Santee State Park

We rolled into Santee sans reservation on a Thursday in January, and after an exasperated reaction for the park's office staff, we were able to choose from 4 sites in the Cypress loop to stay until Sunday.

There are two campground areas here - Cypress View and Lakeshore. Cypress View is smaller and more expensive. Lakeshore is further into the park and a bit cheaper - with older/less level sites.

Prices appear to have been raised from 2018 to 2019 - they were noted as $36/Lakeshore and $42/Cypress View

The sites in the Cypress loop have no privacy between - and are closer than one would enjoy, but most give you enough room to kind of enjoy a campfire, although our neighbors campfire was a little closer to our rig than we were super comfortable with.

Sites are level and long enough for big rigs - although some folks did have issues parking their rig and their car in the same spot - and rangers are not down with you parking on the grass (duh).

Weekends here are loud - the campground fills up (even in January) and people are here to enjoy sitting around a campfire and socializing - and burping really loudly and at great length. Seriously, the burping prowess of the people who were camping here during our stay was impressive.

The showers/bathrooms are older, but the water is hot and high-pressured (score!)

There is a dump station accessible on the way out of the campground.

A few trails run through park - one being a 7ish mile loop trail and another being a 1/2 mile trail. Both are nice. There is a playground, but it's not within the campground and you need to cross the campground road to get to it, so probably not great for exorcising yourself from your young children.

The cabins along the lake look really nice from the outside.

There is literally nothing to do other than be at this State Park in the general area. We visited Elloree and Santee, and while we tried to make this a 'trip', it was kind of painful to try and find something to do other than walk through the barren town of Ellorree and get sweet tea from a barren little cafe. There is a building in the shape of a teapot in Ellorree which is kind of cool, but like everything else in the area, it is permanently closed. Ellorree was still endearing, however, and the locals in the area will probably find you interesting and want to interrogate you, which I enjoyed.

Lake view through the trees. Sites were easy to back into. Level. Sites close together. Central location between Charleston and Columbia. Close to Congaree National Park. Great mountain bike trail our bikes are more street bikes but ride was great. Amazing sunrise and sunsets. Baths need updating. Camp hosts were nice. Cell service ok.

Overall, we really liked it here. We stayed at Cypress View campground which was recently redone. Lake View campground is tougher to find and has not been redone. I would choose Cypress View again if we came back. It was super peaceful after the Thanksgiving weekend crowds left and the rangers, camp host, and people in the office were all very nice.

PROS: The views of the lake and lake access via a small beach area were great! We also loved that they had wifi access at the camp store and office. We had good cell reception, particularly with AT&T which is always a plus for us since we work on the road. You can rent kayaks or fish off the pier.

CONS: Bathrooms weren't the best, they smelled of a really strong cleaner (not the worst smell) and could use some TLC. The ticks in the brushy sections of the woods are terrible. There are lots of them and they embed deep. We battled these with our dogs. Washing machine was broken but not labeled as such, so it stole my quarters.

We came to this park to be in the path of the Eclipse Totality and that was an amazing experience. Because of this unusual event, our stay was likely also not the norm.

The campground was full on our arrival the day of the eclipse and the park as a whole was getting full with eclipse viewers. Park staff were directing traffic and things were very well managed and organized. We had reservations and our site was empty upon arrival so we kind of checked ourselves in and then let the camps store and campground host know we were there.

We stayed in the Cypress View Campground. Most of the 48 sites are back in with only 6 being pull through. We had a back in site with close neighbors on each side. The road in the campground and parking in each site was gravel. The site was grass and heavy mulch. We had 30 amp hook-ups and water at our site. There was a picnic table and a fire ring on it's side. We weren't sure where to do a fire. Some people had fires in the rings on the mulch. This seemed like a bad idea to us. We drug the fire ring onto the gravel area for our fire. Some others had done that too. It was strange that there wasn't evidence of previous use of the fire ring anyplace at our camp site.

Most campsites are small and offer no privacy from neighbors. Exceptions to that are sites 27, 29, 40, and 41 which are huge pull through sites. Sites 32,33,34,35,39,41,43,45,and 47 have some views of the lake.

The bath house was adequate. Not the cleanest, but was mostly buggy and not human gross. There isn't a clear path to the 2 bath houses which was strange. You had to walk between the already tight campsites if you were on the outside of the loop.

Campground is walking distance to the boat launch area. There are kayaks to rent. The camp store is located here. It was a cute store and the kids always like stores with an ice cream case. Firewood is also sold here. Behind the store is an inside sitting area with beautiful views of the lake and tables and board games and puzzles. There is a dock to walk out on and fish from.

There is a small sandy area on the lake where a lot of kids were swimming.

The morning after the eclipse the campground was nearly empty. Things were quite and peaceful and we wished we could stay longer. The online reservation system had forced us to make 2 nights (minimum required) reservation. We only could use one so that was a bummer.

Verizon cell wasn't good with 1-2 bars of 4g. It was bogged down and really didn't work with all the people there.

Trying to stay ahead of a tropical storm, we stopped here for a couple nights to ride out some rain storms.

It's easily accessible from I-95, but with a lovely nature feel. There are two campgrounds, Cypress View being the easiest to find (the roads aren't well marked, and the Lake View campground takes some local knowledge to find.)

We didn't have reservations, but the campground was mostly empty while we were there. A ranger told us to find any open site without a reservation tag, and just check in the next morning.

Roads into the park are nicely paved, the campground itself is all dirt roads - with several large pot holes and run offs. Use some patience with the tight turns, and you'll be fine however.

The Cypress View campground is in a figure 8, with many of the pull through sites putting you facing the street (instead of the lovely lake!). Kinda odd. We opted for a pull through facing us towards the trees with privacy instead.

A variety of sites, some of them more washed out than others. If you can avoid making reservations and choose your own site when you arrive - you might be better off. They don't include any site photos in Reserve America, and we found that some sites marked 'flat' had inclines, and those marked as 'moderate' inclines were in fact flat. SC could do a much better job here.

An annoying trait of SC state parks is they charge a reservation fee whether you walk-in or reserve in advance. But with their low nightly rates to start with, hard to complain too much. Just be aware that you'll be charged regardless.