using a T-Mobile Peplink router and booster. No problems at all with internet speeds. It looked like the campground had wifi, all though I didn't try it, it was available all the way out our site which was on the far end of the loop.

Pros: Affordable rate and large site and beautiful lake. Out of 4 loops and 6 days, we only saw 1-2 other campers and the camp host the whole week. I'm sure in the summertime, it gets busier when you're able to boat. But man, it was quiet in the off season and really relaxing.

Cons: Even though the sites were large for a state park, trees lined the narrow road so backing in was an extreme challenge. Fortunately, there was no one there so the camp host let us have our choice of sites and move over to something with less trees in the way (this is the same issue we ran into at the dump station). We originally booked P109 but moved to P114. Other than that, it was an easy road to access and get in and out of.

Location: Wow. There is nothing to do in the town. We went downtown to a hardware store and this is the epitome small town America, y'all. We didn't need to go to the grocery store while we were there, which was good, because pickins were slim. Not a ton to do around there. It's obvious this is a destination for fishing and boating. Although the town wasn't too far away, it only took us 10 minutes or so to get into town and go to the post office and make a pit stop at Dollar General. Otherwise, I'd recommend making sure you have what you need for the week before arriving.

Things to Do: During the summer it looked like there was some beaches and boat ramps. I enjoyed the 3 mile loop hiking trail that started right in the campground.

In mid-October there were only 4 other campers here on our loop so the place was very quiet. I like the layout of the sites next to the lake. There are elevated pads for the table and fire pit by most of the lakeside sites which makes them feel cozy. It was a rainy week while we were here but all in all a great place to relax. ATT cell service provided 60MBPS downloads so it was great for working.

We arrived late in the day to find out we were at the wrong campground...right lake, wrong campground. We had a reservation at the Hermatige CG and were at the Pittsburg CG...my error) The hosts at the check in station told us they’d give us directions to the correct campground, or I could hop in the golf cart and they would show me the open sites. I took the tour and found a perfect site that backed to a great view of the lake. (226). They also explained that the Pittsburg CG is a bit more rugged with more vegetation between sites...the Hermatige CG sites are mowed with less trees/bushes. The host fixed the paperwork and told us about the marina, restrooms, laundry etc...they were possibly the most friendly and helpful hosts we’ve ever encountered.
The restrooms and shower were very clean and the laundry was also clean and worked very well.
We decided to have a bite at the marina. The food was good and the employees were very friendly...we ended up chatting with them about the area the entire time we were there.
No TV or cell...maybe an occasional bar.
We came back from dinner to find a very large turtle roaming around the site. In the morning I walked down to the lake for a couple of pics. I got some good pics and also some great chigger bites. Hazards of camping and walking in tall grass.
We’d stay here again based on the excellent staff...the lake also looked perfect for kayaking and SUP.

This campground was absolutely beautiful. This definitely made it into the top 3 campgrounds that we have been to. The staff here is wonderful, the campground hosts are SO friendly and enjoyable to talk to.

The campsites have little shelters over their picnic tables, fire rings, water and electric. Only downside was the crazy huge horseflies, but the campsite host said its usually not like that. Oh! And we saw an armadillo!

We loved this campground, and would totally visit it again!