Over Thanksgiving, we stayed at the Campground at James Island County Park for five nights. We needed to book two separate reservations due to limited availability, so we stayed at site 108 for three nights before moving to site 67D for two nights. Here’s our take on this campground.
Sites
The Campground at James Island County Park has 122 sites, including 116 full hook-up sites and six sites with only electricity and water. You can see a campground map here.
We stayed at sites 108 and 67D during our stay. Both sites were full hook-up sites, but each had minor sewer issues. The sewer cover was broken off at the first site. At the second site, the cover wouldn’t open quite enough for our sewer hose elbow to fit.
Both sites were relatively level. Each site had a picnic table and fire pit.
One important aspect to consider when booking is that several sites share a driveway. Thankfully, this is noted when booking. We’d recommend avoiding these sites if possible unless you want to book two sites. After all, it’s slightly awkward to have your living area right next to your neighbor’s sewer connection.
You can book overflow sites directly with the park when all other sites are sold out. The overflow camping area is in the gravel lot behind the campground, so you can easily access the bathhouse and other amenities. But, these sites aren’t actual sites and don’t have any hookups, tables, or fire pits.
Campground amenities
The Campground at James Island County Park has lots of amenities. You can see a full list here, but we’ll detail a few of our favorites.
There is a campground office that also serves as a store and bicycle rental center. During the coronavirus pandemic, the park doesn’t require guests to physically check-in. Instead, you simply take the envelope with your name on it from a basket in front of the office. But, when we went into the building on multiple occasions, the staff were friendly and helpful. Katie was even able to have a package shipped to the campground and a staff member called when it arrived.
There are two large bathhouses in the campground. Each has clean toilets, showers, heat, soap, and hand dryers.
The park offers outdoor laundry facilities at both of the bathhouses. Each bathhouse has four washers and three dryers. Each machine costs $2 in quarters. Thankfully, the campground store is happy to make change. And, when a machine ate Katie’s money, the office reimbursed her with no issues.
You can also buy propane at this campground at a rate of $4.50 per gallon.
And, there are several trash and recycling areas located throughout the campground.
There’s a fishing lake in the campground. Plus, there’s the entire county park to explore. I took the trail along the salt marsh one evening.
Connectivity
This campground offered the most useable Wi-Fi we’ve seen so far. The Wi-Fi had a relatively strong signal throughout the park. We measured 1.44 Mbps download and 0.66 Mbps upload with a 244 ms ping when we ran a speed test.
There was also a strong Verizon signal throughout the campground. We measured 47.9 Mbps download and 2.36 Mbps upload with a 30 ms ping.
Booking
We booked our sites through Reserve America. By searching frequently, we were able to snag 3-night and 2-night reservations over Thanksgiving as people canceled.
As of publishing, rates are as follows:
- Pull-thru with full hookups: $66
- Back-in with full hookups: $59
- Water and electric sites as well as tent sites: $55
- Primitive sites and overflow sites: $35
Activity-duty military, retired military, and seniors 60 and up can get 10% off. But, taxes in Charleston are high. Specifically, you’ll need to pay an additional 14% accommodation tax on your site.
The park limits each site to six people and each reservation to a maximum of 28 nights. You can make reservations up to one year prior to your arrival date — and we heard several other campers noting they’d already made reservations for 2021 Thanksgiving.
If you need to cancel your reservation, you’ll need to pay a $10 cancellation fee if you cancel at least 15 days before your stay. However, if you cancel 14 days or less in advance of your stay, you’ll still need to pay for one night.
Overall take
The Campground at James Island County Park is located in Charleston, SC within a great county park with plenty of activities and things for kids to enjoy. However, you certainly pay for this location. Especially considering the sites aren’t very private, we likely won’t return to this campground unless it’s to visit family in Charleston.