This campground is sorta remote, but also not. It's close enough to civilization that there was a LOT of activity both in the campground and at the nearby picnic area. Choose a site on the outside. The ones closest to the wilderness trailhead were by far the best. Do not choose site 8. There is no cell service. No drinking water (well ran dry). Host is nice. Bathrooms usually smelled okay inside (but they smelled like vault toilets normally do on the outside, so again, don't choose site 8).

Here's some quotes from my travel log:

"The last bit of the road to the campsite was super duper rocky and narrow. I’m sure all that soft-roading wasn’t great for the hole in the tire. We set up camp and soon it started raining. Luckily I had put up a tarp over the table so we sheltered under that. The campground had a lot of kids and it was noisy. I also stupidly chose a spot right next to both the ONE vault toilet (2 toilets, one building, for the whole campground) and the dumpsters which were the most excessively bear proof dumpsters you’ve ever seen (hard to use and thusly very loud). The bathroom doors were slamming all evening and the smells coming from both were there, loud and clear for the duration of our stay…

…I decided to go for a walk and saw that we were right next to a picnic area and trailhead for some Mt Evans wilderness trails. There was a very large group in the picnic area. It started raining and I headed back to the campsite. Once the rain calmed down people started doing fireworks. In a designated wilderness area. Come on people, really? Forrest and I went to town to grab some things and when we came back all the people had left and the fireworks were done. Forrest and I went for a little walk on the trail along Chicago Creek. It was beautiful. We saw some moose poop. When it was time to go to bed I took Forrest into the vault toilet and when we came out a baby moose zoomed past us right through our site! The neighbor mom was like,“It was a moose right? My husband doesn’t believe me!” I said yeah it had to have been and asked the other neighbors, an older couple who looked like they know a lot. He said, “Yup, it was a baby moose, watch out for mama.” It was an exciting Fourth of July surprise. That night there was an hour or two or more… It was a long night… where someone’s car alarm kept going off. We could not figure out what or why or where."

I totally forgot to take a tour video and pictures what with all the storms and the altitude sickness my son and I got from driving up to the Mt. Evans summit.

Overall, if I go back to the Idaho Springs area again, I'd probably stay here again, but I'd choose a better spot and not go on the Fourth of July (this was just a cooincidence on our roadtrip).

You Guys. This place was so magical I can't even, I don't even… there are no words. Specifically our site (cough, 12, cough), which was by far the best site: hugging the creek, hidden by gigantic boulders. This campground has a wonderful forest/mountain atmosphere, tumbling water for white noise, wildlife, granite slides, pools of blue water, trout fishing, and the best tasting drinking water I’ve ever had in my life. Oh and it’s a short distance from the biggest trees in the world. I’d live here if I could. This place is more magical than Hogwarts. I can't even believe my luck that we were able to reserve a spot here and stay here. 

Okay enough gushing. This campground is small and on a super rutted road so everyone has to drive super slow. No car noise. Also all the people were really quiet too. There are two single vault toilets in the campground. The water, like I said earlier, is not only potable but absolutely delicious. There is no cell service. If you drive north on the highway for 10 minutes or so, you'll find a couple pull-offs with enough service to connect to the rest of the world if you need to. The host was super friendly; her spot is over at regular Stony Creek Campground across the highway. 

The granite slides and pools don't have a clear path to get to.  You kind of have to slip through other sites farther towards the hike-in sites to get to, which was uncomfortable. Usually there was an open site that we could go through. But accessing the creek is also not easy in these areas… there's some scrambling, so be prepared. Also in that direction is a trailhead into a designated wilderness area. I wish we'd had the time to take it.

Also, let it be said that in some publications it can seem like they are stating that there are pay showers for public use at Stony Creek Lodge. This is NOT the case. There are no showers anywhere in the park area. Luckily, Upper Stony Creek Campground DOES allow privacy tents. 

More information in the photo/video captions!

We stayed here in June as part of a 3 week camping trip. Foster Residence was the closest to a city that we've stayed in, and that was apparent during the stay (i.e. we had 2 fuel canisters stolen, odd people obviously tweeking coming in the middle of the night and screaming obscenities the next morning, a couple families setting up next to us for the weekend for late night partying, lots of road traffic, etc.).

There are some reviews for this campground under Foster Park Campground. That is a separate campground right next to this one separated by a little nature trail. The same camp host manages both. Foster Park CG is RIGHT next to the road. But it does have a swing set with like one swing if that sways you. Foster Residence is otherwise the better choice. 

The tent sites are further back into the trees and there is a lot of shade. When we pulled in, there was an oak branch down on top of our fire pit and picnic table. We tried to get the host, but he was unavailable. The next morning he stopped by and said he'd get maintance. I told him they can leave the wood next to the fire pit and we could burn some of it, and that's what we did. That came in handy because there were tons of biting flies. The smoke helped to control them while we were at the campsite. And on the subject of little flying things, there are also a lot of wasps in the area that LOVE meat. So if you are going to try to cook meat, just be aware that they will consider it theirs lol. 

The bathroom is separated into male and female and the female has 2 toilet stalls with flushing toilets and stall doors that work and lock. Also a sink with running water, coconut-smelling hand soap, and hand dryers with warm air. I'm assuming the mens is similar.

The tent sites do not have electricity (normal for a tent site). We stayed for 6 nights and on the last morning we received a notice from a "park ranger" that privacy tents are not allowed due to sanitary concerns? That's like national park-level control-freakness there. There IS full cell service at site 14 and other random places in the campground area. There are no showers, no store, and there is plenty of potable water.

Overall, it was nice being able to tent camp so close to the beach (the reason we came to the area was for my son to take surf lessons… we live in the Midwest) and also not be IN the city. But the area was definitely not my kinda bag. Still, if I had to go back to the area, I'd probably stay again.

We were planning on dispersed camping but when we checked out the campground we decided to stay here. It was just so pretty, and having a bathroom is so nice. I forgot to take many pictures as we hiked most of the time we were there and then collapsed into the hammock upon return. The bathrooms were clean, the water was potable, and the scenery was amazing. It’s cold here most of the time in June. Sites are kind of spendy. People everywhere we’re having campfires though I thought there was a fire ban.

This is a small campground that requires a lot of very winding, steep driving to get to. It is in the mountains and not in the low desert, so it's a bit cooler. There is no water, but there is a vault toilet shared by the 5 sites. We were there in mid June and only 3 of the sites (including us) were taken. I sure like an unmanned campground where there aren't stupid rules like no privacy tents. But I don't really like a campground that is covered in cow pies and smells like cow poop everywhere you go. I'm from NW Iowa and live in SE South Dakota, so I don't really consider cows a novelty for vacation. They were nice and friendly, of course, but also smelly and loud.

Their website says the sites are $5 a night but that's only if you have a Lifetime or Access pass. Otherwise it's $10 a night. It's a fair enough price to not have to dig holes to poop into and to have a cleared space for tents. 

The trail across from our site was fun. Lots of wildflowers and great views. My biggest problem with the campground wasn't the campground's fault. We had to leave a day early because it was so windy. Not a constant wind, but random strong gusts, so it was impossible to sleep. No matter how I guyed the tent, it was blowing the tent in. But worse was the dust. It's still desert, afterall, and a thick layer of dust was covering everything and we were breathing it in all night as the wind blew it into the tent. This is probably a normal desert thing, but, well, I hate the desert. It was a road trip and we had to go through some desert spots to get to the places we were headed. Again, not the campground's fault or the forest service's fault, but I would not stay there again.

So if you don't mind smelling cow poop constantly and breathing in tons of dust, then this might be the spot for you. The solitude was pretty nice, though.

We stayed in early summer in D141. It was still a bit chilly, and the wind at the campground made it chillier (and also blew things around a lot). I'm not sure if that was a single weather thing or if it's always windy there, though. The site is a walk-in site which my oldest thought was annoying, but I thought it was nice. Our tent wasn't right on top of other tents and our site was huge because of this.

We saw tons of wildlife right in our site, and the nearby trails are some of the best if you want to see moose (we did!). At dawn and dusk, you can hear the elk that hang out in the moraine singing. 

The bathrooms by our site were a comfort center, so flush toilets, running (cold) water, soap (usually), and even hand dryers (cold air). They were pretty clean and I'm SO glad that these were the bathrooms I had later in the visit when I got sick from the high elevation visitor center and spent the entire afternoon going back and forth to the bathroom. We didn't check out the solar shower stalls. We do bucket washing and they were a ways away from our tent so we just waited until our next stop where we could have a shelter tent to wash up. 

People at this campground were very quiet and respectful. One day we woke up to a dead car battery and a neighbor kindly came over to jump us. As the elevation of this site is above 8,000 ft, our solar panel charged our solar generator super fast in the afternoon. More info in the picture captions.

Let me start by saying I hated the overall vibe in Grand Teton NP. People were selfish, pushy, rude. Everything was set up there for the most selfish to win. We came here after a stay at Yellowstone and thought we would try our hand at a small first-come-first-serve campground. We woke up at like 2 in the morning and got to a wait and frenzy kind of weirdness where people just wasted gas driving in circles to rush to the first spot they could find someone leaving. I wanted nothing to do with that so we left and started looking at other options. We pulled into Gros Ventre and they still had spots, thank goodness. 

The staff were incredibly friendly and helpful. Our site was awesome with a path back to a quieter area for the tent. A staffer told us to watch for a moose cow and baby that had been oft seen lately, but I never did see them. Excpet I MIGHT have seen moose legs through the open flap of our tent haha.

You can walk to the river and there are endless stones to practice skipping. There's a better local vibe in this campground that is way better than the rest of the park. The bathrooms are nice - flush toilets and running water. No showers. A flushing drain for your dish water. Bear boxes for each site.

There are a few dispersed camping spots along this road which also holds the trailhead for Mt. Roosevelt Friendship Tower. There was one pull through site that has no campfire signs and then two or three other spots. We seemed to be lucky and got the last open spot. We got here around 4 pm. The site we got was beautiful and had a lot of room for us to pitch a tent. Plenty of trees to go pee in but also an open spot where we could stargaze through the tent. There was some traffic on the road, more than you would think for such a windy gravel road. The first part of the road up until the trailhead had quite a bit of washboard which was a little scary on the sharp curves with steep drop offs. Enough Verizon cell service to text and make calls. Enough AT&T service to get WiFi on our SubaruLink. No water that we saw that we could use or filter. Had some people pull into our spot at different times not knowing it was taken. 9:30 pm was the last one.

Even though this campground is large and busy, it was still wonderful! Our site was spacious so we weren't on top of our neighbors without any plants for screen. Unfortunately, there are not bear boxes for every site. Fortunately, the bears here won't rip off your doors, so you can keep your food locked and hidden in your car.

The bathrooms were nice - flushing toilets and running water. No showers. But there is a dishwashing station. 

You can walk to the nearby confluence of two rivers and swim. My kids had fun. There are some spots where the current is a little sketchy for younger ones, so be watchful. 

It rained every day that we were here. I recommend bringing a tarp or shelter for cooking/eating under or sitting outside. There was amazing fog that rolled through every morning. That was my entertainment while the kids slept, and I couldn't have asked for more.

The campground is fairly small. They installed one bear box for all on our loop to share. We just kept everything in the car. When we got here, the host stopped by and introduced himself. Said there is a black bear frequenting the campground and we should not leave anything that smells out. The sites are wooded, but fairly close together. Not a whole lot of privacy. Lots of generators running. I never did figure out where we were supposed to dump our wash basins.. the sites along the woods kind of made it akward to go out there and spread it. There weren't any marked drains or anything. 

The squirrles here are endlessly entertaining. There were even a robin and squirrel playing? Or maybe the squirrel was causing trouble. See video. You can walk to the small, damned lake and explore. We did nearby Black Mountain Lookout trail and it was amazing.

I gave this place 2 stars instead of 1 because the staff was super nice and the sugar pines are cool. Oh and the bathrooms were decent.

However, the sites are CRAMMED together. Our neighbors were right next to us. We might as well have been sharing a site. They cluster like 4-6 sites together with a little parking lot for all the sites and absolutely nothing between the actual sites. It looks like that doesn't bother other people, but I do not like that. It was super uncomfortable.

Not that it's the park's fault, but the bears in Tahoe are ridiculously addicted to junk food and will rip open your car doors so you have to take EVERYTHING out of your car and stuff it in a bear box (we were on a 3 week tent camping road trip, so we have lots of smelly stuff). The dumpsters were scratched and dented to oblivion. I mean, I LOVE Hank the Tank, but these highly populated areas have created some major problems for the bears. To top it off, I found a bunch of food trash and even a pork rib as I was setting up my tent. Glad I found that before sleeping on it and meeting Hank before he got famous.

We did not like the vibe in Tahoe. It's pretty. But it seems like it's mostly for rich people who want to be in luxury with some nature around them. That's not really what we're into and we did not felt like we belonged and the nature felt really spoiled.

In one photo you'll see a big cloud above the Tahoe National Forest. That was the fire when we were driving in. The next morning we were in it. I know it's natural, just beware when you're planning your trip dates when wildfires are likely. I was wheezing and my nose was bleeding and we basically beelined home and ended our trip early. This was early August 2021. 

Also, of course, the lake is very cold if you plan on swimming. But beautiful where you don't see a ton of boats.

This campground was so beautiful! The site we had (and indeed many of them) had a layout where you park on the side of the road and then your site is down a short steep hill and surrounded by thick head-high brush. Privacy was incredible!

There were no redwoods in the campground and no rules against tying up hammocks or lines. The big bathroom had flush toilets, running water, and showers. It was at the end of the road and by a very large group site. There was a bathroom closer to us and my 14-year old said the toilet was broken and it was not great. Because of this, and because "there were roads all over the place" he did not like this campground very much. For a campground, I thought it was great.

I loved that Humbolt Redwoods SP was SO much warmer and drier than Del Norte Coast SP, which we stayed at before this one. However, for whatever reason there were tons of mosquitos here. These were different than what I'm used to. You can't tell they are on you until they bite, and it's a super painful bite! Make sure you bring mosquito spray, and don't plan on a fire to smoke them out, because fires might not be allowed.

When we were there last early August, we were warned against swimming in the nearby stream, as it had, oh I can't remember, an algea maybe?

Maybe more like 4.5 stars. Our site was just so weirdly adjoined to another site and by the second night a whole bunch of families moved on in to that site and a couple others and loudly partied until late and then early in the morning, more loudness. Complete with penned up dogs that yelped and whined and barked the entire time. Right. Next. To us. Some other sites that aren't adjoined like this would be amazing I think.

However, the bathrooms were decent. No paper towels or dryers in California so bring a towel to dry your hands, because it was cold in July. Flush toilets, running water, coin showers. I didn't use one, but my teenager did, which is beneficial to everyone.

There was a spigot and drain right at our site, and that was very useful. No hanging lines from the trees, so I had to get creative and hang some stuff over a branch. Not that that did anything, lol. Stuff does not dry outside there.

You have to drive down a very long road to get into the campground, which is totally worth it when you're dispersed camping or it's otherwise isolated, but it didn't seem AS worth it being crowded in next to others. No redwoods in the campground area, but plenty nearby. Same with trails. A couple small ones within walking distance, but not really worth it if you want to see the big mamas!

Nearby Crescent City was a really charming town with a great park, natural foods coop, and (cold) beach. We also saw lots of elk in the field across from the beach. 

No service in the campground, but if you drive up to the ranger station, you can hook up to their wifi.

Overall, a beautiful campground with a mostly good experience.

The bathrooms were great. The privacy was.. okay. But this campground is huge and packed. It had a TON of people, and not the best vibe. Not terrible, but kinda… standoffish? Snobbish? Even the kids were that way to my kids. Because of all the people, there was also a lot of campfire smoke at night. Even in my tent. I had to wear a buff to sleep, because there was just too much smoke in the air for me to comfortably breathe. 

We were there in late July, and in case you are a midwestern noob like I was, this beach is not a beach for the kids to swim at or to catch a tan. It was freezing. Not just the water (that I knew), but on the sand, too. And SO windy that sand got into every single oriface and crevice known to man. And forget about trying to eat there, haha! We did have a lot of fun with our big tarp, though. After failing miserably to make some sort of windblock from it, we decided to play with it like a parachute and had some side-stitching belly laughs from the experience.

Three Rivers Resort is a privately owned campground that I booked on Airbnb, because I didn't want to deal with trying to get a spot at a first come first serve campground, which everything else in the area mostly is. The privacy there was extremely lacking. As a campground in a rainforest ecosystem, they could easily plant more trees, elderberries, and thimbleberries to solve that problem.

And the bathroom situation wasn't the best. There were a few porta potties and then one mens toilet and one womens toilet. Want to poop in the flushing toilet? You better hope someone else isn't in there doing it for the next 45 minutes (yeah, I speak from experience, but no I didn't wait THAT long… I stomped off to a porta potty). 

BUT, there was cell service, limited WiFi, a coin operated shower (again, one for each gender), a dish sink with hot water, and two washers and dryers! There's also a small store and a restaurant (Twilight themed) and gas pumps with non-ethanol gas (which is sometimes hard to find on a road trip). The amenities at this campground definitely made up for anything that lacked. We were right next to the playground and my 7-year-old made tons of friends. The people vibe here was great.

The location was great except for the road and the traffic. It's located at an intersection and it seems like every person with a loud pickup came and tried to beat their 0 to 60 record right next to the campground. All day and all night.

This large national forest operated campground wasn't up to full operations from COVID when we visited last summer, so our bathroom was closed and we had to use porta potties, but otherwise it was my favorite campground, I think ever. Privacy, gigantic lichen-draped douglas firs and yellow cedars, tons of thimbleberry to snack on, and adjacent Cowlitz River to play in. With a little hiking, there is a swimming hole and you can jump off rocks into the freezing cold water. According to the kids, this is the coldest water they experienced on our whole PNW/coast trip. 

People were not worried about bears here (or anywhere in WA, really), in case you're traveling from a non-bear area and wondered about bear boxes. We mostly didn't get cell service at our site (Verizon), but my son got a call through to my husband a couple times on his older Samsung while my iPhone never got anything through. Water didn't taste great. Maybe bring a filter or your own water to drink.

Perfect proximity to Mt. Rainier. Really nice vibe in the campground and with the people. Just absolutely gorgeous and perfect.

Ratings are really subjective. What are you after? 

~A secluded spot in nature? 0 stars. 

~A small campground inside a small town with flushing toilets and showers (albeit not new, super clean, or extremely nice), a lake with docks and boat ramp, large playground (with the cool old structures AND new ones), a baseball diamond, football field, city pool, creek with fish, and a tennis/basketball court? 5 stars. Yes, ALL of those things are right next to the campground.

I grew up in Lake Park, and I've stayed in this campground as an adult with kids (simply to visit family, certainly not to "get away" and enjoy nature). Lake Park is a small, rural town, and the current local passtime appears to be driving around town in ATVs and side-by-sides. It is noisy and extremely annoying. Every single person that drives by will stare at you; welcome to a small town.

There are a couple tent spots (one of which we utilized) that have some shade, a picnic table, and a fire ring. There's also a small RV area where people live in their RV's (complete with decks) for the summer. 

If you stay here, perhaps to visit the lakes area without the crowds or at a lower cost, perhaps to fish in Silver Lake, or… well I don't know why else you would stay here… you should definitely try the breakfast or taco pizza at Stans Corner -- the local gas station/convenience store. You could also walk to the 2-block downtown on Market Street and try out one of a couple restaurants or a few bars. If you want to swim in the lake (I really don't think it's good for swimming anymore, but if you want to try your luck) you can go to the boat ramp by the bridge by the city park, the dock at the end of Trappers Bay, or to the public access area (dock and boat ramp) on the west side of the lake, accessed via 110th Ave (go west on Hwy 9, and turn left onto 110th st., it's a mile or two in on the right side of the road.

Regardless of the passtimes of driving around and staring, the people of Lake Park are generally very friendly, so you should definitely walk around and meet some people.

This is a first come first served campground with a small number of sites. When we got there at around 5 pm on a Saturday, there was only one site left. On Sunday, many people left and the the sites that were replaced with new people filled in in the mid afternoon timeframe. Some sites were left open. (This when there were zero reservable sites in the entirety of the Black Hills.) The campground host was very friendly and helpful.

We stayed in site 16. The ground wasn’t super level, but we made it work. It was right next to a vault toilet which was very clean and smelled great in the inside, but we did get whiffs of that gross vault toilet smell whenever the door opened and then when the wind picked up, more constantly.

Firewood is sold there, but if you come from the East there is a house before the turn in that sells firewood for super cheap (it was $3 per or 2 for $5 when we drove by). You can also forage firewood there. Dogs are $2 per dog per night.

The campground is remote, very quiet, and extremely beautiful. The sites are large and spread out. There are paths down to the lake where you can swim or stick your paddling boat in. It’s not a beach but it works well enough. You’ll want sandals or swim shoes to walk around in the water. Lots of rocks and also lots of crawfish which kept my boys endlessly entertained.

It’s less densely forested here. Still lots of trees but also tons of wildflowers, which were absolutely beautiful. We explored a small bit of trail 40L, which encircles the lake. In some spots it’s overgrown with cow parsnip and/or thistle, so you’ll want to wear pants if you don’t want to touch them.

This is my favorite campground I’ve stayed at so far, I think.