Dowdy Lake Campground

Wonderful campground! Cannot wait to go back! We stayed in campsite #4, for reference. You can hike all the way around the lake. It takes about 45-60 minutes at an enjoyable pace. Pretty level, nothing difficult. I saw all ages, young and elderly, both enjoying the trail. Dogs too! The campground has bathrooms available. I suggest you plan ahead and reserve a site. The campground was full this past weekend, mid October. Each site has a campfire ring, picnic table, and bear box. Our site also had electric hookups. The views of sunrises and sunsets will stop you in your tracks! Enjoy!

I HATE vault toilets - this place is immaculate. However, NO sanitizer was a major minus particularly as we know we have to be vigiliant - COVID will not go away, also I caught walking pneumonia from a State park due to the lack of appropriate handwashing facilities. There are plenty of other bugs eg, dysentry etc which, being near a water activity area makes this point all the more important. The only place with water outside of the vault toilet block was for filtered water where they don't want you to bring your own soap to wash your hands because they don't want that soap going into the aquifer below. The sign was confusing and people, want to wash their hands so meh! They had had bear sightings in the adjacent area but didn't update the bear last seen on the notice board because it wasn't in that specific camp area! Whoa! Kids out on their canoes or paddleboards without parents! Forget hungry bears, the squall may have had its pick instead. No lookout even though it was a State Park or ability to rent a kayak or paddleboard which would have been fun. No notice to remind people to wear a life jacket with a whistle. No one to rescue them if anything went wrong. So it was a case of fend for yourself. I wonder how all that would hold up in court in terms of liability? This is a country of extremes LoL. First come first served means you have to wait for the camp host to allow you to be there :( Arrived at 11.15pm so I slept in the car as that was not an appropriate time to set up. Family left around 7am so I politely asked if I could have theirs. Set up my tent. Visited the camp host twice but they were not available. Another person told me they were snippy. Waited till I saw them but I was then told they had received a 'special' from on high and I couldn't have the spot. That i had to ask them first because they keep a waiting list (hang on! what happened to first come first served?). The lady who was one of the camp hosts, said I could have the next spot for free but I would need to move. Her husband cared so much about the campsite he was somewhat rude and difficult to talk to! I was given two numbers. One chap came to talk to me and knew the male host was often abrasive. I didn't care really as it was a slightly comical incident. The main office didn't bother to call back. They were very helpful overall. I had had enough by then so I went on up into the woods. Being prayed over by oncoming traffic was slightly amusing. I don't recommend going up to as only one site was safe enough to camp in, possibly two, due to falling trees from pine beetle kill. The weather had lightning and it wasn't safe to be a campsite frankly. Having just tried to find the name of it, it doesn't list it. Whoops! That is because I should have gone to Bellair campsite but that wasn't sign posted and I must have missed a beat in the directions Oops!

Great ldeveloped campground with all the amenities. Be aware, you can't pull your car right up to every spot. I had to park and walk my stuff over to my site while my friends with a camper were able to pull right up to their spot.

Beautiful views. One rowdy group ruined our last day. Bathrooms need to be emptied more. Overall pretty good.

Excellent campground! I spent a week here. The weekend was full and the weekdays were empty. The host was great! That's pretty much the main reason I'm leaving this review. He helped me out with several things. I had some good conversations with him. I caught a lot of trout on the lake, did some good hiking although a lot of the trails still had snow, ice, and mud (it was the middle of April). The bathrooms were very clean and had a bunch of cinnamon scented air fresheners to keep them smelling good. I love cinnamon!!! I always think of that episode if Seinfeld with cinnamon bobka hahaha. "I beg your pardon? Cinnamon takes a back seat to no Bobka. People love cinnamon. It should be on tables at restaurants along with salt and pepper. Anytime anyone says, "Oh This is so good. What's in it?" The answer invariably comes back, Cinnamon! Cinnamon! Again and again! Lesser Bobka - I think not." 😆😂🤣 Anyway, I liked this campground a lot, I had great cellular service everywhere in the campground (I use Google Fi which uses Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and some other service provider satellites. It's shocking to me that so many people have never even heard of Google Fi, and if you travel outside of the US often it's almost unbeatable considering the price doesn't change). I wish this campground had showers and water at the campsites but I'm not going to deduct a star because of that. I'll definitely be coming back to this campsite again. The only strange thing was that on Sunday night there was only 1 other campsite taken and Friday and Saturday night it was completely full. That Sunday night has a girl that was louder, more obnoxious, and more desperate for attention than the completely full campground with lots of children and teenagers from the 2 nights before combined. She was there with someone else, her boyfriend, but I never heard him say anything. She was constantly yelling and screaming like she had her first beer ever and was at the Super Bowl. I feel bad for her boyfriend because she doesn't care about other people and, clearly, believes the world revolves around herself. I wish she was there Saturday night just to hear and laugh at her for all the other people that would tell her to "Shut up! We're trying to sleep!" after midnight. 😆😂🤣