Payne’s Creek COE Campground - Hartwell, Georgia (August 2019)

Before talking about the Paynes Creek COE Campground, I want tell you about our adventures eating lunch on the way to the park. 

We decided that lunch at Cracker Barrel was a great idea. We needed some good ole’ southern vegetables and their sugar cured ham was calling my name. 

We were about to pull into Cracker Barrel’s parking lot when we saw the sign that said no RV parking. No problem because we saw a big parking lot for the local newspaper about a block down the road.  There were about a dozen cars next to the newspaper building, so we elected to park about 400 feet away in an area of the parking lot without traffic. 

The original plan was to park Rosie, our 25 foot Airstream trailer, and walk to Cracker Barrel. It was too hot, too far to walk and we were too hungry to wait so we decided to make sandwiches in Rosie. 

We weren’t inside Rosie three minutes before Becky noticed a car stopped about ten feet from Rosie and the two young guys in that car appeared to be eyeing Rosie and our truck. After a few minutes, the car crept off and parked about 300 feet away from Rosie. It didn’t take long for the car to pass on the other side of Rosie then stop about 100 feet in front of us near the newspaper office. 

We didn’t wait around to see what their next step was. We quickly ran for the truck and got away. There was a rest area about 15 miles down the Interstate. We decided that it would be safer to eat lunch there surrounded by truck drivers who would probably beat the “stuffing” out of anyone attempting to mug someone there. 

Sure, the young men in the car stalking us may have only been interested in looking at an Airstream trailer. Still, lunch tasted better without any unwanted attention. I trusted Becky’s intuition and removed us from what could have been a very bad situation. 

The lesson learned from this experience is clear. RVers know that they have to park away from a building to avoid being blocked in by other cars. We need to start parking closer to the building and in a “busy” area and not be a tempting target in an isolated spot. 

The remainder of our trip to Payne’s Creek Campground was uneventful, if you ignore the anxiety caused by heading to a park with no address and only geographic coordinates. Maybe the GPS knows when a campground doesn’t have a street address and takes you down some small back roads for fun. 

The sign at Paynes Creek Campground

We found the campground, checked in and parked Rosie in our site for the night. We were right on the lake and it was beautiful. Similar to most other COE campgrounds, sites were large and wooded.

Our site in Paynes Creek Campground

We loved being parked along the lake. We sat outside Rosie that evening just watching the water. What a great little campground.

The lake

Rosie as seen from the lake

The lake

Here are some specifics about this campground:

• Our site was a back-in and paved with dirt
• Our site was mostly level 
• Our site had 20, 30 and 50 amp electrical service 
• Our site had a water connection 
• Our site did not have a sewer connection 
• There was a dump station in the campground 
• The campground had several restrooms and showers. None were close to our site
• According to the TV Towers app on our iPhones, we should have been able to watch several TV stations using Rosie’s antenna. We didn’t try to watch any local stations because of our antenna problem 
• AT&T placed three bars of 4G service for voice and data
• The campground does not provide a WiFi service 
• We noticed evidence of “ant powder” around the site we camped in. Maybe previous campers had an ant problem, but we didn’t. 
• Finding the trash dumpster was an adventure. Its location wasn’t on the campground map and our neighbors knew it had been moved but didn’t know where it was now. The new site for the dumpster ended up being a long, long way from our site 

It took nearly 20 minutes to arrive at this campground from the Interstate and all we passed during that time were farms. You need to make sure you are well stocked when camping here. 

The benefit of camping so far from the beaten path is that the campground is very peaceful and relaxing. Sometimes camping out in the woods is just what you need to recover from an upsetting incident. 

A great view from Rosie's site