that's another thing i liked about sky meadows, they have stacks of firewood available ($5 for 10 pieces) right at the campsite, and i kept warm by burning through a lot of wood!
that's another thing i liked about sky meadows, they have stacks of firewood available ($5 for 10 pieces) right at the campsite, and i kept warm by burning through a lot of wood!
That's worth a lot right there, sometimes hunting for wood is a challenge.
A note on firewood. Unless things have changed, they do not let you bring in your own firewood because of problems they have had with insects damaging the trees. So, to prevent the unintentional import of harmful insects/diseases they require you to use their firewood or collect your own.
i think every state/federal park campground i've ever been to lately have this rule in place that you can't bring in your own wood in order to protect the local environment from outside bugs. luckily, at sky meadows they have plenty on hand for sale at a reasonable price ($5 per 10 pieces).
We were at Washington Green group site recently. We had 5 hammocks set up using straps but the ranger told us we could only hang over the gravel tentpads, which were all full of tents. Only a few of the pads had good places for hanging. Not gonna say what action we took. The area has a large number of good trees however check with the ranger ahead of time before hanging around the camp sites.
I wish VA DCR clear guidance posted about which parks allow hanging in what locations.
I have family in the area so I visit every once in a while. Any information about hammock camping options is greatly appreciated! I've been so focused on finding places near me but there are plenty of places to explore!
Thank you for posing this question and thank you everyone for sharing your knowledge! I'm very green to camping generally and adding restrictions to hammocks makes it a steeper learning curve.
This thread is a little old, but I thought I'd update it with some recent information that I learned today.
I wanted to go to Sky Meadows State Park this weekend for a short overnight trip, so I called them this afternoon to ask about whether or not they allow hammocks.
I told the Ranger that I'd be using my 2" wide tree huggers (Spider Web huggers that arrived yesterday from Dutch!) as a preemptive move, in case they were on the fence about allowing hammocks. But he said hammocks were fine, as long as they were within the campsite area--he didn't specify that I'll have to be over a tent pad.
He also said that the 2" huggers were fine, but they didn't seem to have any particular rules about strap size. I know that in Prince William Forest Park (PWFP), they require at least 1.5" straps, and the Camp Host at Oak Ridge Campground at PWFP last summer asked me if mine were 1.5" the first time he came by my site (they were--I was using the standard 1.5" wide, 36" long straps that originally came with my HH back in 2003 or so).
But PWFP is a National Park and I don't know if there's any set standard within Virginia State Parks, as this will be my first camping trip to a Virginia State Park in quite a while.
Anyway, it sounds like Sky Meadows is good to go! I'll take some pictures and post them here with an update after I get back.
Sleepy
Last edited by Sleepy Sasquatch; 01-25-2019 at 20:31.
Thanks for the update!
I'll also add that they recently added food storage containers to each site because of "increased bear activity." Of the many times I've been there I've never seen or heard a bear, but deer is plentiful and occasionally you'll hear a pack of coyotes howling over night. It's still one of my favorite places to go.
Yeah, those food storage containers are great! Very convenient, could hold up to about 4 backpacks, maybe a bit more than that?
Regardless, Sky Meadows is a beautiful park! There were only 2 other sites occupied (out of 15 total), but I got there a bit later than I planned to on Saturday afternoon and had a tough time finding trees that were not too close or too far apart, since there were a fair number of brambles or big puddles of mud between many of the trees--the recent snows had mostly melted, leaving a lot of muddy pools.
I finally found some trees with no brambles or puddles that were at the extreme upper distance limit for my hammock and tarp, partially because one of the trees was about 7 feet in circumference. I have a Dutchware Continuous Ridgeline on my WB Superfly and had about 3/4" left over after securing it with the Tarp Wasp! My hammock was actually just barely touching the ground once I got in it, but I was using a closed cell foam pad, so it worked out fine.
According to NOAA, it got down to about 19 degrees overnight but I was toasty warm the whole time. I woke up early, as I usually do, and made some coffee while I waited for the sun to rise. The cloud cover completely vanished at about 5:30 and the moon was really bright, so much so that I could pretty clearly see everything around me without using my headlamp. I ended up taking a sequence of about 40 pictures of the sun slowly rising--absolutely beautiful!
Anyway, it's a great park and I'll definitely be going back during the winter and in the warmer months, as well. Here are some pictures:
01.Evening campfire.jpg
02.Early morning Medaglia d'Oro.jpg
03.Sunrise beginning 0615ish.jpg
04.Western side.jpg
05.Sun over the horizon.jpg
06.Hammock and tarp.jpg
07.Wider view, with picnic table and firepit.jpg
08.Full view, with bear locker and tent pad.jpg
Last edited by Sleepy Sasquatch; 01-30-2019 at 19:17.
good to hear you had a good time! looks you took advantage of their firewood too. i once posted a picture on another forum of my hammock on a tato stand, and got a lot of criticism about "there are so many trees around you, did you really need a stand?" they didn't understand that there are a lot of bushes, saplings or brambles between trees that prevent you from hanging anywhere you want.
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