Campground Review Summary

• Name: Birmingham South RV Park
• Dates of stay: Nov 14-18, 2018
• Location: 222 Hwy 33, Pelham, AL 35124
• Type of campground: Private / Independent
• Cost: $43.17/night (Good Sam Rate)
• Additional fees: none
• Stay limit: none
• Accepts mail / packages: did not ask
• Cell reception: AT&T good
• Website: www.bhamsouthrvpark.com
• Pros: close to mountain bike trails
• Cons: aging park, un-level sites

Full Review

Birmingham has been on our radar since the beginning of our travels, due to its proximity to what is touted as world-class mountain bike trails at nearby Oak Mountain State Park. We just had to squeeze it in during our first year loop. This campground is conveniently located 10 minutes away from the Park

This campground is a former KOA, now private. It offers quite a few amenities: camp store, game room, playground, pool (seasonal), bath house, coin laundry facility, camping cabins, pavilion and dump station. However, the facility is showing its age and could stand some maintenance.

First the good stuff: The campground is attractively wooded and the roads are wide enough for even big rigs to navigate with care. The full hookups work well with stable power and good water pressure. Cable TV is offered, but since we can receive ample over the air stations, we didn’t bother with cable. (Our newly-repaired Direct TV satellite is blocked by trees and unusable). Our AT&T signal strength is very good here. The campground wifi is OK, but our AT&T hotspot works better. The nicely-heated bath house is a bit tired, but kept immaculately clean. The campground is conveniently located to the State Park, shopping is 10 minutes away, and travel to downtown Birmingham is only 20 minutes.

Now the not so good: The paved roads and sites are crumbling and rutted and desperately need re-paving. Our site is so slanted AND rutted, we didn’t even attempt to level the bus for our short 4 night stay. We are living with our slides in for the duration. If there was a better site elsewhere in the campground we would have requested it, but we couldn’t find one. In fact, we watched several other buses (our size) pull into adjoining sites and go through numerous gyrations, trying (ultimately unsuccessfully) to level.  The review sites gave this campground glowing reviews, so finding all of the sites to be nearly unusable (for us) was very disappointing.

The $43/night Good Sam rate seems pricy for what you get, especially considering that this is moderate-cost Alabama.  I doubt that we’ll be back.

Bottom Line: Good location, but high priced for a rutted un-level site.