Smoky Mountain Campground, Castle Rocks State Park

Only 3 stars due to non-equestrians being allowed to take up equestrian spots/corrals. Oct is the beginning of no reservations, yet a non-equestrian was given RESERVATIONS. Another non-equestrian was TOLD to camp in the equestrian area! There was an abundance of spaces for non-equestrian campers. Us equestrians are VERY limited on where we're allowed to camp. Other than that rant, there's paved parking with electric and water. Each site has a picnic table and corrals. The corrals are advertised as 12X12. Not....more like 10X10. My horse definitely did not have enough room to roll or lay down. Only ONE corral per camp spot . There's a designated area for manure that was in desperate need to be emptied. No scattering allowed. Water is shut off when it gets to be too cold. There's an area before you get to the campground to dump your waste & fill up with drinking water. Although the drinking water wasn't available and the water to rinse out your tubing after dumping your waste, was shut off. That was gross. There's maps of the trails you can purchase for only $2. Nice variety of trails. After about 3-4 days you'll have done all the trails within 20 miles. I strongly recommend going when reservations are in effect. I will most likely not return due to how it's run.

A hidden gem tucked in a juniper pinion forest. Just mins from City Of Rocks. Nice paved camp ground with pull through and back in sites. The sites are nice and private because of the trees. Very clean facilities. We enjoyed our stay in site 23. We had plenty of room with our truck and 23ft travel trailer.

Had a great time! Only wish we knew ahead of time the day water was turned off until May 1 (we were expecting flush toilets, showers and water connection for our trailer, we can rough it, but made it more difficult since we had to make a few trips to the visitor center to get out water... Would have helped to have it published more on the reservation website). This was our first trip, and loved exploring the City of Rocks!

I tent camped here a few nights ago while driving from Montana to CA with my dog. It was a Thursday night and I didn't have a reservation, but there were about 10 sites open at 9 pm when I arrived. It was a full moon, and beautiful night. I was the only tent camper here and it really is set up for RVs only (camping is on a flat bed of rocks, which worked fine). Pricey imo at $31 a night if you're not an ID resident, showers cost additional. Small campground, I easily walked the entire thing with my dog in 12-15 minutes. The sites are nicely spread apart in general. In the morning I drove to City of Rocks, and wished that I had camped there, as that place has much nicer tent oriented campsites imo ...stunningly dispersed in the rock formations. Beautiful area, and I'm so glad I got to check it out!! Shower and bathroom are clean, and I recommend this place.

When I reserved a space in this campground I thought it was IN Castle Rocks, but it is not, it is on the road to City of Rocks. The campground is probably a ten to fifteen minute drive for both the City of Rocks and Castle Rocks, so we had to drive into both parks to do hiking, fishing, etc. As for the campsite itself the tent pad barely held our 8 man tent. There was a picnic table, fire ring, and water available. Bathrooms were few and far between. We found one vault and one flushable. Some of the sites provided a good amount of shade, ours didn't. This campground seemed to be more designed for equestrians as each camp space had a small corral, which was helpful if you brought horses, but would be nice if they were mucked out a bit. We stayed at site 35 which I would avoid, as it is kind of in the middle of the road. 36 seemed odd as well, the campers at 36 and 37 had to share the space, so I wouldn't book those spots unless you are going with someone else. Overall it met our needs, but not one of my top spots to stay. It worked.