Best Tent Camping near Athol, ID

What a gem! Small state park campground at about a 3000 ft elevation with only 8 sites. Dry Camping only, no dump station, but clean flushable toilets(no showers) and potable water available. Two beautiful trails are accessible from the campground and lots more are within a 10 minute drive with plenty of parking at trailheads. Local foliage is wonderful, views are fantastic from the trails. Quiet hours are enforced and observed- very quiet and relaxing. The camp host, Linda, does such a wonderful job of keeping everything neat and tidy and checking in with campers to see if they have what they need. Sites are small- only one was a pull through. I wouldn't attempt with anything longer than 23 feet. Each site has a bear box, really nice and large picnic table, firepit and tent pads that are nicely cushioned with pea gravel. Our site,#3, was centrally located without a ton of privacy, but it was still a nice site and folks were respectful and quiet. Decent cell service in the campground. I am absolutely coming back.

We stayed at Chatcolet campground for two nights in late June. The campground is really nice with lovely hosts and clean flushable toilets. We booked site 128 and didn’t realise it was a tent only site with a short walk from where you park to the picnic table, fire ring and tent pad. We have a rooftop tent so we parked and set up our tent and then just carried our chairs, food and wood down to the picnic table. Privacy on these sites isn’t the best, I would recommend booking this site along with 129 as a group site to give yourself good privacy.

Overall this campground was great, the toilets were clean, they are porcelain, flushing toilets inside a hut. There was drinking water and some nice walks to the lake, if you have bicycles there is a really nice cycle that you can do. The reason for rating this 3 out of 5 is that there was very noisy and intrusive maintenance going on from 7am to 5pm in the sites next to us which was very disruptive. No warning had been given about maintenance in the campground, notice was only given regarding roadworks leading into the campground.

2020 cost is $16 + $8 extra car, half off with Federal parks pass, & it's average for a Forest Service pay campground. There's water, & you can fill a holding tank, but no power or dump. The lower loops are very close together & less shade. The upper loop has more shade, bigger sites, but sound rises from below. You can hear the conversations and generators of your lower neighbors. Our site was next to a vault toilet - we could smell it. There was lots of noise, e.g., road, train, barking dogs, etc. The 2020 camp hosts were very intrusive. They stopped us in the middle of the road while they inspected our front license plate (we aren't required to have one), then interrogated us, without masks, about where we were from, what we were doing & how many dogs we had. We have a nice RV and look like average middle class folks. Maybe it was because we were in a Class B Van, but our van cost more than most class As. This is a self-pay campground so unless I need firewood I don't need to be forced to stop & be questioned by a volunteer. While we drove through looking at sites one host tailed us on foot through the CG. Five minutes after we began to set up they showed up, not wearing masks, wanting money. I didn't think volunteers were supposed to handle any money. We'd already paid at the iron ranger pay station & they seemed disappointed to not get the money directly from us. Then, within a minute, they returned, not wearing masks, & fussed because we hadn't gotten the tag on our campsite post yet - we were still setting up & hadn't had time yet. They weren't social distancing & we thought they were very peculiar and intimidating.

General: 67-site US Army Corps of Engineers campground in two loops along the Pend Oreille River. All sites are water and electric and have gravel driveways. 

Site Quality: All sites were nicely wooded, level and spacious. The roads are paved but the sites themselves are gravel. A BBQ grill/fire pit and large picnic table complete each site. 

Bath/shower house: There is one ADA-accessible all-in-one bath/shower plus regular restrooms. Clean if a little dated. I don’t take long showers but in the middle of mine, the water turned ice cold for the remainder of my shower, however, hubby did not have the same experience! 

Activities/Amenities: Water activities including boating, fishing, and swimming. Non-water activities include paths, including one around the campground that is approximately 1.4 miles, nice for walking, running, or biking. Partially paved and partially gravel. Other activities include two playgrounds (one for younger children, one for older), volleyball, horseshoes, sport court, and a “doggie island” (pet area). Between the restrooms are two dishwashing sinks with hot water, a nice amenity. There is also a dump station. 

We were still setting up when the host came by to give us a map, remind us there was a fire ban, and see if we had any questions or concerns. We stay at many CoE campgrounds and this one certainly measures up!

I found this free spot on another free campsites app. It’s right next to a National Forest boat launch, where there are 2 pit toilets. The campgrounds themselves are dispersed, with already human made fire rings. Some sites are next to the water (those were taken), I ended up driving to see what’s open and settled on top of a hill. There was another camper who must have been there for a while, set up a little tarp village, he looked like he was moved in there… and then a bear up pickup truck drove by few times - something about it felt sketchy to me. I explored a bit more the next day - there are several walk-in sites which looked great - but you can’t drive into those - some up on a hill, some at the bottom of a hill past big boulders.

This is a great little private campground in the Wolf Lodge Bay, and their added free amenities made this campground a really fun alternative to the usual state park/national forest campsites I go to more often. The swimming pool was well kept, and we really enjoyed using the free canoes. They had a lot of decent looking free firewood, but we were camping during a fire ban and weren't able to use it. (This, of course, is no fault of the campground. But if we camp there again it will be nice to have free firewood!)

We originally booked tent site 3, which I cannot recommend as it had no shade or privacy, but the attendant was very kind and let us switch to a shadier site for free. I think this was tent site 4 or 5, which were much better. Tent site seven looked really nice as well and I would recommend that one. But if we go back we will definitely be booking the island tent site 201, it looked to be the best one of all.

Campground Review:

This is a great mid-week spot. We camped on a Wednesday in late June and there were only two other spots occupied and it was fantastic. We did notice that almost every spot was reserved for the coming weekend. Even if there were lots of other campers the sites around the outside of the loop have lots of trees and brush separating them offering decent privacy. The spots are quite sizeable with multiple options for tent location. We selected site 12 because the trail to the overlook and down to Hayden Lake runs right next to it. The trees are fantastic and their interwoven canopy offer near constant shade. One nice feature we had never experienced was the gigantic picnic table – you can really spread out on this thing!

Access to the lake is super easy, although it does involve a steep section of trail. We took the paddleboard down to the water and had fun watching all the fish dart away from us. If you are into to fishing there are plenty of good spots accessible from the campground.

Overall this is a very nice spot, especially if you are going to utilize the lake for recreation of any sort.

Product Review: Primus Firehole 100 Camp Stove

As a Ranger for The Dyrt, I get products to test from time to time – on this trip I tested the Primus Firehole 100 Camp Stove.

This stove has some nice features – namely it’s super easy set up and compact shape and size for transport. The recessed knobs help with it’s packability for sure.

The key feature I enjoy is the integrated flexible fuel line that stores compactly under the stove and pops out easily for super quick set up. The little magnets on the side panels used to hold up the wind screen are great and add to the intuitive and fast set up.

Most importantly – the flame is even and has quite a range from super low for simmering all the way to high output for fast boiling. The only real drawback was that the twist-click igniter did not work every single time, but I’ve never run into one that does and this one always caught eventually.

I am overall very pleased with this stove’s performance.