Our previous trips to Hocking Hills have been some of our favorite weekends. We love the hiking and camping in sites 152-163. We had never before camped in the full hook-up side, so we were very excited to spend a couple nights in a beautiful place with full water and sewer. I can’t remember a time we have been so disappointed in a place we had previously enjoyed.

Some of the issues with these sites included:

1. The mud. I recognize it is spring and the week before was rather rainy, but these sites had a terrible run-off problem. Much of the area that wasn’t paved was a complete quagmire. In fact, the mud buried much of the paved area as well.

2. The grass. What little ground covering there was, had not been mown in recent days and much of it had gone to seed.

3. The pump house. Our sites backed up to the water/sewer pump house and we were serenaded by the constant noise of the pumps. The occasional whiff of sewage was a bonus.

4. The neighbors. In all fairness, the sewer smell could very well have come from our neighbors’ sewer connection that was just feet from our picnic table. These sites are inconsistently spaced and many of the fire rings and outside living areas overlap with the next site’s water and sewer connections.

Bottom line: we will never stop coming back to Hocking Hills, but the benefit of full hook-ups is not worth the gamble of such lousy sites. If I decided I needed the water and sewer, I would stick to sites 50ish-70 and really check them out on a site like 360campviews.com.

The good news is the bathhouse has recently been updated and is lovely.