Campground Review: Honeysuckle Meadows RV Park (Great Smoky Mountains)

Most places we travel in the RV aren't big destinations. We can book a campsite weeks, or even mere days, in advance, and be just fine. The Great Smoky Mountains, however, was our biggest destination in our 2022 travel itinerary, so we needed to plan ahead. We started planning the Smokies before we even took delivery of our RV! In summer of 2021, we booked Honeysuckle Meadows RV Park, a no-frills campground on the outskirts of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The path to even book this place was less than straightforward. There are so many campgrounds in the Smokies. Some are right downtown and have every amenity you could want and more. Others are just parking lots, stuffing as many RVs into sites as possible. I must have poured over 3 dozen campgrounds before narrowing down my choices. Also, let's remember that I had no clue what campsites we'd actually like, because we hadn't even stayed in one before! You might recall from previous posts that some of our earlier bookings didn't work out so well. I wasn't in the groove yet.

Before settling on Honeysuckle Meadows, I was eyeing a few other campgrounds. One, located in Pigeon Forge, was featured on an RV YouTube channel we watch, and it looked cute. Except it wasn't taking reservations until January. Another, also in Pigeon Forge, had sites right along a river, and I was very excited to have a site where we could put the patio down and be on the water. A third, located in Gatlinburg, wasn't accepting reservations until September. The good part about these campgrounds not accepting reservations until later, is that if you're set on that campground, you can put the date in your calendar and jump on it. We didn't feel secure enough to do that; we wanted something booked ahead of time so we could relax.

So that left us with Honeysuckle Meadows RV and this riverside campground. I decided on the latter, and was one click away from confirming the reservation, when a little thumbnail caught my eye. It was a photo that a reviewer had left, who had booked the campsite adjacent to the one I was about to book. Across the river was a building. A really ugly building. It looked like some sort of apartment with balconies facing the river. I thought, would we really want to use our patio if we're right across from a bunch of people on their balconies? Suddenly the pristine river views I was envisioning were dashed. More reading into the reviews got me concerned that the riverfront sites were too unlevel as well, as many people complained that the back of the sites slope downward. That's something we'd like to avoid if possible.

So I X'd out of the booking page and went to the Honeysuckle Meadows RV website. The place looked cute but the reviews were mixed. A few people complaining about unlevel sites, others complaining that there were a bunch of junky RVs piled into the campground's front yard. But the price was good and maybe we could gun for a one of the sites that the reviewers say is nice. We called them up and the lady told us she'd put us in a site with "one of the best views." And so we were booked.

That wasn't where it ended, though. I had made a note in my calendar for January 4th, when reservations for the downtown Pigeon Forge campground would open. I intended to book a site there on January 4th and then cancel our booking at Honeysuckle. Unfortunately these days, as more RVers hit the road, sometimes you have to play dirty.

January 4, 2022: We're sitting in Massachusetts, stranded in the wintry hell of our own making. My thoughts? "Why would we change our Smokies reservation when we might not even hit the road in the first place?!" So we stuck with Honeysuckle Meadows.

Fast forward four months, and we were on the road and feeling pretty good about our choice, a complete contrast to the low point of winter. Now our Honeysuckle Meadows stay was approaching, and I was getting nervous. What about the poor reviews? Would we rather be closer to all the downtown attractions? Did I make a good choice back in summer of 2021 when I had no clue how to book sites? My anxiety got the best of me and I started researching other Smokies campgrounds again. In my search, I discovered something about our campsite that I hadn't noticed when we booked it. It was a pull-in.

Pull-ins are mainly for motorhomes who want the view out their big windshield. The hookups for water, electric, and sewer are on the opposite side to back-ins, so that when a motorhome pulls in, they can connect on their left. But we don't have a motorhome. We don't even just have a travel trailer. We have a toyhauler, which means we want our patio facing the back of our site. We certainly don't want to pull in and have it near the road! We actually ended up emailing Honeysuckle to see if they had another site available, which they didn't, but they told us we could still back into the site if we wanted. It was clear that Honeysuckle just puts whatever type of RV in the sites, whether they're back-in or not. We didn't really know how this worked logistically, so we tried to figure out as much as we could. We did a lot of due diligence to make sure our cords and hoses would reach if we backed in. We asked Honeysuckle where the hookups were in the site, we looked at the map over and over, and we even bought a longer electric cord and sewer hose extension just in case. We honestly didn't know what we were going to do until we got there and scoped out the site in person. It wouldn't have been a real issue if we were only there for a few days, but this was a 3-week stay. We needed to be comfortable and have all our hookups.

As for the other campgrounds? There were a few sites available here and there, but nothing for 3 weeks straight. We really didn't want to be switching sites constantly while we were there. Plus at Honeysuckle, we got a weekly discount on an already reasonable price. I was hesitant, but we decided to just let the situation lie.

To add to my trepidation, we had to leave our beautiful pond site at the Asheville KOA and march into the unknown of Honeysuckle Meadows. The whole drive to the Smokies, I was wondering what on Earth we got ourselves into.

When we arrived at the campground, we stopped at the office to check in. No one was there. At 3pm. Not a good start. We knew our site number though (boy did we know it!), so we just went to our site. It was at the bottom of a hill, so we were able to stop our RV just before the site, get out, and decide how we wanted to proceed. Behind our site was a huge grassy area. We're talking probably 1/2 an acre. I've never seen anything like it. So ideally, we'd like to back into the site. Then we checked the connections, which were not where the workers had told us they were. They said connections were at the back of the site; they were in the middle, which was actually better for us anyway. Also, the site was massively long, so we could kind of finagle our positioning to better run our connections under our rig to the other side. It was settled. We would back into our pull-in, on a slope. At this point, all bets were off, and I told Anthony to just use the empty site across the road, pull into it, so that way we could be straighter when backing into our site.

While in the middle of our grand maneuver, a nice gentleman walking his dog stopped to let us know that our site is a pull-in. Oh, we know, kind sir. That was when we realized, lots of our neighbors probably think we're really stupid. But I don't think we are. We just need to try this out and see if it works.

We got backed into the site, and the next order of business was positioning ourselves length-wise in the site, so ensure our connections could run across. We also needed to level. Because we were already beginning to slope upward on the hill, we needed to do a lot of leveling left-to-right. Even with our levelers, we still had to do some..."gravel dispersement," we'll call it....aka, dig some little trenches where our wheels and steps could sink in. This whole process took us about a half-hour before we were satisfied enough to start running all our connections under our rig and over to the hookups.

The plus side to all this hustle in the beginning, is that we frontloaded the effort. Once it was all done, we had three weeks to enjoy it. And boy did we enjoy it.

We thanked our lucky stars many times over the next three weeks that we kept this booking, and that we didn't change sites. Hands down, this was the best site in the campground. We had that huge meadow that was bigger than our yard at our old house, which our neighbors mostly just stayed away from, acting like it was part of our site. We had one RV next to us, but it was a seasonal site and the occupants weren't there. Way across the meadow was another RV site, where our first neighbors departed from shortly after we arrived, then remained vacant for a few days before the new neighbors came in. Those neighbors were only there half the time. We're guessing they had family in the area and just needed a place to park. So besides the neighbors across from us, we were mostly by ourselves in our giant site, next to our giant yard. Each day, waking up to the lush green grass, with mountains to one side, and a barn to the other. Buttercups growing in the meadow. And at night, the most spectacular firefly display we've ever seen, which even put our literal firefly guided tour to shame!

We quickly got over the limited office hours too, because whenever the workers were there, they were super nice. They collected our packages for us, which was extra important because Anthony was getting his laptop for his new job, and I was also getting a new monitor because my old one had a travel-related injury. They kept our technology safe and we never had to worry about it. We also found out that they had recently put in a new laundry room, which happened to be just up the hill from our site. This was fantastic, since we'd definitely be needing some laundry time during our 3 weeks' stay. We also quickly discovered that things were pretty chill at Honeysuckle. The "one-way" road meant we'd need to go up and around the hill every time we left, so we just decided to make it two-way. No one cared. This also helped tremendously when we left, because we just pulled right out of our campsite and didn't need to haul our rig up the hill. Later on during our stay, a family set up camp at a site across the road. They had good yard space too, and so in addition to their RV, they set up two hammocks and a few tents. They had a great long weekend.

Besides the occasional kids riding bikes or landscapers mowing our lawn, the park was quiet. There is a pool and café, but it's all the way across the park and on the other side of a road. Initially I thought this was inconvenient for all those who want to swim, but it kept the actual campsites nice and peaceful. We had lots of days where it was too hot to do much, and so we just hunkered down inside. Having the extra space to let Tanner out to roam the grass felt so homey. I also got to create some harp videos in the meadow. Then on the days we did go places, we were just 15-20 minutes from Pigeon Forge and 15 minutes from Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

During our drives around town, I'd look at the "campgrounds that could have been." All the RVs packed together like sardines, and that ugly building that was in fact really ugly in person, obstructing the view of all those riverfront sites. Those campgrounds are a definite trade-off; be in the hustle and bustle, but have no space and a hefty price tag. This is a worthy trade-off for some, but not for us. Driving past the other RVs, I felt like we were in on a secret. We found the biggest site in the park. Not just our RV park. In the whole National Park! And for just $34/night!

After three weeks of making our site home, we were sad to leave. This is an interesting review for us, because yes, we'd recommend this campground, but the sites are so variable. We loved our site, and a couple others looked nice too. However, the reviews were correct. They do allow RV storage near the office, and some of those RVs are junky. If you get a site near the front of the campground, you'll have a view of all those RVs and it takes away from the mountains in the distance. The sites are unlevel and a bit wonky. We found it bemusing that they just book towable RVs in pull-in sites, because that means once the trucks are unhitched, they need to be driven on the grass and back around to the road. We waited 3 weeks to see someone maneuver this, and the one opportunity we had we missed, as they unhitched and brought their truck around in the 3 minutes we were over at the dumpster. Darn. Nevertheless, our choice to back in was 100% the right one. I can't imagine having to back out of that site because there were slopes and ditches everywhere. We backed in fairly easily and then had a very simple departure. And in between those days? A patio overlooking a half-acre of grass. Short drives to everything the Smokies offers. Lovely walks in the campground at dusk, as the fireflies emerged. A neighbor with an American Eskimo dog that fell in love with her doppelganger Tanner (first other Eskie we've seen on the road!). And a boost of confidence that maybe we can plan our campsite bookings better than we thought.

Campground:

Honeysuckle Meadows RV Park, Sevierville, TN

Site 23, Pull-in (that we backed into), FHU, picnic table and firepit, mountain and barn views