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National Park Service · Prince William Forest Park · VA

Camp Mawavi (Cabin Camp 2)

1Heads uppark alert
Park Closure
Parking Lot E Closed for Construction Parking Lot E is closed for construction. The park is currently working to expand this parking area, and the lot will be closed while the expansion is being built. Visitors can still access the Mary Byrd Branch Trail and Quantico Cascades…
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 17, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: all 1 sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Sites
1All of them walk-up
Photos · NPS Photo
270 ftElevation
939 ftWater · Happyland Camp Five LakeTidal flat · 6.1 mi
2.7 miS of Independent Hill, VA
67%Tree cover
Bortle 5Night sky · 79th darkest of 88 in VA

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Camp Mawavi (Cabin Camp 2) first hosted campers in 1937. The camp sleeps 148 visitors. This camp mainly contains rustic 4-person cabins, with a few 2 and 6-person cabins. The units are clustered in a circular arrangement and each contains 8 cabins, a bath house, and a craft lodge. Each unit is in a grassy clearing that is surrounded by dense forest. The large ballfield and lake access in Camp Mawavi are among the best in the park.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Flush Toilets - year round
Drinking water
Yes
Source: National Park Service and agency records

Around the campground

On the water
Lake
Fall color · reported 12 days ago, 36 km away
Patchy color
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (36 km) · Oct 5, 2026
Official page →Official page →Reservation →Reservation →

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itNational Park Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate38.58127, -77.41572
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the next four days · the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Forecast

This Afternoon55°Slight Chance Light Rain15% rain
Tonight35°Mostly Clear then Areas Of Frost
Sunday58°Areas Of Frost then Sunny
Sunday Night39°Mostly Clear1% rain

NWS forecast for Independent Hill, VA

Source: National Weather Service, LWX forecast office · Oct 17, 2026

Typical weather

Typical October night 50°F, day 69°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 28°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

100°32°20°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Julys are colder than the July line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: QUANTICO MCAS, VA (USW00013773), 8 miles away and 260 ft lower
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

what threatens it · who answers for it

What threatens this place

Watch

You’re camping on ground somebody wants. We track the threats and the comment deadlines.

Source: MTJP Threatened Lands map · Sep 28, 2026

Who answers for this land

Eugene Vindman, official portrait

Camp Mawavi (Cabin Camp 2) is in Virginia’s 7th congressional district. Its representative, Eugene Vindman (D), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: B. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: National Park Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate: the number below is the only way to be sure.
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 3.5 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 88 rated federal campgrounds in Virginia · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Fall color: More Than Just Parks foliage tracker, joined to this campground by distance (36 km) · Oct 5, 2026
Reported by: USA National Phenology Network (Nature's Notebook), reported patchy color · Oct 5, 2026
Cell signal: the Park Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 21, 2026