Beautiful park, very weird camp sites...
The Virginia chapter of RainbowRV visited the Pipestem campground over the weekend of 6/5-6/7 2009. While the setting is beautiful, the sites leave much to be desired.
- All but a couple of the sites have water and sewer on one side and electric on the other, thus presenting the camper with difficulties in either connecting electric or water/sewer, depending on which way you face your camper. Several in our group had a power post right at the base of their steps.
- Most sites are very narrow and uneven. Most either face a steep grade or a major drop off after 6 or so feet. Even working in cooperation with 3 other campers, we were never able to get my unit even close to level.
- Water pressure was very, very high and some campers suffered problems/damage, even with pressure regulators (though I had 2 of them in line, I still had a couple of leaks).
- Larger units (mine is a 33' 5er) are difficult to place into the pull thru sites without having them stick out into the roadway when the slides are extended. There was a large post that I had to pull out of the ground in order to open my slides.
Access to the park is on WV-20. This road is carved right out of the mountain. It's narrow and twists a lot. Where the signs say 20 or 30 MPH on a curve, they do not mean 21 or 31. Rock comes down on the road a lot (the control building for the nearby dam is screened by a 20ft high, reinforced fence), so use caution as you drive in from the north.
Personally, unless there's no other option, I'll give this one a miss in the future.