Cottonwood Park Campground

Dry camping on gravel spots next to the C J Strike Reservoir that apparently has great fishing. 2 pit toilets and randomly placed potable water you can use to refill your tanks. No dump station. Plenty of spots to handle large rv's. Ours is 40' plus toad and we had no problems. Picnic tables and firepits and every spot. Camphost on site but you use fee station to pay. Approximately 2 miles down a well maintained gravel road (Cottonwood Rd) off hwy 78 to get to campground. There's a free dumpstation at 42874 Hwy 78 (CJStrike Wildlife Management Area) with rinse and potable water. It's not far from the campground. Also free camping along reservoir off hwy 78 just east of the Cottonwood campground (14day limit) we didn't get info on that but drove thru. Seemed decent. Good spots, good road in. A few potholes.

When I arrived there was only on other person using the campground. There boat ramp had a few other vehicles. The campsites are fairly large. There are a few group spaces as well. There were fire pits and tables at each site.

I did not see a dump station anywhere on site. There was a dump station at the Cove Campground, which is just down the road a short distance away to the west. The water had been turned off for the winter. There was potable water at the CJ Strike management office, a short distance away to the east.

Law enforcement drove thru a few times while I was there. There were no hook ups and the vault toilets were clean.

Mountain Home is the closet town with a variety of grocery stores and hardware stores.

The summer rates are $8 per night (April - October) and $4 for the winter rates (November - March).

Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and cannot leave a fishing report.

IMPORTANT NOTES:
1) IF you have any kind of watercraft you will have to stop at the Check Station a few miles before the turn off to the CG. The Check Station is at the intersection of 51 and 78 where you turn to head to the CG entrance.
2) The gravel road entrance when we visited (it may not yet have been graded for the season) was as washboardy as it gets. 7 MPH in our 33' MH was as fast as I wanted to go and it was still like 5 on the Richter scale! Open all cupboards carefully!
3) There is NO ATT service of any reliability-a few emails came in at weird hours but there was a signal for only moments before it would disappear altogether. We have a booster. We have a backup Verizon hot spot that once it was turned on gave us about 2 bars but still no phone service. There is a minimal service if your are near the Check Station.

This is a nice campground with nicely spaced sites, vault toilets that are kept very clean, potable water spigots throughout the campground (which are turned off in winter). It's a busy fishing spot with quite a bit of truck pulling boats traffic during the day and blissfully quiet at night. During the day there is also noise from the nearby Air Force base but only jets and not too loud. Sites are mostly level, gravel with a fire ring and picnic table. We came on Memorial Day weekend and it was full but during the following week almost empty.
The weather was all over the place including a tornado warning one day but other than very high winds no danger. FANTASTIC cloud formations though and nice sunsets and sunrises over the lake. LOTS of birds, white pelicans, a resident blue heron, red winged blackbirds and killdeer with the occasional magpie. We saw 2 gopher snakes (non-venomous) one of them at our site.

We had kayaks with us in hopes of taking them out but the weather didn't cooperate and several people told us that the winds here are pretty constant. Waves can get up to 4'. The fishing boats we saw were all motorized but there was a lot of fishing from the shore as well.

No dump station on site but several in the area we've been told.

All in all a nice place to stay with a few free places right down the road. (Enter the Cottonwood Park entrance off 78 and turn left just before the campground. Slightly rutted dirt road with a few places to pull off right down at the water. Nothing larger than 35 ft though. Jacks Creek, just east of Cottonwood has no amenities and is free though we didn't see the condition of the sites there were a number of smaller trailers parked there.

Washboard entrance for about a mile. Fee was $8.00 plus tax so total was $8.64. T-Mobile basically had no cell service but occasional spotty email received. Camped in early June, temps were very hot. The pit toilets were very dirty and could be smelled if within nearby campsites. Quite a few boaters. Enjoyed the abundance of red wing black birds and other birds. Quiet on Sunday but Near air base so fighter jets could be seen and heard on Monday. The campground wasn’t terrible but we wouldn’t camp there again.