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Bear Creek Horse Camp is located in the Kentucky portion of Big South Fork National River and Recreation Area.
Numerous trails snake through the recreation area, offering mountain biking, hiking and horseback riding for visitors.
Bear Creek combines the experience of traditional woods camping with the modern conveniences of flush toilets, hot showers and electric hookups. Sites can accommodate both RV and tent camping. Tie-stalls are available on each site.
Big South Fork is located in north-central Tennessee and southeastern Kentucky in some of the most rugged terrain of the Cumberland Plateau. The park encompasses approximately 125,000 acres including rocky gorges and forested plateaus.
Just a few miles from the campground is Blue Heron Mine, also known as Mine 18, a historic abandoned mining town that has been rebuilt as an outdoor museum. Visitors can hear audio presentations from actual people who lived in the community in the 1950s.
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Good camping and trail riding. A little rocky, but OK. There are some nests of ground hornets and yellow jackets, unmarked, on or near the trails. I do not like the concrete racks your horses have to stand in, but there are a couple of corrals, and I think you can picket, as long as the horses don't chew on trees.
Rangers were confiscating coolers that had water in them. Water. Extremely unfriendly, inconsistent with dogs running everywhere, grills left out, yet watched him skip every other camp and chew out campers letting random others go unchecked. one ranger pulled up on my neighboring camp with a cooler in the bed of their truck as they were leaving, blocked their vehicle in, got out and said to them "you trying to avoid me?" Grass overgrown, trails awful. Bathrooms were spotless, that's about the only positive.
The trails are amazing. The park has improved these trails immensley. Beautiful, quiet, clean, awesome church nearby called OTTER Creek Baptist. Friendly enviroment,Round pens to use. Our favorite place to camp , coming from Ohio.
Campsites were clean, electricity and water at every site, bathrooms were spotless and heated, hot water was very hot, water pressure was great. Bathrooms are wheelchair friendly, as is the stalls. One of the two showers is as well.
We saw fall foliage and loved the campground. A few round pen corrals have been placed throughout the campground making keeping horses there even easier. Open back 4 horse stocks are provided at every camp site. They are older and look a little rusty but would do the trick while camping. Wheel barrows, mucking pile areas, and shovels were provided. Buckets are not, we brought our own hay, grain, and enough buckets for water and food both. There were no water troughs that I saw provided.
Trails were a lot of fun, I’d say some were intermediate thanks to a recent rain leaving lots of mud, some steep places, and some trail wash out leaving small ravine cracks in the path. The long loop looked more difficult than the Bear Creek Loop which was pretty easy. And I’d recommend shoes on your horses for rocks and gravel used on trails. But having them right there was great and we thought the adventure was fun. Our horses are good trail horses and did fine.
There was a picnic table and grill and fire pit at every site and it’s far away from towns so the sky was gorgeous at night. We brought our own firewood and fire starters. The grill is not a waist high, stand alone one but instead it’s over the fire pit. Fit a cast iron pan and water kettle no prob.
Area was quiet and not populated much. The road in does have a gravel stretch that is mostly one lane for 8 miles, with our rig it was fine but a huge rig would be annoying to drive into this place. Road was well maintained and no pot holes. There was one creek area with a small amount of water and a dip that we bumped a little on the dirt road.
We were careful to put away all food and garbage properly each time we weren’t actively cooking. We also were very careful about our trash and making sure we left no trace when we left. This is bear country and we took it seriously. We left nothing that had any lingering food smells out, everything went back into the car and shut tight.
I recommend the overlook area, the rock formations were really amazing and fun. The walk to the river view was easy (a few steps at the end make it not wheelchair friendly.) The view is gorgeous and you can see the whole area.
I had a great time and would happily be back.
