Best RV Parks & Resorts near Prairie City, OR

We stopped by Anthony Lakes on our way back to the Willamette Valley from Baker City. The campsite is on a property that becomes a ski resort in the winter (it's at over ~7000 ft). The campground was immaculately maintained and had lots of recreation options. On weekends in the summer, the ski lift becomes a mountain biking lift, there are hiking trails, and of course lakes. The lakes themselves are pretty small, but big enough for some kayak adventuring and swimming. We got caught in a summer thunderstorm, so we were glad we had a shelter to pop up.

Our site was private with access to the lake trail. Pit toilets, but everything was very clean. There are also walk-up sites around the back of the lake which had more mosquitos, but were very spacious.  It looks like there is one yurt on top of the mountain. The mountain bike path goes by it, and it looks like it has great views.

This was an easy drive from Baker City, a little far from Portland unless you're going to make a multi-day vacation out of it. On the way through the mountains, there's plenty of gold mining history, a historical dredge, and some ghost towns to stop by. 

Lots of chipmunks, so watch what you leave out (even momentarily).

We had reserved a site here and upon arrival, pulled in among all the large RVs, where our campervan was dwarfed. Spaces were all level and gravel with full hook-ups (20/30/50 amp). Large picnic table but difficult to determine which one was ours as the sites are close together with no privacy between them. The sites in the row we were in were all pull-throughs and the John Day River was just beyond the road which was nice. 

The most welcoming part of the park was the sign on our site otherwise it was dismal (the overcast weather didn’t help). We later heard from someone that there had recently been some thefts at the park. 

The bathhouse is accessed by walking through a grassy area and was pretty basic but clean. We chose this campground based on the reviews and I realize our opinion may be in the minority but we just didn’t get a good vibe here. If we had a large RV, we might have felt differently. We stayed for about 45 minutes debating what to do but in the end, left and found a space at the state park about eight miles away that better suited our needs.

This review is based on an overnight or short stay versus destination campground (CG). Our GPS took us right into this CG. Check-in was easy and we headed to pull through site 118 with FHUs. The pad was plenty long enough for our 40’ 5th wheel and our F450. The utilities were in the middle of the pad, which made it nice for our one-night stay. As the water pressure here is around 100 psi, you need to use a reducer. Sites are close to one another but you still have a grass yard with some separation. We stayed here back in 2019 and not much had changed. They added a small fenced dog area inside the CG. They still have the field behind the park where you go out a gate into a small industrial area. There’s a poop bag dispenser and trashcan. Happily, people were picking up after their dogs. There were a mix of overnighters to long-stay residents and the CG did not have trashy sites. We could not get the CG Wifi to connect, but we did have 2 bars on Verizon. The CG has cable but we did not use it as we were able to stream on our Verizon MiFi. There are a lot of mature trees so satellite could be iffy depending on your site. They have a nice little store with sundry and gift items. Across the street from the office/store is a nice laundry facility. We again enjoyed our time here.

This campground is about 20 miles southwest of Baker Or. Hundreds of miles from Crator Lake or Prospect that the other reviews said were close...must be another Union Creek Campground over there.

Excellent campground. About 50/50 reservable vs first come first serve. Good space between sites. Elec and water hookups...a few have full hookups. Dump on site. Cell service and over the air TV....surprisingly.  Some sites have lake (reservoir) view. Mixed shade sites.

We intended to stay 2 nights but stayed 4 because of great weather and campground.