BLM Lower Beaver Campground

We have stopped here before but didn't really see any sites, except one that was tucked back by a tree that had a note on it saying "don't camp under this tree". The tree was, well, dead. That tree appears to be gone now but the site remains. We were set to take this small little site thinking, this really isn't much to write home about. But my boys had to use the restroom and they ran off, only to come back to say, there's a cool spot over here! So, we did some exploring.

We found a site right behind the bathrooms, to some that is unappealing but with small children, it's perfect. When you hike back in to the woods you find a picnic table, a grill and a fire ring. It had plenty of space when you went in to the clearing for a tent and was right on the river. The river is moving super fast right now so be careful with dogs and small children. The bathrooms were relatively clean, they could have been swept out but for a free campground that is not frequented often, it was pretty clean. Well stocked with toilet paper too. With the river so high, the toilets did look like they were taking on water but nothing too worrisome. It appeared that most of the sites were kind of a hike back to. We didn't get a ton of exploring in because the weather was a little sketchy. There is also a boat launch right there. Parking for the walk in sites is close by. It's actually a fun little spot. I know last year when we camped up stream there was a bear siting by this campground so beware of bear country. My kids ran around with sticks playing with imaginary friends and trying to beat "levels". So it was entertaining. It had rained pretty good so all of the wood that was around was very wet but we did manage to get a fire going and it was welcomed for the evening. 

We tested out a recipe that I've been wanting to see how it did on a small cook stove and once we got it dialed in, turned out really good. They are tortilla pizzas. We brought pizza sauce, packaged salmon and pizza cheese, along with tortillas. It took a while for them to cook, a good 5-8 minutes each and if you were on your own, this would work out just fine. But there were three of us so dinner took a while. But they tasted amazing and with a little more fine tuning (smaller tortilla to fit in my backpacking pans) and I should be able to take these on my bike tour, with dehydrated pizza sauce and shelf stable cheese of course.

This was a fun little campground and we look forward to returning in warmer weather, we woke to ice on our tent, we slept quite well and it didn't feel that cold when we stepped out but our tent was frozen. Definitely check out this little free campground along the river.