My favorite place to camp in VA, despite it being a 5.5 hour trip for us. Right on the AT with access to many wonderful trails. Primitive camping for the most part, though the fenced-in area has always been pretty well maintained and the pit toilets provided by the forest service are nice. We love to hike, stargaze, forage, and take tons of pictures up there when we go. A few things to know before you go:

1. You'll need a vehicle with good ground clearance to reach this site. I've seen locals up there in compact sedans, but I wouldn't attempt the access road in anything lower than a Subaru Outback (and even our Outback scraped in a couple places).

2. Bring your own water. There's a spring near the end of the access road, but it's not convenient to the camping area and often flows slowly.

3. For the toilets, follow the rules and bring your own TP just in case.

4. Pack out your trash!! There are bins in the toilets, but the forest service only empties them every week or so. Let the thru-hikers use those and take care of your own trash so the bins in the toilet don't get mucked up with overflowing trash.

5. Speaking of thru-hikers, we always bring extra water, snacks, sodas, etc and offer them to any hikers that pass through. It's a great way to meet new, interesting people and they are always grateful. Offer to take their trash too! :-)

6. If you are "lucky" enough to time it right (last weekend in Apr/first weekend in Oct, approximately), the herd of steer may be driven up/down the road on Saturday. You'll get to see all the horseback wranglers do their thing which is cool, HOWEVER... you won't have access to the road for several hours on Sat AM and they corral the herd into the camping area before driving them down the road, so it gets noisy and lots of cow pies are left behind. We loved seeing all the activity but if it's not your thing then plan accordingly.

7. Lots of area to camp, but please note that most of the fenced area is sloped, and flat sites tend to be grabbed up first. If you have a rig that you can level, please park on the slope. If you are lucky enough to grab a flat site, be mindful to leave space for others and don't spread out too much.