Laurel Bloomery, TN (near Damascus, VA)
If you're planning a trip to Damascus, Virginia — and you should be — your RV park options in the immediate area are slim. But slim doesn't mean bad. Old Mill Music & RV Park sits just across the state line in Laurel Bloomery, Tennessee, about five minutes from Damascus, and it turned out to be exactly what we needed: clean, quiet, and genuinely peaceful.
This is a small, independent park — only 20 sites — and it has the feel of a place run by someone who actually cares about it. That's because it is. The owner lives in the house adjoining the property, and he was out and about regularly during our stay, always friendly, always willing to stop and chat about the area, the history of the property, or just
whatever was on your mind. That kind of attentiveness is getting harder to find.
Getting There
Fair warning: the road coming in from I-81 via Damascus is a winding two-lane mountain road with plenty of curves. It's nothing impassable, but if you're hauling a big rig, take it easy and enjoy the scenery — because the scenery genuinely is worth taking in. Coming in from Mountain City, Tennessee is a shorter, somewhat gentler approach, but still with some mountain curves. Either way, you'll be fine. Just don't be in a hurry.
Once you're in the park, it opens up nicely. Wide turns, easy to move around, plenty of room to maneuver even in a large motorhome. The loop runs clockwise — keep that in mind when you pull in, because if you go the wrong direction (ask me how I know), the sites are set up in a way that makes backing in from the wrong angle a bit of a puzzle. Nothing catastrophic, just an extra few minutes of maneuvering.
One heads-up: screenshot your site number from your reservation before you leave cell coverage. The internet up here is essentially non-existent via cell signal, and the park's reservation system puts your site info behind a link — not in the body of the confirmation email. If you can't pull up the link, you won't know your site. The owner is usually around to help, but he wasn't on property when we arrived.
The Site
Site 14 was a back-in on a solid gravel pad — higher quality gravel than you typically see, clean and mostly gravel with
very little dirt mixed in. The motorhome leveled out easily with minimal fuss. The truck had to park sideways at the front, but that's completely standard at most parks. Hookups were perfect — electric, water, and sewer all worked exactly as they should, no drama.
What made the site genuinely nice was what was behind it. Laurel Creek runs right along the back of the campground, and there's a wide strip of green grass between the sites and the water's edge. I pulled my chair down to the creek in the afternoon — once the sun dropped behind the mountain and the shade moved in — and just sat there. Our neighbor downstream spent an hour fishing and pulled in five trout, missing another five. That's not a bad afternoon by anyone's measure.
The Park Itself
Old Mill Music doesn't try to be a resort. There's no pool, no gym, no game room. There is a bathhouse, picnic tables at the sites, and a stage — and the stage has a story.
The owner mentioned it during one of our conversations: that performance stage is actually the original Peavine train station, relocated to the property. And back behind the far end of the park, near where the old bloomery used to operate, is a grist mill. The park's name isn't random — this land has layers of history. There's even a local legend that Davy Crockett camped on this property at some point, though the owner was the first to admit there's no way to prove it.
The park hosts live music events periodically — bring your chairs and settle in on the grass. I can imagine that on a good summer evening, with the creek in the background and the mountains closing in around you, it would be a pretty special thing.
Connectivity
Cell signal is bad to nonexistent up here — plan accordingly. We ran Starlink the entire stay without a single issue. Clear sky views from the site made that easy. If you don't have Starlink or a similar setup, don't count on getting reliable internet during your stay. The park has WiFi, but I couldn't get it to work.
The Bottom Line
Old Mill Music isn't a destination park. You're not staying here to hang out at the pool or attend organized activities (unless there is music). You're staying here because you want to explore one of the most trail-dense, outdoor-recreation-rich areas in the entire Southeast, and you need a clean, peaceful home base to come back to at the end of the day.
On that front, it delivers completely.
It was clean and well-maintained, quiet from morning to night, and had a genuinely friendly owner who is present and attentive.
Check out our other posts about this stop:
