They do not tolerate late arrivals at all unless you preregister. Gate locked at sundown.
The park is gorgeous, with sites right against the beach. Many bathrooms available. The staff is wonderful! We're having tire issues on the way and I thought we may arrive late. They gave me detailed instructions so that we would not be locked out of the campground. We ended up arriving before closing, and have been wonderfully pleased with this campground. We even booked a stay already for the same time next year! Many families, dogs, busy during the day but very peaceful and quiet at night.
We didn't stay here, but we were in the area and checked it out for a next time. It's a state park and it has no sewer hook ups, but on the plus side it's right on the beach. I think it's worth, at least, a two day stay.
This park is always clean and very dog friendly. Free wifi and a cute shop is on site incase you forget anything small or wish to do some gift shopping.
If you like camping in a swamp this is the place for you. Mosquitoes were even in the bathrooms. And they were old and dirty. The beach was nice. That's it. This place reminded me of my tour in Vietnam. Dump station was awful. Never going back. South Carolina park service should be ashamed.
Everything is perfect about this place! Can't wait to come back.
Maybe it was nice before the storms came through and destroyed much of the natural privacy offered by trees. What you now have is sand fleas invading your camper and sites one atop another. The bathroom facilities are not all currently operational and those that are do not all have showers, there are lines even late at night (mid week) for those. There is one dump station and we waited in a line that was five before us and as far as the eye could see behind us to use it before we left. The light house area was nice.
Nice beach. Turtle nesting ground. Me n my 3 grandsons stayed on site 116 and the restroom/showers were right behind us over a sand dune. The restroom was all tiled and in good shape. It had an outside shower also to wash off your feet or head. At one end of the beach shows the devastation from Hurricane Matthew. We enjoyed our time there. The only drawback is the mosquitos. Bring plenty of heavy duty spray and fans.
Stayed at Hunting Island a LONG weekend and thoroughly enjoyed. I had not been here for about 30 years. All the staff we dealt were nice and knowledgeable. The bathrooms are standard South Carolina State Park bathrooms. They are adequate. Two issues with the bath rooms. 1. No trash cans. 2. There are 2 showers with one privacy door. Privacy door good, no privacy between two shows, not so good. Bath rooms may get sandy, you re at the beach, expect it. There is a very nice playground set for kids. It appears to be new. Bugs. You are on the coast with marshes all around, there will be bugs. Be prepared. If you really don t like bugs you probably should not be camping, there is nothing the park can do about it. The biggest issue for us in early May were the gnats. We had some nights or mornings that we would have like to leave the windows/doors open, however, the gnats could fit thru the screens. Wild Life, yep, it is here as well. Animals around camp grounds tend to be a little braver than most as they get use to people. Best thing to do, sit back, enjoy watching them. Don t feed them and just stay calm. Wild life includes alligators, deer, raccoon and much much more. Again, State Park is not going to exterminate them. Sadly the park lost 88 campsites due to Irma and Mathew. The first sites you will see may scare you as you will see a lot of tree stumps hinting at what was. Once you get past those first campsites the tree cover is in good shape. Where the public roams, the trees have been removed, like 2300 of them. Other areas you will see they have not and will not, State Parks primarily let natures run it s coarse. The ocean has been eating away at Hunting Island for hundreds of years. It is very interesting to see the areas well the ocean is winning. All in all, the beach at the camp ground is really nice, though at high tide there may not be much of. At low tide it is huge. We had campsite 194 and really liked it. However, for a 35 camper it could have been challenging getting it backed in. The roads are TIGHT. Luckily the bathroom was on the other side of 194 and I was able to pull in there to straighten out and then back into 194. Problem with backing in from the street is that at the point where I needed to turn my truck sharp, there were trees preventing me from doing so. This will be a problem in a lot of places here. Another issue, which I will mention to the campground, is that the map is not very accurate. For instance, we scouted and really like site 95 for the future. It is on a curve so I will be able to drive past the site and get straight before backing in. However, if you look on the campground map, site 95 is not the site on this turn. Touring and learning about the lighthouse was awesome. Well worth the $2 to climb up the accessible lighthouse in SC. Hilton Head doesn t count as it is not a REAL lighthouse and never was. The beaches at the lighthouse are good as well. The Nature Center is worth a visit as well. The pier at the Nature Center is closed due to the hurricanes, though you can walk out a good bit and get a really good view of an active (May 2019) osprey nest. We also did a trail here that was well worth it. Really got to see what the ocean is doing to the island. Marsh Boardwalk trail well worth the time as well. Visitor Center, not much to it, I think they need to combine it with the nature center. The trails we did were good. However, the signs are lacking. We could come to intersections of other trails and the trail marker arrows showed fine, the marker stating what trail it was were unreadable most of the time. Trails have colors on the map but never saw any tree with any color blazes on them. Trail markings and blazes needs to be addressed. Overall, great visit. This is a QUIET area compared to the Myrtle Beach area. No attractions here beyond nature and the lighthouse. There are some good restaurants nearby and Beaufort is worth taking some time to explore. We use to go to Sunset Beach every year for our Anniversary in June and have decided to make Hunting Island our beach location ever June for the time being.