roadtripper936097

First let's be clear about where the camping is! The Monon Campground is on the west side of the fairground. Use the main entrance off of E. 38th Street to enter the fairgrounds then head west past the grandstands. The camping area is along the fence with the Monon trail running behind it. There was a lot of construction going on which made navigation a bit more difficult. It did not look like the Coalyard campround, located on the other side of the Monon Trail, was open. Sites are back-in, grass and gravel, and sloped up from front to back so make sure you've got extra blocks for your tongue jack. You also have to back up over a curb which presents its own challenges. No trees. You have to get to your site then call security to get someone to come unlock your electrical box, which took over a half hour. No-frills camping for sure. It was surprisingly quiet at night tho and suited our needs (working in town) just fine. We did not use any of their facilities.

What a gorgeous place with amazing scenery. There are multiple campgrounds within the park, we stayed in Juniper. They all have both pull-through and back-in, big enough for a family with a triple axle 5th wheel and their extended cab pickup. Electric and water at each site along with a covered picnic area. 35 miles of trails, bird/wildlife viewing blind at the Trading Post. All of the campgrounds are towards the end of the 8 mile-long road that winds down into the canyon. Nearest gas is off the highway, 10 miles from the park. Price for a site is $25 a night with an $8 per person (13 yrs and up). Not sure if the per person charge is per day as we only stayed one night.

Let me first say this is a nice campground. Paved pads, pavilions at each site, water and electric. Sites are well spaces but the campground is wide open so you make your own privacy. Bathroom facilities were clean, but I did not use the shower. There’s a marina and boat launch that are in good condition and get a fair amount of use, and a boat rental facility.

The rest of the experience here was disappointing. Utah Lake is a freshwater lake hemmed in by mountains, agriculture and human development. Everything runs off into the lake. By August the heat has turned the lake into a cesspool, especially the protected marina area where the beach is. The algae was so bad you couldn’t not see an inch into the water. I wouldn’t let my dog swim it. It stinks like carp, which are an invasive species wrecking havoc on the lake ecology as well. I am disappointed that the staff even told us we could use the beach—I can’t imagine it’s safe to swim in that water.

All the wetlands are choked with phragmites (which it does seem is being treated) so there’s virtually nothing to see this time of year because the stuff grows seven feet tall. The first morning we were here we woke to the stench of sulfur from I don’t know where. Also the park is at the end of the runway for the Provo airport so there is a constant stream of small planes and helicopters with a few larger planes flying low overhead pretty much from sun up to sun down.

There’s a “natural area” with a trail across the Provo River that is apparently not maintained anymore. There’s tables and benches and a boardwalk but it was badly overgrown. A disk golf course winds through it but is clearly no longer used. The Skipper Bay Trail passes directly behind the campground but there’s no direct access to it—you’ve got to walk over half a mile around the chain link fence to access any part of it.

In addition to all of that there was garbage all over. In spite of regular staff and a campground host there were bottles and other trash all over the place. The dumpster by the boat launch must be filled with fish guts because it smelled so bad I couldn’t stand to be with 50 feet of it.

In all this is a typical urban campground—a nice facility overall that gets used by people who don’t respect it. There were empty sites mid week but I suspect it fills up on the weekend. It’s close to town, but other than the planes it’s quiet, and there are a lot of birds here. I hope they keep up with restoration efforts and figure out how to control the algae as it makes the beach unusable, and clean the place up. I would stay again for a night or two at most as it’s in a convenient location with hookups, which you need in Utah in August when the temps can hit 100 degrees.

Stayed here two nights so we could spend a day at the Joseph Williams Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. Nice campground with some hiking and biking trails and boats to rent.