Cheaha State Park

Awesome park. Super hiking trails - especially with those with handicaps. Upper Campground had great restrooms, new-ish showers and restrooms. Very clean. Big conscience store and lovely restaurant at the top offering breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We drove up early to check out the park. Overall we thought it was fantastic...great scenery for photo ops & we enjoyed the observatory tower and picnic area.

Very interesting park. The drive up the mountain was beautiful. The day we went it was very windy and cold at the top of the mountain. But you get some excellent views.

It is a nice campground, and the sites are well spaced apart. However it is a full 30 minute mountain climb in an out of the park so be prepared to stay once you arrive. No cell service for AT&T or Verizon. Playground was closed for Covid but did not look great. We were in the upper campground in a 37’ travel trailer, and could not have made the road into the lower campground with our long rig. We woke every morning to total fog (couldn’t see the truck from the trailer), and that didn’t burn off until 10-11 am so I wouldn’t attempt leaving the mountain early in the morning with your rig! We enjoyed hiking, but we didn’t find many beautiful overlooks, mostly just woodland trails.

We stayed here over the Thanksgiving holiday 2020. We stayed in the Lower Campground and drove through the Upper Campground. Both campgrounds have some distinct pros and cons.

First the Lower. It's much smaller than the Upper...the loop can be walked in about 5 minutes. None of the sites were amazing. There were a few back-ins...I wouldn't stay in any of these. Tight spots and no yards. With the exception of a couple of the more traditional interior pull-thrus at the far end of the loop, pretty much all the pull-thrus are a bit weird. What I mean by this is that 2 or 3 sites share the same piece of gravel. One site bleeds right into the next site, often with no real delineation of boundaries. Very odd. All of the interior loop pull-thrus are backwards sites (door opens to road, not to the site. They all share a middle area with the opposite side of the loop that is about 20 meters away. The exterior sites face away and normally-facing sites (door opens to site). Most exterior sites don't have yards beyond the gravel (steep dropoffs). Our site (site 46) had the best view of the mountain. A few of the sites have a view of the lake below. Bathrooms are clean. Some stairs go down to the lake which is a nice lake for swimming/kayaking.

Upper Campground. It seemed to be double or triple the size. Most, if not all, of the exterior pull-thrus seemed to have large yards (opened up to woods and plenty of room to play). I don't recall if this loop had the same issues of shared gravel spaces with adjoining sites. We only did a drive-thru but I would definitely only stay in this campground if I came back.

The park itself is beautiful. Most of the longer trails were closed for repair while we were there but we were able to walk/hike to both of the lookouts. These lookouts are phenomenal and highly recommended. Sunset was amazing! We did the very (VERY) strenuous hike from the Lower Campground to Pulpit Rock. It was invigorating but we climbed 900' in less than a mile. Worth it though!

We were in the upper loop. The sites and park are very well kept. Staff was super friendly and there are hikes all over. If you were a biker, there’s lots of pedaling to be had too.

Hike up to the tower, go to bald rock and then go to Vista Cliffside for lunch and or a drink.

Amazing park.

You can tell that AL put a fair amount of money into redoing the park and upgrading the sites, roads and bathhouses. We stayed in the Lower Loop which is smaller with easy access to Lake Cheaha (beach, swimming) and hiking trials which take you to some incredible vistas. Upper Campground is larger with more space btwn sites and access to up Bald Rock .
PROS: new bathrooms and showers, level sites, excellent trails with beautiful views nearby and very quiet. We hiked every day and loved the scenery.
CONS: whomever designed the sites probably isn't a camper. Roads are one way so all the pull through sites on the left side have your door opening to the road and very little space for a "living area". There are super bright lights interspersed in the campground (we had one right between our site and the next) with no rhyme or reason so it takes away from the evening ambience. The pull through sites are great if you are camping with friends but not as great if you are solo as they share driveways. No cell or WIFI in the campgrounds but you can get it at the visitor center and lodge so be warned if you are working remotely.
Even with all the cons we really enjoyed our time here and will certainly come back again.

loved hiking here. was very peaceful. Liked being able to just walk to the nearby trails.
our 23 foot ainstream had no issues getting here. Camp store is predictably expensive

Only a one night stay for us as we were passing through towards North Carolina. We were in the lower campground. Signage into there is not very good- we found it and ended up at a closed gate. Turns out you have to check in at the office located at the upper campground. Luckily no on was behind us and we could back out of that sticky situation- be aware if that if you're camping there.

We'd like to return. I think the upper campground may be a bit better, the sites are spread out a bit more.

We stayed five nights in Dec 2022 and due to rain we were only able to make one hike but it was fantastic! Beautiful sites and close to multiple hiking trails, so we put it on our "Must Return" list! We have a T-Mobile hotspot so we had wifi but our phones (Verizon) were useless...no service. Campsites and bathrooms were very clean and the staff at the office/general store were super helpful!