Endless trails, cool cliffs, quiet atmosphere

I have been to Backbone a few times, this spot is one of my friends and I’d favorite. There is no through traffic so it’s quiet. Tons of trails, specifically the spot we camped at was right by the trail so we had easy access. The sites are big so you can camp far back and keep the vehicles at the front. I was able to fly my drone here and it produced some amazing footage, check the descriptions you are interested!

The bathrooms weren’t the greatest, and their aren’t any showers near the site we stayed at, so be ready to be dirty for a couple of days.

Jester park is great for a weekend with friends and testing new camping gear

This site was great, it has a reserve site to its right, (the people never showed up) and a FCFS site to the left. No one showed up there either and it was Father’s Day weekend! Super quiet and relaxing. Each site towards the front of the 400’s is BIG. You have plenty of room for 2 vehicles and two sizable tents. There was four of us and a dog.

A couple minor complaints that I developed would be that it is right next to the golf course so there is a lot of near by traffic, and people like to cruise on motorcycles and drive muscle cars through the twisty roads. The nice bathroom in the #300s camping area is a bit of a walk BUT has showers and really clean toilets. Some of the cleanest I’ve seen at a campground in Iowa. DO NOT USE THE “TOILETS” in the #400s area, they are dirty and basically a hole in the ground.

Another downside is that things are pretty spread out, and with it being pretty hot out we weren’t able to walk miles to get to the different trails at the park. The short trails we did walk on were nice and up kept though.