Scales Campground

Great place to camp. Beautiful trails to hike, cows and wild ponies to entertain. Definitely need 4wd and high clearance to navigate the road, which is more like a Jeep trail IMHO. It took about 40 min driving about 6-10 mph in our jeep to arrive at the Scales, but was definitely worth all the bumps!

One of my favorite places to camp. Beautiful scenery! Great place to view wild ponies. Bathrooms are available. You will need 4WD or a vehicle with clearance. The road is rocky but is not to bad. Just go slow you will be fine. It’s about an hour or less drive on the dirt road. There is drinking water on the left side of the dirt road before entering the campground. It’s spring water coming out of a pipe. Very clean and cold water. Weather sometimes can change quickly. Be prepared for wind and dropping temperature’s.

Well it took all of an hour to cross the 4 mile road to get to this campsite. You definitely need 4x4 I took my Honda CR-V and made it but it was rough. We did see that a Tesla made it 🤷 but plenty of spots. No reservations needed. Dogs allowed. A/T runs right by here and connects to the state park. There were clean restrooms. (Thank you to whoever maintains this area!) And when we woke up the ponies and cows were right outside the fence to greet us in the morning.

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.

The road up is very rough and slow as stated in the reviews. I have a 2” lifted 2015 Toyota Sienna AWD and was able to traverse the road without any clearance issues. It took about 45 minutes to reach the top. Once on top you have a large corralled area where you can choose your campsite. The ponies were there as were a few new colts. I was the only non-AT hiker there that night. Be sure to bring your own water as the water source was only a trickle while I was there.

One of the best free campgrounds accessible by RV! This spot offers easy access to multiple scenic trails that can be linked into loops ranging from 4 to 20 miles. If you're hoping to see wild ponies, take the Crest Trail—you're likely to spot them around the 4-mile mark. The road leading to the campground is a bit rough, but manageable if you take it slow and your RV has decent ground clearance. A truly rewarding destination for hikers and nature lovers!

Best off road, 4x4 camping you can find! What a beautiful place. 💚