We spend some time at Salt Lick Creek Recreation Area in Gainesboro TN. This is a wonderful COE campground with good size sites with some full hookup and many with water and electric. Some of the roads in the area are small. We had to take 263 from 25 at Carthage to 85 and found 263 to be a little too narrow and twisty for a comfortable drive. Especially when you meet a big vehicle coming the other way. Stick to the larger roads (85,262) and getting there should be ok.
There are some sites that are not level, and some that appear pretty level but still have some slope to them. Below is our water + electric site near the parking lot for the beach. Note the location of the tongue vs the rear end of the trailer. There are many sites as level as this or better and a few that are worse or where the level part of the pad is not very large. There are some that are very level. We intend to go back and have no worries about a level enough site and intend to ask the park staff if we should remove any sites from our preferred list of candidate sites based on availability.
Another interesting item to note is that there were plenty of open sites here the weekend of and the day of the 2017 solar eclipse. This may mean that for some reason these campgrounds don’t book up solid such that you need a reservation a year in advance during the prime season in the area.
The campground has a wonderful beach, sorry no photo of the beach. There is another COE park up the street called Defeated Creek Park. This campground has similar sites to Salt Lick Creek and there is also a nearby marina where you can rent watercraft as well as hiking and mountain biking trails. Here’s the view from Bearwaller Gap trail at about the 2 or 2.5 mile mark from the parking lot near the campground.
The trail has some steep switchbacks but nothing so steep that you need to use your hands (but a few close spots). You cross a few creek beds and dry waterfalls that are interested to explore as well.
The campground was inexpensive and nice and relaxing. A directional antenna was needed for decent internet connectivity from the campsite and even then there were times when it was slow. With no external antenna we were unable to get a reliable connection from our site. With the antenna the MIFI device reported an SNR level of 5-7 dB most of the time.
You can find site information for both of these campgrounds here:
National Park Campground Information
Put -TN- SALT to see some site statistics on Salt Lick Creek or -TN- DEFEATED in the search field to see Defeated Creek site statistics.
Our reason for selecting this campground was that it was in the path of the 2017 solar eclipse. We’re really happy we picked it. There were no crowds and we were able to view the whole thing from the comfort of our campsite. Here are a few photos from the eclipse:
