Juniper Campground

Love this place. A bit out of the way but worth it. Good fishing and all of the even camp sites are first come first serve. Lots of crawfish in the lake, love to take your bait.

We were there from 7/29/2022,  leaving 8/3 and had reserved and paid for site 11.  The lake itself is great, 5 stars.  We used a kayak and went all around.  Some parts are only one foot deep. Good things:  bathrooms were clean and they had toilet paper; electricity and water were available and worked well; they had cleaned brush and there were many piles of wood for fires.  The access to the lake is about 500 feet down from Juniper and parts are rocky and at 45 degree slope.  If you go in an RV and stay at Juniper Campground be aware that it is not setup correctly.   First- there are 6 areas that each area has parking for 3 RVs but very close together-see photo  You end up being too close to the other RVs. In our case 2 feet. Second- you can only reserve odd spots or sites  We reserved #11.  When we got there a big family had #10, #11,  and #12, 3 big rvs. We would have been in the middle of them!  We ended up in #9 that is not as good (not flat at all).  The ranger showed up on Sunday 7/31.  He was ok with our arrangement of switching sites.  There was no host.  Third- out of the 9 sites that can be reserved, at least 4 had "reserved" signs that were expired.  One had been expired for since 7/21 (see photo).  On 7/31, the ranger said that he would tell the person in charge.  RECOMMENDATIONS: 1 You could place all 3 of the sites in a given area or group as reservation only.   2 DON'T increase the number of sites per area from 3 to 4.  As is, the distance between the 35 footer that parked in number 10 and our RV was 2 feet. 3 Reduce the number of sites per area from 3 to 2. In most National forests/parks that we have stayed in, there are single sites separated by trees. This felt like commercial rv parks - too jammed in. 4 PLEASE ADD TRASH CANS- we saw them all piles together in the Pinon Campground.

Cool weather nice and sunny.

Clean campground with excellent views overlooking Quemado Lake. Lots of Elk and birds of prey to watch in their natural habitat. Be aware, however, if you have small holding tanks on your RV. The USFS site lists this park as having "full RV hookups" but there is only power and water available. You have to go 1/4 mile down the road to the Pinon Campground in order to dump for a $5 fee. There is no dumping of any kind on the premises, to include any wash water or even rinsing out a cup, else you face a $100 fine. If it were not for this issue with the listing, it would be an easy 5 stars.

This is a gorgeous campground with reliable water and electric and clean as possible vault toilets. The lake is amazing, and we caught quite a few trout. Trails nearby were easily driven in our Toyota 4Runner. We saw elk, a bear, mule deer, etc. Sites are all squished together, but we fortunate enough to have nobody there, so we had site 12, with nobody in 10 or 11. Great camp!