Raccoon Branch Campground

This is a small, basic campground with not much to do except hang out in your site. That said, it was as clean and well maintained as you might want, especially compared to some campgrounds run by other federal agencies, such as the CoE. There are two campground hosts, although we saw very little of them. One was across from my site and he left his host site early in the morning and returned in the late afternoon. We never saw any of the hosts doing any work such as maintenance, cleaning, etc. Yet, as I as I said before, the campground was clean and well-maintained. It would be difficult, though, if a camper needed host assistance during the day.
Note also that there is no cellphone, internet or OTA television service in the campground. Between distance from towers and the hills, even FM radio was hard to pick up.
Also, the electric and water sites are on the part of the small campground loop next to VA Hwy 16. There is a surprising amount of highway noise from large trucks on such a small, windy and hilly highway.
Finally, site 13 was not as level as described on www.recreation.gov. I had to use four jack pads under the front two levelers to get the auto level system to work and get close to level in my motorhome.

Great campground near back of the dragon. Nice camping facilities and hosts.

Quiet campground, clean bathrooms.

Never approached by host, grass needed cut, fencing needs repaired or removed.

Raccoon Branch has gone downhill. The wireless connectivity was great formerly but now has been removed. There was standing water in the men’s room due to a blocked drain. The camp host appears to be diligently engaged but has to pick his problem to work on next. .

We have stayed at Racoon Branch several times and our grandchildren enjoy the creek and we have had no problems. But this recent trip we were in site #13 and couldn't use the microwave when our air conditioner was running because it would cause the breaker to flip off. Day 2 of our stay campers moved into sites 10 & 11 & all electric sites were full and most were running air conditioners. The host was gone for the day & the main breaker flipped off leaving half of the electric sites without any power, on a day the temperature was upper 80's. I had 3 grandchildren who could not nap in the RV because it was too hot so I drove them around in our cool vehicle to get a nap, wasting expensive fuel. It seems the breakers are old & old breakers get weak so money needs to be allocated to change all the breakers.

Peaceful and maintained. Nice host.

This is a very small ground - 20 sites but only 17 available for campers. Only a very few have water and electric and rest have no services. Unfortunately the sites with services back up to a somewhat busy highway. There are a few trees (and lots of poison ivy!) to muffle a little bit of the sound. We really like the format of our site - kind of y shaped, so the camper is on the right side of the y and/or vehicle is on the left side of the y or you could set up a tent and chairs there.
We were in site 17 where we had a clear view of the traffic. But we had a great fire pit (only one like it in the campground) and a large heavy picnic table. Fortunately the traffic does dwindle significantly after dark.
There are NO showers in this campground but you can use, for free, the showers at the next campground up the road.
This campground does have flush toilets, but neither were cleaned the 5 days we were there. The campground host pretty much ghosted the campground.
We did not have an issue with mosquitoes at this campground.
There are 2 hikes in this campground. One is a horse trail and has some challenging areas to get around ( we eventually turned around and returned to the campground) and the other went up the mountain and was a really good and gradual hike.
Though there is not any internet signal here, we did quite by accident discover ( on day 4) that there is wi-fi. We asked a forestry employee (not the campground host) what the password is and he told us where we could find it. We did and was able to connect with the world our last day there.
When we come back to this area, we will probably chose another campground because of the road traffic. Semi’s cannot climb mountain roads quietly.

We camp here fairly often. This location always has good hosts and very clean sites.

We stayed in our travel trailer while visiting Grayson Highlands and Hungry Mother State Parks and biking the Virginia Creeper Trail. Quiet and peaceful. Very clean restrooms. Note that there are no showers available. There are a couple lovely hiking trails that begin at the campground. We looked at some of the other campgrounds in the area while we were there and decided that next time we would return to this one.

The host was very friendly and helpful. The campground was kept in excellent condition.