Love Valley Campground

Love Valley, North Carolina

When I checked out the websites for Love Valley, North Carolina, it looked like a nice little tourist attraction geared towards equestrians. There are easily a half dozen equestrian campgrounds clustered around this small tourist attraction. The idea is you can camp at one of the campgrounds and then ride into town where there are hitching posts outside all the businesses.

The reality was like having a bucket of cold water poured over you. Apparently, a few years back the town lost their sewer and water lines and all the businesses shut down for a couple of years while repairs were made and the town has not recovered.

We arrived at the campground and the owners were surprised to see us - never a good sign. I had been phoning every day up to our arrival, but they have no answering machine and they weren’t picking up the phone. Campsites were water/electric hook-up. The electric was just 110V. The covered stalls were small - about 10 ft by 10 ft. Our horses could barely turn around in them, but they were clean. Cell service was poor, no camp WIFI, no RV dump, and no shower house. On the plus side, the horses loved the grass.

It was a three hour drive to the campground and we arrived around 4:30 in the afternoon, so we decided to spend the night and see what the next day would be like.

There was one other set of campers in the campground - a couple with a pre-teen daughter. We asked them about the trails and the town. It’s about a five minute ride from any of the campgrounds into town. The sign on the side of the building says “A cowboy and a cowgirl dream come true.”. Well, somebody woke up, because the only surviving business is a saloon called Shelby’s. We asked the campers about it and they said the only food they serve is microwave pizza and it’s pretty bad.

If you ride through town (which takes about five minutes), you can access some trails - The trail is called the Carolina Thread Trail. The trails were muddy and rocky, but you do climb some elevation to the top of a mountain.

At the top of the mountain, you exit the trails into a residential area, but there is a nice view of the valley. It took us about 30 minutes to get to this point, so we just headed back.

There were some riders at the entrance to the town as we were headed back. They had asked a passing cyclist to take their picture at the town entrance. Given that the town is shuttered, a photo op is pretty much the best you can get.

Since the town is basically closed and we had ridden the only trails, we decided to leave after only one night and head to our next stop. The campground owner initially asked us to pay $150 for our one night stay. I balked - that’s what we paid at Black Prong Equestrian - where there was a pool, a hot tub, WIFI, free breakfast, full hook-up, and the horses got large paddocks. I offered her $60 - which was generous - and she accepted it. To be honest, we felt a little sorry for her. Imagine buying into all the hype of the town when it was first being marketed as “The Cowboy Capitol”, investing in a campground, and then being stuck in a real ghost town.