Raccoon Mountain Campground & Caverns

September 11, 2007 by steve.

The CurbCrushers stayed at the Raccoon Mountain RV Park and Campground located on the southwest side of Chattanooga off of I-24. There was not a lot of research to picking this campground, CurbCrusher Googled Chattanooga Campgrounds, and then checked for reviews on the rvparkreviews web site. That combined with the Raccoon Mountain web site helped determine that we’d give this park a shot.

This park has about 157 sites, but not all are RV sites, and four cabins. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, and checked right in and parked and hooked up. We were in one of a number of pull through sites that had electricity, water, sewer, cable TV and wireless. The only real issue with hooking up was that the utilities were located toward the front of the site. That placed the sewer outlet more than 20 feet from the hook site on the rig the way I first parked, so I had to move up about six feet to get the long sewer hose hooked up. There was a concrete pad with a picnic table that served as a porch, placed perfectly for the RV door and steps to open onto.
We never had anyone located next to us, so we didn’t suffer from the closeness of other sites. The sites were not as far apart as you would find in a state park, but were not so close that you couldn’t open slides and awnings. During our entire stay, the park probably never had more than fifteen rigs in it, so it was never crowded.

There is a pool, go-cart track and cave tour located at the campground. When we arrived on Saturday, the go-cart track and pool were open. On Sunday they closed the pool around 6:15PM. On Monday they had no intention of opening the pool or the go-cart track. Mrs. CurbCrusher went to the office and chatted with the manager for a while. The go-cart track opened for a couple of rounds. She made a second trip to the office, and the pool opened. Interestingly enough once the pool opened, about a dozen folks headed over to it.

Monday afternoon, we visited the caverns. The cave tour last about 45 minutes. This cave was discovered by local farmers, and they hired Leo Lambert (the man who discovered Ruby Falls) to explore the cave. Leo then gave guided cave tours for a time here at Raccoon Mountain in the 1920s. Our guide’s enthusiasm left something to be desired, but the cave was interesting. You see a lot of the same geological features that you see at Ruby Falls. Raccoon Mountain Caverns is also a lot less confining feeling than Ruby Falls was. Of course we only took the “Crystal Palace” tour, where you can pretty much walk standing up the entire time. There is a “Wild Cave” tour that last two hours, and you get to crawl around and get muddy. I imagine that tour is not for the claustrophobic.

All in all the CurbCrushers enjoyed their time at Raccoon Mountain. If we find ourselves in Chattanooga again, we would probably stay there. Since the park is so convenient to I-24, it might also make a good overnight park when transiting the area.

Pictures can be found here.

Posted in RV Stuff, Travel Review, Campground Review | No Comments »