Park Review- Southern Trails RV Resort (Unadilla, GA)

Address:  2690 Arena Road, Unadilla, GA 31091
Phone:  (478) 627-3254
Website:  southerntrailsrvresort.com
# of sites:  186
​Full hookup price:  From $395/month
Open:  Year-round
Rating:  2 out of 5 stars
​Warnings:  Interstate noise

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Unadilla, GA, is a small town about 45 minutes south of Macon and nearly two hours from Atlanta.  It is an RPI park, an add-on for Thousand Trails memberships, and we paid a discount price of $12/night for 30 amp and full hookups.  Its convenient location heading southwest from Virginia and visiting a friend in Byron were our primary purposes for choosing this campground.

Pros:
​This resort is open year-round and Unadilla has milder winters, meaning you can wait just a little bit longer in the year before heading to your usual winter home or region, such as Florida, Texas or Arizona.  The campground has a small fishing pond onsite (catch and release) and the sites are above normal in width.

Southern Trails has several of the expected amenities, such as laundry facilities, bath house, swimming pool, miniature golf, and clubhouse, though most of those were closed during our stay due to the pandemic.  

Cons:
The biggest negative aspect of this park is its proximity to I-75, which was literally a stone's throw from our campsite.  Tractor-trailer traffic is continuous, 24/7.  There was no noise barrier at all (barbed wire doesn't block much sound), so, even though we were so close, the entire park is a noise pit.  The campground caters to monthly customers, and a few of the longer-term residents mentioned that they had gotten used to the noise, but if you are staying a few days, this won't happen.

This resort looks well-past its heyday, with perhaps the exception of its newest loops.  Amenities and buildings are old and dated, dirt pathways narrow and uneven, and any landscaping an afterthought at best.  I mentioned that they cater to long-term residents, and we find that this type of guaranteed revenue focus tends to dissuade owners from spending much for improvements or maintenance to attract new campers.  There just aren't any outstanding qualities.

There was plenty of space to have an off-leash park for dogs, but they did not have one.  Speaking of dogs, we had a canine welcoming committee (the black dog in the photo), which was skittish but friendly and was wearing a harness and collar, so I was pretty certain he belonged to a camper in the resort.  He wanted to play with our dogs but wouldn't let me see his tags, so I leashed up Rosie and Sadie and he followed us to the office.  I tied off our dogs and stepped inside to give the park manager the scoop of a loose pet and the woman couldn't care less.  She basically said that it was my problem, not hers, and she couldn't do anything about it.  Fortunately, as we were walking back to our site, a young girl ran up and apologized for my having to deal with their dog.  She had a leash with her and took him away with a smile.  I was pretty put out with the staff not stepping up.

As an example of our noise problem, I took the video below at 3:30am from my bedroom window (next to my head when lying down), still awake due to the cacophony from the highway. 

The bottom line is that we do not recommend this campground for anything but the shortest of stays, and even then we might suggest a couple nights Cracker-docking.  Because the park wasn't trash-filled and the hookups all worked, I decided that two stars out of five was more appropriate than just one.

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