Frances S.
Yelp
CAMPERS BEWARE! I have a lot of thoughts on Audra State Park, so I'll try to organize this based on what I think tent campers need to know to make an informed decision about staying here, the reasons you should come here, our personal experience, and finally, accessibility and sustainability.
Tent Camping: they have about 60 campsites. They vary wildly in terms of size. Many seem like they have been optimized for RVs. Every camp site had a picnic table, a wooden bench, and a fire circle with a grill (in various states of repair). It's really hard to tell looking at the booking website what you're getting. If you don't have littles or need electric, I definitely think it would be worth doing a riverside site (they looked bigger as well as beautiful) but we had those needs so we camped on the back side in electric sites.
Our biggest surprise was the ground. There were no tent pads which you see at a lot of parks. Instead the entire camps site was covered in large, jagged rocks. I assume this was for drainage because in the neighboring site where our friends were in the spots with no rocks it got very muddy. But this ground cover made the tent floors EXTREMELY uncomfortable and made it extremely hard, verging on impossible, to hammer in stakes.
While we were able to overcome these problems I would like you to be prepared for them and pack with them in mind instead of doing what we did and dropping extra money in town at Walmart to make our camp more livable. We picked up some cheap area rugs for the tent floors (a life saver) and cheap flip flops to wear in the tents for the areas not covered by the rugs. We also had to buy some extra thick bed pads, our typical camping pads were absolutely NOT going to cut it. We bent quite a few tent stakes, so bring extras or opt for heavy duty stakes.
The other thing to know is that there is absolutely NO cell service. In fact, just driving there from Virginia we had spotty service for most of the trip. Some people will doubtless consider this a perk, but If you're like me and need to make and receive calls for kids and pets, you'll find yourself driving into town for cell service or making WhatsApp calls at the camp store.
I feel like for the number of campsites they had they really didn't have enough showers (only about 4!) and there were definitely lines for them.
Why you should go to Audra State Park: first of all, shout out to all the staff. The park was really well staffed and everyone was super kind and helpful! The bathrooms were cleaned and restocked every morning and the staff was quick to deal with problems. The camp store staff was great and there was wifi available there.
The park was extremely beautiful. The river was pretty and there were blooming rhododendrons everywhere. The Alum trail hike was very pretty and the boardwalk was a cool way to see the cave.
Our experience: we were initially feeling very frustrated. Our campsite was small, rocky, uneven, and very hard to set up. We had already planned to get dinner in town that night so while in Elkins we grabbed the stuff we needed to get comfy. After that we felt way better about our camp site and were able to rest and enjoy ourselves.
Over the next few days we enjoyed the River and the Alum Cave Trail. One word of caution: the Alum trail is rated "easy". It is definitely more moderate.
Accessibility and sustainability: i am by no means an expert of sustainability at parks, but I know most have recycling bins. If that's important to you you'll have to be prepared to pack it back out with you. They also don't seem to be very concerned with wildlife, as the trash cans are absolutely not wildlife proof and those raccoons were BRAZEN.
The park gets like a D for accessibility. There were some accessible campsites. The main difference between those and the rest seemed to be poured asphalt driveways for RVs. It would have been nicer if they had been closer to the bath houses or camp store. The bath house closest to the accessible camp sites had a shower that was clearly set up to be more accessible.
The WV parks website has the Alum Cave Trail in its list of accessible trails. IT WAS NOT EVEN A LITTLE ACCESSIBLE. It does have the nice board walk, but there's no way to get there.
The most accessible part of the river is a poured concrete "beach" style graded entrance with a close parking lot and several handicap parking spots. But the only way to get to the river is by stairs (womp womp). Making that entrance more accessible with a ramp or paved walkway would be a really great addition.
