Unicoi State Park & Lodge

There is a lot to do here. Helen, GA is close by. Anna Ruby falls is near and is beautiful. Took a nice tour of a historic home with a Cherokee Mound which was interesting. They have fishing, zip lines, lake for swimming, ax throwing, bow and arrows and a lodge. The sites are very close together here and have no privacy. Site 52 was the best site.

This is a beautiful campground with individual sites spaced well apart and on a stair step hill giving every site a unique view. Some sites have picnic tables on a balcony overlooking the woods. Well spaced and unique. The price is high for camping and may not be for everyone. Great location close to the town of Helen. Most importantly the staff was absolutely wonderful to work with, and helpful in every way. Beautiful lake and many activities available.

Upon arrival, we were met with a very steep grade and a sharp turn to back up into our camp site. After attempting twice, we contacted the visitor center and Wanda and Tony were very helpful in assisting to find another site for us despite it being a fully booked camping facility. If it weren’t for them, we would not have been able to stay the night. thank you!

Our stay at Unicoi in March 2021 was incredibly quiet on the weeknights and interrupted only by campfire laughter and chatter on weekends. The campground is aging but charming, featuring campsites with decent spacing tucked into a forest of trees.

The campsites themselves are not all level or large, but all feature a picnic table and fire ring. While Little Brook Spur (the upper loop) is a bit hilly and winding and features electric/water only, Big Brook Spur (the lower loop) offers back-in sites that are more level and prepared for big rigs with sewer/water/electric. We secured a site in Little Brook Spur (3) and were more than able to get our 40'er in and hooked up.

The campground offers a camp store and a free(!) laundry room with two washers and two dryers, as well as a small dog park and a playground. The bathrooms throughout the campground are in need of an upgrade, but usable if needed.

Most of the campground's sites were unoccupied during the week, but chockful on weekends.

There are a few hiking trails in the park itself. One up to Anna Ruby Falls (4 miles each way), which allows you to bypass the toll to drive up to see the falls. Another (~3 miles each way from the campground) leads to the town of Helen. There is also a trail around the 'lake' which is 2 miles. Some of these trails prohibit bikes - none of them would be overly useful for anything less than a mountain biking setup.

The park also offers a lodge with 'hotel' style rooms, cabins, and 'squirrel hut' camping (platform sleeping bag camping). There is a zip line course, a small swimming beach, and non-motorized water boat/toy activities.

We had no issue with Verizon or AT&T-based data use (4G/LTE) in the camping area, although there is a dead zone when traveling into town.

This is a pricey state park, but we thoroughly enjoyed our stay, the trails, and our proximity to Helen. We'd book again without hesitation.

This was our second time camping here. The park is beautiful, the few staff we saw were friendly, campers are all pretty respectful. There is a lake loop trail that was easy enough to hike with our two small kids and there is a playground with a small creek that the kids loved playing in. Woods behind our site had lots of little trails that the kids ventured through.

The camp site was a good size and level. It has water and electric hookups and there is a dump station as you leave the loop. There is an offset area with a fire ring and picnic table and, depending on which site you have, it is sometimes on the driver side which could be awkward if you have a traditional set up with an awning on the passenger side. Our set up is pretty flexible so this actually worked really well for us. There were some time periods that we were without water. They were doing some work in the tent area on the water lines. We were never notified when water would be turned off or turned back on, which was an inconvenience.

The bathrooms on this loop leave a lot to be desired. The stall doors didn’t close well, some of the toilets shook when you flushed them, and the showers were smaller than most RV showers. Even though I did see someone cleaning the bathrooms (once in our whole trip), they did not seem to be taking any extra measures. In fact, there was a robe hanging on the hook by the main sink that was there our entire trip. Not super thorough.

There are signs everywhere regarding bears. Take them seriously. We had two different times a bear came through the loop, once right through our campsite. Our camp neighbors were there when this happened and said it seemed more curious than anything, just passing through then up into those trails behind the campsite.

The campground is a very short drive from downtown Helen. Lots of shops, restaurants, tubing, and a mountain coaster. Nearby there are also numerous waterfalls and day hikes. We had no cell reception at the campsite but did have it in other areas of the park as well as in Helen.

This all may be virus related. I've stayed in the lodge before though and had some of the same issues.

Check in was routed to the lodge. A line of vehicles were backed up with people standing in line outside to check in. Finally a young man comes out with clip board and asks if any of us are camping. He writes our name down and tells us to go to the campground to check in. Once there they say they don't have our reservation, then after searching they tell us we're already there. Super unorganized.

Sites are close together, place was packed. Some sites had 4-5 vehicles parked at them. Tents off the pads. Looked like a homeless camp in spots. People burning their trash in the fire pits left smelly haze.

The only reason I'd stay here again was the access to trails right from the campground. Once off the road we hardly saw anyone.