Nolichucky Gorge Campground

I never write a bad review. But this was the worst interaction camping in my life. Me and my wife, 7 and 12 year old kids and our friends young adults were staying with us at USA Rafts, in the campground, USA Rafts is right next to this place. We have stayed many times and would walk through Nolichucky Gorge campground, which are both connected by a small bridge to get to the National Forest trail which has a rope swing and slow water swimming areas my kids love. We usually have friends staying in both sites when we go. Our most recent trip while staying, the third day we were there, the owner of the Gorge campground, stopped us on our way to the National Forest site. She demanded $5 cash per person or $7 per person for day passes if we didn’t have cash. There were no signs that stated any of this or we would have paid. We explained that we were at a cabin next door for the weekend and we’re just planning to walk through only down and back once taking their road and would not go through any campsites so not to disturb anyone. She said she was the owner and it was private property, therefore we needed to take the trail that goes around their property. I politely apologize and asked if she could show me where it was since I wasn’t familiar with it. She pointed and said it’s up there in a direction I’ve never been too and it would be a pretty trail for us. I asked if she could accommodate us as we aren’t familiar with that trail and she said no get off my property and began to call us nasty names in front of our kids and my 7 year old was balling because he couldn’t understand why we couldn’t just go the same way to the place we had been going. She demanded we get off her property. We turned around and left. We tried to find the trail and it took us on a 45 min adventure and apparently the cut off trail is unmarked and not noticeable. I’m an avid trail hiker. We mentioned it to the USA Raft owner and management, they apologized, were extremely accommodating to make sure our trip wasn’t ruined and offered us free tubing for the day. They are so nice there. The next day we went to visit our friends staying at Nolichucky Gorge Campground and while we were at their camp site talking with them the owner came down and asked us to leave. Our friends explained that they invited us and she said, I don’t care, you don’t have the authority to invite people over and made us leave. So we invited them to our camp site because they would be welcomed there. USA Raft allows the other campsite to do rafting, tubbing, use their showers and amenities, listen to their bands and eat at their bar and grill without a fee. We will always be staying from now on at USA Raft. Appreciate them going out of their way to make sure that interaction didn’t ruin my families trip.

We were searching for a campground in the Johnson City TN area to enjoy hiking and solitude. Had planned to raft the river, but the river was too low.

Turned out the camp ground is right next to a river guide center, which looks like it may get pretty fun and rowdy if crowds showed up. So we were pretty happy that wasn’t the case. Also there are quite a few long term campers some of which seemed to live there a while. Dogs were required to be on a leash unless you lived there long term. Several times we had stray dogs wander into our site. This made our labs a bit uneasy.

All in all the hiking near here was great and the river is beautiful.