Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Donnelly, ID

This campsite is located east of Cascade Lake and Donnelly, Idaho. It's a scenic road to get there. The camsite we were in was dry camping with no hook-ups. The camping pad for our 27' Travel Trailer was nice and level. Each campsite had a picnic table and a firepit. There are some nice hiking trails in the vicinity. Mountain biking and horse riding is acceptable there as well. Since we had kayaks, we had a short drive to the boat ramp. There is excellent trout fishing. There is a small swim beach near the Warm Lake Lodge and Restaurant, near where the cabins are. All in all, a great stay, away from the city :-) It's a nice peaceful setting.

This small lakeside campground captured our hearts. Who could resist it, with wide open lakefront views like these? A easy launch for kayaks by day, and a sunset view from the campfire by night. It was 4th of July weekend, so we did make a reservation, but there are a couple sites that are first come first serve. No hookups so it tended to be a quiet campground for smaller rigs and tent campers. The only noise?........ Cows! You could hear them in the early morning from the farm all the way across the lake, a country alarm clock. One of the things I really liked about this site, and a rare find in lakeside camping- No Bugs! A couple negatives, nice sized sites that are spread out but a little open so not a ton of privacy. And, the beach was a little lacking in that it was a drop off at most of the campsite edges, so finding a spot to get into the water was not as easy as in others. Cellular signal here was suprisingly good for Verizon. The town of Donnelly, was a 10 min drive away and had a small grocery store for ice and other supplies.

Cascade Lake is beautiful and an excellent stop over. Water sports and beaches and sand to get into everything.

Sage is a roadside campground with moderate size sites, NO SHADE and level cement pads. My site overlooked the beach , however we had to walk the trail to gain access to the beach. The beach was never crowded, though on occasion it had some annoying and loud boaters who seem to think they were the only ones that were there to enjoy the area. Their dog even tried to attack my leashed dogs. I just did my best to stay at the area of the beach with no one else present.

There was a constant haze in the sky from the wildfires in the area. Kudos to the fire men and women .

Town was very nearby and everything you could need was there, including a huge laundromat and snow mobile dealership. Worth the visit.

Camping is free, limit of 10 days. Not really any designated sites and surrounded by private land with aggressive signage. Not all roads around the reservoir are public, so be prepared to turn around and back up at dead ends. We came to an orange gate that said "private property", and stopped. While trying to turn around, we noticed a white truck sitting behind us. When we turned around and passed him, he motioned to roll down the window, and then berated us and called us idiots, even though we had not even entered the private land, nor did we want to. We felt threatened. In the end we chose a site on the upper road of the reservoir. The view was nice but not close to the pit toilet. No fire ring. No table. A no frills place. Like many lakes in Idaho, the reservoir is mostly dry. Not a huge deal but not the prettiest to look at. There is only one single pit toilet for the whole reservoir and someone was set up right next to it like it was their own. People ride off-road vehicles here. In an area with slim pickings for free camping, I guess you have to take what you can get.