Thousand Trails Hidden Cove is located just a couple miles outside Arley, Alabama. Arley is a very small town in northern Alabama, on Lewis Smith Lake. According to Wikipedia, Arley has a population of about 350 and that is actually down from a 2010 survey. It’s location and distance from other larger cities gives Arley a very remote feel and seems to sustain itself on the traffic it receives from Lewis Smith Lake. You won’t find any large shopping outlets in Arley, and you also won’t find large restaurants or big entertainment venues. Arley is just a small town, with wonderful residents, who value their simple living.
Location of Thousand Trails Hidden Cove
Thousand Trails Hidden Cove sits nestled in a beautiful location and has a lot of shorelines on Lewis Smith Lake. The lake is a sprawling 21,000 acres plus. It’s absolutely gorgeous from any viewpoint we found and if you’re into water sports or fishing, the lake would give you countless hours of exploring and fun activities. We saw watercraft rental, home rental, and plenty of fishing areas around the lake. You can even tour the dam or just fish at the dam outlet.
Thousand Trails Hidden Cove RV Park lives up to its reviews for its aesthetic beauty and seclusion. The roads leading to it are rough and curvy. We entered the park before closing and the gate staff were very friendly and helpful. As with a lot of other Thousand Trail parks, they sent us in a direction and let us choose our camping spot. We chose section C, as it offered large pull thru sites and was easily accessible. We had no problem finding a large site with 50-amp service and full hookups. Our spot ended up being next to a worker for the park, and he and his wife were very kind and helpful. We had to leave our camp for a couple of days during our visit, and our neighbors even helped keep an eye on our camp.
The park is very large and separated into different sections. There are a lot of annual site holders, and they consume almost all of the lake view sites. As you drive around the park, many of the campsites were blocked off with cones or had decks built to suit annual site members. The park management is also offering super cheap rates for new annual members as of our visit in 2024. I suspect they will eventually have a great many more annual members than short term visitors.
Park and area amenities and activities
Thousand Trails Hidden Cove is very well kept. The pool, clubhouse, ball courts, playground, restrooms, and laundry facilities are clean and very inviting. This park also accepted US Mail and UPS for us, during our visit. The Wi-Fi was good from our location and while they advertise a fee to use it, it isn’t password secured. We chose to use our Starlink but it was nice to know another option was available. As with most other RV parks we visit, we never really saw people taking advantage of the amenities offered, but everything was well maintained and in good working order. There is a really nice boat launch with docks in the park, as well as plenty of places for bank fishing and lake side picnicking.
Our stay was for two weeks in August. There isn’t a lot of activity in the area, outside of the lake. We found entertainment at a marina about 10 miles away, that also had really good food and lake views. The RV Park advertised access to food vendors for the weekend. Friday night was a BBQ food truck that came to the park and Saturday was supposed to be a seafood truck, which cancelled. There was bingo at the clubhouse during our visit. There weren’t many participants, but those that went did enjoy themselves.
If you need hardware, groceries, or even repairs, you can find it locally. What you won’t find in the area is a place like Walmart or large chain groceries. For all of those things, you will need to drive about 25 minutes to the small city of Jasper. There is also no place to buy alcohol in Arley. For that, you will need to make the drive to Jasper.
Overall Review of Thousand Trails Hidden Cove
The park is beautiful. It’s very secluded and remote. It’s well maintained, has friendly staff, and nice facilities. Its lake access is superb and is probably its biggest asset.
Before booking a stay at this park, we checked out all the reviews and online opinions. Almost all were very positive, and some people claim it to be their favorite Thousand Trails Park. For us, we had a bit different opinion. We don’t boat and didn’t really use the lake. We do fish, but since it was the end of the fishing season and beginning of a new one, we didn’t want to purchase a fishing license for both this year and next year.
We struggled to find things to occupy our time. We spent time in the pool, and it was really nice. The evenings offered beautiful sunsets, and the park attracts white tail deer that walked right by our camp on way to their feed spot. We did enjoy taking biking trips around the park and lake, and we enjoyed driving around the lake for the views. The area doesn’t offer much aside from lake activities. If you’re lake fanatics, you will absolutely love this beautiful park. Take your boat and fishing gear and enjoy. If you like to explore and find outside area entertainment, you will probably be a bit disappointed. Arley is just too far away from everything and aside from the lake, there isn’t much scenery to be viewed.
