MacKay Reservoir Dispersed Camping

Seriously one of the best boondocking spots I’ve experienced. It’s a little tricky figuring out what roads are off-road vs camper safe on Google maps, so you just have to trust your intuition. The reservoir is beautiful, and the snow capped mountains on the other side of you are stunning. Sunsets? Forget about it! Sooooo incredibly beautiful!!! Skip the paid sites and stay here. You won’t regret it!
Also, Joe Fallini campground is 1 mile away, so I’m going to dump there before I move on!

There’s no water in the reservoir but a nice place. Almost no one here this time of year.

This location is a win-win all around & one of our favorite boondocking locations yet!! The road is easy to access and there are so many great spots right on the water! We also had strong cell signal on both Verizon (14 download & 9 upload) and AT&T (14 download & 1 upload).

To top it off, the STARS! There is little to no light pollution here, so the stars were magnificent — we could see tons of constellations & the Milky Way. Truly breathtaking.

ONLY CON: mosquitoes — there are a lot of mosquitoes, so bring bug spray or wear long sleeves & pants.

Spent a week on a grassy spot. Enjoyed the quiet, sunsets, stars & quiet. They drain the reservoir and you can see geese, ducks & cranes. Only a few bugs and some road noise during the day.

Lots of dispersed camping around the lake & campground if you want hook-ups.

We camped here a few months ago in August. The place the coordinates lead to was ok but we ended up finding a spot just a little further south down the main road. There's a sign for a boat ramp and that leads to a larger camping area (43.964620, -113.702379) that's a little easier to access. It has some vault toilets and is right next to the boat ramp.

We took a site that was on its own up on one of the cliffs. If you turn off the paved road to go to the big camping area I left the coordinates to there's a small dirt road right as you turn off that looks like it goes straight to the reservoir. It's only a few hundred feet long and you reach a decent sized open area. We were able to maneuver our trailer and set up there. The only problem was it was on a hillside and we had to really work to get our trailer level.

It was also a hike to get down to the water but the levels were low, and the water was getting pretty murky anyway. Cars would drive up to our trailer to check out the spot so it wasn't super private but it was still pretty great.

All in all, it's a beautiful area with some of Idaho's highest elevation mountain peaks right by the reservoir. The town of Mackay has a grocery store, a dump station, potable water, and propane. In late August it was already starting to get down to freezing at night.

There's more good free camping near the dam and closer to town as well.