The Shenango Recreation Area is situated about 7 miles northeast of the quaint little town of Sharon, Pennsylvania. The campground (CG) is nestled within the broad, flat, meandering valleys of the Shenango River and Pymatuning Creek. The Shenango Recreation Area Campground is in Transfer PA, approximately 21 miles east of Youngstown, Ohio. Visitors to the area can enjoy camping, boating, and fishing. Shenanango Recreation Area Campground is run by the Army Corps of Engineers (COE). We will discuss: why we stayed here, provide a campground review, what to do in the area, our Dawg Haus rating, and some final thoughts.
Why We Stayed Here
We were making our way to the Tioga PA area to meet up with friends we had met at a service center that specializes in VanLeigh 5th Wheels. As we created our travel itinerary to head east, we found this COE that was the right distance between our stops. The reviews were good, so we decided to check out the CG. We like COEs as they are normally more spacious than other CGs and since we are both disabled veterans we have the National Parks Access Pass which gives us a 50% discount on the daily rate.
Campground Review
For this CG, we paid $15/night with our Access Pass discount for a gravel pad, picnic table, and fire/bbq pit. This site was 50/30/20 AMP electric only.
You will definitely want to follow the directions from the CG’s website to get to this park. Due to how the roads are set up in this area, you can’t make a left-hand turn. Instead, you have to take a right exit to come back to the intersection and go straight across or turn left to head back in the opposite direction. Due to this, our RV Garmin GPS routing didn’t work. We were able to use Waze and followed the CG’s website instructions that took us across the causeway on N. Hermitage Rd, then a right turn off on Birchwood Rd, which led us to take a left turn back across N. Hermitage Rd to get back to the Shenango Rec Area turn. Once we got to the CG, check in was quick and very easy. Just happened, that the camp host that checked us in was also our neighbor in the site next to us and told us we could get water off their site instead of having to go to the dump station. We proceeded straight to back-in site 199. This site happened to be one of the better spaced sites in the CG. We did have to maneuver a couple of times to get into the 90 degree site but the road was wide enough with no obstacles to prevent swinging into the site. We quickly found out that our 50 AMP connection had issues and after reporting it, a maintenance crew came within 20 minutes and fixed a bad breaker.
We got 3 bars on Verizon and a handful of OTA channels. Due to the number of mature trees, satellite would be iffy depending on your site. There are no FHU sites (even the camp host sites only have electric & water). Electric sites are centrally grouped within the loops and spaced closer together than most COEs. The majority of the sites within this CG are dry camping and they too are fairly close together. The sites right on the lake were all dry camping. With all the dry camping sites in this CG, it’s nice that they allow generator use during non-quiet hours. Quiet hours here are 10:00 PM to 6:00 AM. There are water spigots periodically located within the loops and the CG map identifies where they are. There’s also a two-lane dump station located near the entrance but there is no potable water. There are signs stating no alcohol in the park, but people were openly drinking. We also noted that the contractors who clean the restroom/shower facilities start really early in the morning and close the facility while cleaning, which was inconvenient for the dry campers just waking up.
What to do in the Area
We golfed at the only free golf course in the United States, Buhl Park Golf Course about 20 minutes away. Buhl was a challenging little par 3 & 4, 9-hole course with some hills and narrow fairways. This is a walking course, but they do have a few push carts you can borrow. Buhl Mansion is on the National Register of Historic places located in Sharon PA. The historic mansion is now run as a guesthouse and spa. Mercer County Courthouse is about 20 minutes away. This is a historic courthouse that was built in 1910-1911 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The architecture of the building is grand, but don’t miss out on going inside to ascend the stairs and look up at the curved stained glass of the dome, especially on a sunny day.
Dawg Haus Rating
We publish CG reviews on RV Life Campground Reviews, Compendium, The Dyrt, and RV Parky. To date, we have provided over 200 reviews of private and public CGs. Here’s our opinion and rating based on what we like and dislike about a particular CG. We rate CGs differently depending on if we are just stopping for an overnighter or a few day rester or if it’s a destination type CG. Our subjective ratings are The Best (Five Paws), Very Good (Four Paws), Good (Three Paws), It’ll Work (Two Paws), and Not Impressed (One Paw).
We were in the Old Duck Loop, which was a mix of electric and dry camping sites and this loop just didn’t do it for us. We were also next to the camp host, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but we and everyone else around us were admittedly being watched. The campsites in this COE were also closer together than other COEs we’ve stayed in. We rate Shenango COE as Two Paws, It’ll Work, based on these observations and other points in our Campground Review section.
After Blush
We were impressed with the New Duck Loop. Although the loop doesn’t look all that new, there are electric sites and more spacious dry camping sites. If we were to come back, we’d reserve site 178 as it would be a good dry camping site for us. The site is wide, spacious/away from other sites, you get afternoon sun for solar panels to charge batteries, and the site sits right on the water where we could launch a kayak. Another plus is that there’s a water spigot and restroom/shower house not too far away. A couple of other dry camping options in the Main Loop could be site 50 which sits off by itself with a path to the lake. And site 45 sits by itself but there’s a ditch on the other side of the road that would make it a little tougher to get in. Both of these sites are back-ins. The images below were taken during our stay.
