Charcoal Hearth Campground

Lots of space

Narrow roads in and out of the campground. The sites are gravel, reasonably level, and private. I had virtually no Verizon cell service. Nonetheless, I think it's a terrific campground. It's about 35 minutes from Gettysburg, and that made it worth the trip alone. The general store has GREAT burgers and it's fun to see the AT hikers on their way through. I ate a gallon of ice cream in their honor, albeit over a five day period and not in one sitting. I never visited the two lakes, but my neighbors raved about both. The campground host is very nice and very helpful. Firewood is $5.

One last note: The Thirsty Farmer Brew Works is worth the 25 minute drive from the campground (if you are a beer nerd).

Pine Grove Furnace is a great Pa. State Park!!

We had a great time camping here May 30th to June 1st. Since we arrived on Thursday there were very few people there, we had the whole end of our Loop to ourselves. Totally private , peaceful , and dark at night . It did fill up on Friday . We were in site 19, which was a great site for a tent. Lots of room, and for me the greatest part was the tent pad since I have never had a tent pad before, it was great to have a flat level surface for the tent! If you have a reservation you don't need to check in anywhere before setting up, the camp host Joyce came around to meet us and she was very friendly. Three people right off the bat told us that there had been a bear in our campsite and at the playground earlier that day, and he had been going through the trash dumpsters while we were there. He or she also and torn apart somebody's campsite because they left food out, so we were extremely careful about never leaving food items out in the open when we left the campsite, everything got locked in the car. We never saw a bear. We did see the park rangers drive-thru pretty often . The bathrooms are the nicest that we've seen in state parks so far, very clean, the only problem I would say is that the shower water had to be pushed on in the women's room about every six seconds, but I heard in the men's room it stayed on for about 30 seconds. I could live with that while we were there. The closest bathroom to us was only a restroom, then there was more of a walk to get to the shower area . There's a really nice rail trail which we biked, then hiked up to awesome views. There is nice easy hiking trails, and some really difficult Rocky uphill trails . And over the two days we put 12 miles on our bikes . We also did some hiking on the Appalachian Trail. There's a small area with Beach like swimming, not right in the campground, and a little further up the road is the area where you can rent Kayaks or canoes. No complaints at all, this is a very nice Campground, very well worth the 1 hour 45 minute drive for us, and I'm sure we'll be back.

Quiet peacefully. Good place to camp if you want to relax.