Paddle Plan It

Cheraw State Park IS one of my favorite South Carolina Parks, and I have visited many!

It is located on Lake Juniper and has plenty of trails and water activity fun available at your finger tips. I am going to review this park a little differently than I have the other ones. For this review, I am going to take you on a journey through our boat-in camping trip. For this camping trip, we packed all our camping gear on two paddle boards and paddled to one of Cheraw’s boat-in campsites. Let’s start with our arrival to Cheraw State Park…

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Checking-In

We arrived at Cheraw State Park’s main hub so that we could check-in.

The main building and sand volleyball at Cheraw State Park

Robin checked us in and gave us a map showing how to the Boat-in Campsite. (Boat-in meals that you can only get to the campsite by water.) She also gave us an “on-call” ranger number that we could use after the park had closed. We didn’t have any issues but it was nice knowing that we had that number. Robin was super friendly and helpful.

Cheraw State Park Main Hub

After checking in, we walked around the main hub of Cheraw State Park. The main hub of Cheraw State Park was packed with plenty to do.

Some of the special features included:

A large beach with swimming area: The swimming area was roped in to provide a barrier between the swimmers and boats. This rope created a natural “swimming pool” that not all state parks have.

beach and swimming area at Cheraw state park — Huge beach area!

benches on a beach by a lake swimming area — Designated swimming area

Lots of seating, picnic tables, and shelters: Some of the seating and tables had umbrellas which added a nice touch.

chairs with umbrellas by lake juniper at cheraw state park

Sand volleyball court

sand volleyball court with lake juniper in the background

Playground

playground at cheraw state park — Cute playground

Two Store for souvenirs, snacks, toiletries, etc.
Plenty of open space for kids (an adults) to run a play
A small pier

Paddleboard, Kayak, and Canoe rentals

paddleboard and kayak rental building by lake juniper — Paddleboard, Kayaks, and Canoe rentals and Cheraw State Park

Boat Access

You can put your kayak in at the main hub, bit the walk from the parking lot to the water is some what lengthy. Cheraw State Park also has another boat access point. At this boat access, you can drive your car right to the water.

After checking in and walking around the main hub, we drove to that boat access point. (This park is big, it’s best to drive to some places). To get to the boat access, you turn right our of the main hub entrance. Then you turn right at the next dirt road. You will see a boat access sign at your turn.

The boat access point is for paddleboards, kayaks,canoes, and boats with 10 HP our less. Boats over 10 HP are not allowed at Cheraw State Park.

Once we parked, we pumped up our inflatable boards, loaded them up with our camping swag, and headed out on the water. (Btw, for our inflatable paddleboards review, click here, for our Paddleboard camping list, click here). Pumping up the boards and loading them with our camping gear took 15 minutes (I timed it!). We are able to pump up our boards so quickly by using the Jackery Battery, the iRocker battery, and two electric pumps. With these tools, we are able to pump up both boards at the same time. You can also plug the pumps into your car adapter, but we like using the batteries so that we don’t have to keep our car running, which uses a lot more gas than we would like. When loading our boards, we evenly distributed out three dry bags and Ice Mule among our two boards.

dry bags, and ice mule on a boat ramp — All our camping gear fit into these dry bags and an ice mule

iRocker paddleboards loaded with dry bags — We use the iRocker Cruiser Inflatable Paddleboards. All our gear was evenly divided and carried on our two paddleboads.

Camping

We stayed at a boat-in campsite. As mentioned earlier, boat-in campsite is a campsite that you can only get to by the water. Cheraw State Park is one of the few state parks that has a boat-in campsite option. Cheraw has two boat-in campsites, to be exact. The furthest one away is about a 45 minute paddle according to the state park staff.

We didn’t time it ourselves though. Cheraw State Park also has RV and tent campsites as well. The traditional tent and RV sites have electrical hookups and water and are located close to the bathrooms and showers. Some pull-through campsites accolade RVs us to 40 feet while others accommodate up to 34 feet.

Boat-In Camping

The two boat-in sites do NOT have bathrooms, electricity, or water. But they are pure magic in my opinion. The boat-in campsite was easy to find. In fact, you could see it from the water.

cheraw state park boat-in campsite — Cheraw Boat-in Campsite. (I have heard this is the nicer of the two boat-in campsites.)

cheraw state park boat in campsite with hammock tents — Our hammock tents set up on our boat-n campsite. All of this was our campsite fro the night. From the shelter to the fire ring and benches!

When we paddled up to our site we thought it was too nice to be our campsite. It was completely private and spacious. The boat-in campsite had a shelter with picnic tables and a fire ring that was surrounded by rocks. Benches made a semi-circle around the fire ring.

benches around a fire ring, a shelter, and hammock tents — The benches surrounding the fire ring. You can also get a goo idea of how much space we had at this campsite.

The site also have plenty of trees as well as open space for kids to play. The site even had it’s own little connecting trail to explore.

Technically you could get out of the campsite and back to the main hub by this trail, but it would be a long walk. Still it was nice to know that you did have a way to get out without going by water in case of an emergency.

Golf Course

Cheraw State Park also has a golf course.

We could see the golf course from the water as we paddled. It really is a beautiful course.

golf course and lake juniper — You can see the golf course from the water

Campsite Set Up

We set up our hammock tents among the trees near the water.

man walking with camping gear — Unloading at our campsite

hammock tents hung by the water at lake juniper Cheraw State Park Boat-in campsite — Setting up our hammock tents near the lake.

We also had inflatable pillows.

You will not believe how compact these pillows are before you blow them up! They fit into the palm of my hand! We also added twinkle lights round our hammocks.

hammock tents surrounded by fairy lights — Twinkle lights around our hammock tents.

Twinkle lights are a must for me. I like having a little bit of light when I sleep at night. The twinkle lights provide the perfect shimmer and ambient lighting when I sleep. Without the twinkle lights, it would have felt eerily dark. With them-magic!!!

paddleboards, hammock tents and glowing fairy lights

We placed out compact portable chairs between the fire ring and lake.

Lake Juniper

After setting up, we headed back on the lake for an evening paddle. This might be one of my favorite lakes to paddleboard. The lake is big enough that you have plenty of areas to explore but not overly massive. Boats with more HP that 10 are not allowed here, so the water was calm, you didn’t have to worry about big boats not seeing you on the open water.

The Lake was beautiful. From our campsite, if you went left you were heading back to the main hub, if you paddled right, you paddled out to the trees that grew in the water.

Paddling among the trees.

girl paddleboarding among the trees in lake juniper

man paddleboarding among the trees in lake juniper

iRocker among the trees in lake juniper — We like the iRocker Cruiser Paddleboards

We also saw Lilly pads and flowers as we paddled.

After exploring the lake we went back to our campsite and anchored in the water.

man holding an anchor covered in water foliage — Our anchor was covered in lake nature when we pulled it out. It easily washed off though.

As we floated, we listened to music using our floating waterproof iRocker speaker, took in the views, and snacked on Country Archer Grass-Fed Beef Jerky Sticks.

girl on a paddleboard eating a country archer grass-fed beef jerky stick — Our Grass-fed beef jerky stick snack

The Campfire and Dinner

After a while we pulled our paddleboards ashore for the night. We picked up fallen sticks to use in our campfire.

girl carrying firewood — Collecting sticks for the campfire

We made dinner using our MSR Pocket Rocket Stove Kit and Freeze-dried meals. (Watch us use the MSR Pocket Rocket Stove Kit on our Cheraw State Park Boat-in Camping Youtube Video.

MSR pocket rocket and freeze-dried meals — Cooking our freeze-dried meals on the MSR Pocket Rocket

This stove and these meals are so compact that they can easily fit into our dry bags and take up little room on our paddleboards.

pouring water onto a mountain house freeze-dried meal

We have been trying a variety of the freeze-dried meals, and so far we like the Mountain House and the Patagonia Provision meals. We ate dinner by the fire pit and lake.

a bowl of food on someone's legs, eating by a campfire

man and woman holding hands, sitting in lounge chairs by lake juniper

After dinner, we listened to music and sat by the campfire. We even slow danced by the lake and campfire to 90s ballads.

hammock tents surrounded by twinkle lights, a campfire at night

Sunrise Paddle

The next morning, we woke up and packed up. Before leaving, we built a small fire then sat around the fire and ate breakfast (a breakfast freeze-dried meal). Then we paddled back soon after the sun had risen.