East Portal Campground

Go to the walk-in campground area and you will NOT be disappointed. $20/night Secluded area with 95% less traffic than either North or South Rim Campgrounds. Beautiful area with clean bathrooms, trash cans, bear-proof bins for smelly things, and potable water. I strongly recommend this campground over North or South if you want to see way fewer people. Make sure to use your lower gear when coming down the road to East Portal or your brakes will smell the campground up and everyone will laugh at you for not knowing how to descend steep roads. There are fire rings, picnic tables, tent platforms, and trees to hang hammocks on/be in the shade of. Give me a like if you have a crush on me or if you found this helpful. I will assume you have a crush on me though. So. Don't lie.

This was a great campground! There are 16 designated campsites. A small handful of them are pull ins. The rest are ones you have to carry stuff down to the campsite. It wasn’t too far, but it is down a large fight of stairs. That is where we stayed in spot 7. It was perfect! Each site has a pad for the tent, a picnic table, and a fire ring with a grate on top for cooking. There was a water spout that we washed dishes in (I don’t know if the water is drinkable) The bathrooms are very clean for campsite bathrooms with a pit toilet. There are also food lockers throughout the campground. It was $16/night. There was barely anyone else here. The site is very close to the water. So the drive down was very steep and slow. But it is gorgeous!

Beautiful place to stay at the bottom of the canyon right next to the river. The road to get down is bumpy and steep. The campground was small and has people right next to each other. We got there around 2pm and snagged one of the last spots, lots of people came in later and had to leave because there was no spots left. Half of the spots are down stairs that you have to walk all your stuff down to and leave your car in the upper parking lot. You can't beat the proximity to the river though. Currently $16/per night.

Spent the night without another soul in sight. Drove in after dark and didn't realize the 16% grade until the morning. Absolutely worth a visit, stunning visuals. Perfect dark sky, in a narrow canyon, in the middle of nowhere. Enjoy this gem before all the Jerry's ruin it!

I had a great time staying at this campground and was very impressed with the cleanliness of the pit toilets. Honestly the best pit toilets I think I’ve seen. I will say that I had the best camp spot in the campground. Up top and pretty private. There were others in the area that I wouldn’t have liked staying at and if I was stuck with one of them I probably would be rating my experience a little lower. The closest camp spot to mine was so close to its neighbor that their picnic tables were almost touching.