Overview
McKinney Campground is a beautiful campground located on Lake Allatoona, a half hour Northwest of Atlanta near Acworth and Cartersville. Most of the sites are on the water which makes boating and swimming (with feet protection) convenient. There is a beach, but surprisingly no playground. There is much to do at McKinney, even without a playground. If you have a boat, you will especially enjoy the ability to park it conveniently near your campsite (in many sites). If you enjoy rockhounding, you should also be entertained at McKinney.

Adventure Journal
Entry Date: September 2010
On this visit to Lake Allatoona, we stayed in site #88 right on the water. All sites are nice, but this and the surrounding sites are especially convenient to the water.

It was Harvest at the Homestead weekend, an event occurring at Red Top Mountain State Park that brought us to Lake Allatoona this time. We chose McKinney as the place to stay because of the incredible lakefront sites, and because Red top Mountain is accessible by boat. It's always more fun to go in a boat! We spent a good part of the day at Red Top Mountain, but when we got back, we enjoyed a beautiful evening at the campsite, and doing a little fishing and rockhounding.

Rockhounding at McKinney - Lake Allatoona is fed by the Etowah River which winds its way down from Dahlonega, the site of the first Gold Rush in the US. Placer gold (gold that has washed down creek beds from deposits in the mountains) can still be found in the creeks that feed the Etowah. Gold is typically found in quartz, and quartz abounds at McKinney. Now I'm not saying there's gold in the quartz at McKinney, but there are lots other colors. Rocks that don't look like much on the ground often polish-up beautifully. We found some rose quartz that I believe will look great polished. We also found some rock with  pale blue crystals I couldn't identify (yet). I will polish them and post the pictures.

There is much layered rock here as well. Layers often mean fossils, although I found none. There are fossils in the quartz, but they are difficult to identify.

With regards to the gold, that will be a future trip. Across the peninsula from McKinney is another Corps of Engineers campground called "Payne". It sits across a cove from Kellogg Creek, a place known for gold. we'll camp at Payne sometime soon so we can ride to the mouth of Kellogg Creek in the boat and pan the day away. Just a note about panning at Allatoona - before you pull out the tools, read the rules.
                         
The Richardson Tribe

For more pictures and prior entries, scroll down.

Entry Date: July 2010
McKinney Campground is near Red Top Mountain State Park, so we were interested as soon as we heard about it. We love Red Top Mountain State Park, and we really like their campground, but RV sites are not lakefront (that we could find). Another nice feature of McKinney is the ability to reserve specific sites. It sure makes you rest easier knowing that you have a site, and even better if you know which one.

We borrowed Paw Paws fishing boat and a couple of kayaks so we would have plenty to do. Our site was on the lake, but pretty high up on a hill. Not a good place to park a boat. We met some friendly campers just downhill, and, like most all campers would, they said they did not mind us accessing the lake there (we will stay in that site in the future). 
                         
The Richardson Tribe

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