Best Tent Camping near Lava Hot Springs, ID

This free campground has about 10 sites to choose from, mostly RV but occasionally tent camping. There is a bathroom, no luxury showers or a store to buy firewood or items. It’s about a 10min or less drive to Lava Hot Springs in case you need supply. This campground is right next to the river, has a small waterfall and beautiful scenery all around. The road is extremely bumpy so if your have a low car or trailer be careful. The pros of this is its free. 1st come 1st serve, nice, quiet area. The cons, no shower, hook ups, store and the train that runs by Lava Hot Springs can be heard.

Stayed one night at the end of May. The road along Oneida Narrows is good graded gravel. At the base of the dam, a sign recommends against large RVs and towed vehicles so I scouted it first, but it's ok, just a little rutted in places. The campground is small, 12 spaces. I suggest not towing a camper that's longer than 20 ft or so, due to the general smallness of the pull ins and the narrowness of the road. Sites have picnic table and fire ring. Vault toilets that were reasonably clean. No water or trash service. There is access to the reservoir shore, but it has a lot of aquatic growth near the shore, which i don't like. So many fish jumping, big ones! I don't know what they were. It was about half full when I was there mid week. Quiet except when the neighbor was playing his trumpet -- are you kidding me?!?! No cell service, Verizon.  Nice shade from the maples. Surrounding ridges are scenic.

Beautiful campground set high up in the Caribou National Forest. The campground is around 13 miles up a mountain from Pocatello- it took us roughly 30 minutes driving up curvy mountain roads to get up to the top. Be advised, our gps tried to route us off a dirt road half way up, but you just stay on the paved road all the way up. We got site 20, I’m not sure which loop, as the loops were kind of hard to determine. It was next to bathrooms and across from water and a group campsite which looked like it’d be awesome if you were in a group (site 19.) Beautiful in the pines and furs. You can’t see from the road but many of the tent pads are behind the tables and fire rings. The tent pads aren’t huge- Our tent pad wasn’t big enough for our 6 person REI tent so we pitched right behind our car on the parking pad, which was considerably larger. We were only staying for one night on a Thursday and it was very quiet with only a handful of other campers, but I saw reserve tags on most camp sites in our loop for the weekend. No showers, vault toilets. Drinking water. We tent camp so I didn’t see if there were any electric sites, ours was not. We saw cows, moose, birds and deer on the mountain. Wish we could have stayed an extra night to hike around the area.

The park is nice and clean, appears to be recently paved or resurfaced.  The spots are relatively level. Restrooms are clean and nice shower is large.  The 12 pull through sites have 20/30/50 Amp outlets and potable water and each has its own picnic table.  The dump station is just past the sites there is a seprate potable water fill 50' from the dump station which has its own hoses and water for flushing tanks.  

There are two areas of grass designated as tent sites with in ground fire rings and there is one shared elevated charcoal grill.

As of July 2025 the nightly rate is $25/night for Bingham County Residents and $45/night for Non-Residents.  There are envelopes for payment (cash or check only) at the front gate and inside the envelope is an information sheet with the bathroom codes.

- AT&T Service is 3 bars and bounces between 5G+ and LTE my speedtest showed 10.38 Mbps Download

- Starlink is partially obstructed in all of the pull throughs with ~15 outages greater than 2s in 15 minutes but has download speeds of 157.93 Mbps when not obstructed.

- T-Mobile is 3 bars of 5G and my speediest showed 310.58 Mbps download speed.

This is an older campground, and space near reservoirs is a hot commodity. The RV park host was very friendly and accommodating. Very clean campground with a nice boat dock and plenty of spaces to get down near the reservoir and fish.

Warning - Some of the spaces felt like extremely close quarters especially with slide outs. The picture below shows one of the older full utility locations. Some units may not have much room to slide out without contacting the utility boxes. Some units offer great shade and an awning next to a shared fire pit, shared picnic table. Some units have a really nice shared grass area between trailers. Also several people here are seasonal campers with monthly rates. This can make finding a space a little more challenging. Call ahead and make sure to get reservations so you can get a spot.

Lot size seems inconsistent between spaces as some feel very cramped and some of the high number units without utilities had larger spaces between them, almost appearing as an extra space between two units people were using for pet/kid play areas.

Dogs are to be kept on leashes, but people should consider short leashes/tie lines as it is easy for pets to cross into adjacent units depending upon where they are staked. Make sure to plan ahead for power adapters. Only one 30amp service so if your planning to run AC, plan to be the first in or coordinate with your neighbor.