O'Bannon Woods in southern Indiana has a lovely primitive camp (they also have an electric camp up the hill)  The primitive camp has 3 or 4 pit toilets positioned within the camp and one centrally located shower house.

There are several trails that lead off from the primitive camp.  Anything from 2-6 hour loops.

I'll send you a PM with some more info.

This pic was taken last fall around the end of Oct.  There were maybe 20 trailers in over the weekend, but by Sunday afternoon we had the place to ourselves!

Meant to say the pic was taken the end of Oct. last year.

Also, you can not make reservations on the internet after Oct.  You will have to call.

Just got back from Hocking Hills last week. Highly recommend it! It was great. Free primitive camping, ultra quiet campground, and the park's staff is friendly. The trails are nicely marked and there are maps of them so it's hard to get lost. The trails and sights are amazing! Don't know if you drink alcohol, but the park officers are sticklers about it.

My biggest complaint was the water source-which wasn't a big deal. The pump and underground lines are crushed so the park service brings water in a 1000 gal tank on a truck. They were really good about keeping water in the truck, but if you're at the back of the camp loop, it can be somewhat tedious to get water back to camp as the truck is only about a 1/3 of the way back. I would recommend bringing a water tank and drive back and forth between your camp and water truck. Or try to get a site close to the truck.. The people around there are extrememly nice. Toilets are a shack with a hole in the ground. All you need I guess. My wife and I survived a week ;) Bring TP.

 We were there 7 days and rode about 85-90% of the trails. We could have gone the 100% but we chose to ride some of the same ones over again. I sure hope your horses are in shape as these trails will put them through their paces. Places to see: Chapel cave, Box canyon, airplane rock, the repelling area/table top rock, conkles hollow, and the artesian well. There are a few trails that we took out of curiosity/ignorance and would recomend not going on--very dangerous/steep. All of the trails that are marked with color (i.e. orange, purple, red) are easy trails for the most part-nice and wide. White trails are trails to overlooks and "connector" trails but some are more challenging trails. Green trails are hiking only. Blue trail is part of the Ohio Buckeye Trail.

If you have any questions, just ask. :)

Dwight...

Does the campground offer water and electric sites in the horse camp?  I got on their website, but wasn't sure if that would be available. 

There are two horse camps at O'Bannon.  One electric and one primitive.  Both have water spigots close, but not at every site.  Be sure to take plenty of hose.

If you go to the IN website and look at the campsite map, you should be able to choose a site close to the water.

http://www.in.gov/dnr/parklake/2976.htm

You mentioned bringing our own tie lines or the triangles. When we were at Hocking Hills we used the triangles (terrible setup I thought) because the rules said no picket lines. We actually had ours up with towels and stuff drying on it but thankfully no horses when a ranger came by (we weren't there) and he left us a note to take it down. Other campers told us it's a big ticket but they convinced him we were just using it as a clothesline. I figured it would be the same rules in other state forest camps.

I just looked at Salt Fork but it only has 12 miles of bridle trails according to the website, are there others not listed? Thank you for the new suggestion.

Bleve - O'Bannon and Deam Lake both allow biking on certain trails.  Not sure how many miles, but you should be able to find that info on the DNR site.

rimrockranch - Concerning Ben's Happy Trails, how much road and what type of road do you have to ride to get to the trails?  We are considering a trip up there next spring.  I e-mailed him but never got a response.  The website says there is a $2 or $3 charge for the shower.  I was wondering of that applies to campers or just day riders.

Dwight - It's about a half mile on asphalt road to one trail. That road does have some traffic and the locals are not always considerate of horses. To access other trails you will have to ride the road to the camp or some forest roads (usually gravel). Ben does charge the campers for showers and there is a toilet in each, one for each gender. In the camp there is an outhouse. We were there Memorial Day 2009 and it was pretty bad by the end of the weekend. He has telephone posts for hitching rails or you can run picket lines between trees.

Do they have tie posts? What are you supposed to picket to if you can't use trees?

We're definitely leaning towards Zaleski or Shawnee now just because we'd save some money in camping and bridle tag fees from similar places in IN. We had a good time in Hocking Hills, hopefully we can keep exploring the area. (Although the 10 day forecast looks slightly better in IN, but not by much)

One place that hasnt been mentioned is East Fork (Ohio). It might be outside of the distancve you want to travel, but it is a nice place with nice trails. There are about 55 miles of trails there. I havent been there in a long time, but I loved it when I was there. There are highlines on each site and a nice shower house.

Now, does anyone have a good site with maps of the horse trails? The DNR map has a bridle trail map for Tar Hollow, but not Zaleski.

Perfect, thank you.

Glad to hear that you had a good time. Yeah, Tar Hollow has a bit of a reputation, sounds like the camp was pretty full so that you couldn't get away from it all. I'll bet the trails were in good condition both places since we've had so little rain.