Campsites and picnic grounds have tables, grills, restrooms, flush toilets, warm showers, and a waste disposal unit. Dry River and Switzer Lake. Dry River, from which the district takes its name, is not really dry. During the doldrums of summer, though, it disappears from view beneath the rocky rubble of the bed. Sometimes only pools are left here and there to indicate the river is not dead but in hiding.
Water flows beneath the porous surface, connecting the pools.
Dry River runs southeastward through the heart of the Dry River District along US 33. In a 14-mile stretch of river above Rawley Springs, on the eastern edge of the district, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries stocks trout in spring when water levels are high enough. Game department signs along the road lead anglers to the stocked section. The river drainage is on the eastern slope of Shenandoah Mountain. A dam on the Skidmore Fork of the river, high in the Shenandoah Mountains near the West Virginia line, forms deep Switzer Lake.