Lake Walcott State Park

wln 2006

Beautiful area, great camp sites. RV bathrooms pretty clean. However, cold showers that they "don't have the money to fix". They will also tell you to pull kayaks and boats out of the water overnight for "environmental reasons", while their boats sit there 24/7.

Paul Lindsey

So, the State park is a very nice place to spend an afternoon. The swimming and fishing is decent and there are paved bike trails to walk and ride on. It is fun and secluded with quite a bit of shade. Camping on the other hand was a disaster. Keep in mind, the site we were assigned was $26 per night for our tiny, teardrop trailer which is barely the size of a tent. This might not seem like much, but really, this equals $806 per month......for a basic campsite. Very recently you could rent a two bedroom apartment in Pocatello for less than this per month. So, with such prices in effect now, I would expect that the park should be in working order. This is NOT the case. Our electricity hookup was broken. They told us that they would fix it the following day and eventually gave us a long extension cord to connect to an adjacent site. I am self contained, and did not really NEED the electricity, but since the only offering is a 26 dollar site with electricity and water, it had better work as expected. It did not. Honestly, I would have been just as happy to spend 15 dollars a day to have a spot with a bit of shade and no hookups whatsoever. But, the only option is a spot with non working hookups for the price of renting an actual structure with rooms. To top this off, there was ZERO shade, so if you plan on spending any time whatsoever in the campsite during the day, you had better have some sort of alternative. Consequently, we spent basically the entire day by the water. After returning from the water, I looked forward to using the showers to clean up. Again, we are self contained and do not necessarily NEED them, but if they charge me for them, they had better be in working order. No such luck. Neither the bathrooms, nor the showers work and were all locked due to a pump issue that we were not made aware of until after we had arrived and set up camp, which was completely unusable during the day due to the lack of any shade whatsoever. July, desert heat in southern Idaho without shade just is not my idea of fun. When the sun started to set and temperatures finally cooled off enough to enjoy camp, the bugs came out in force. No amount of bug spray or our fire would deter them and we ended up going to bed early. In the morning we woke up and around 11am the sprinklers started going off. They sprayed everything except the grass and continued for a full hour. We had plenty of chairs, towels and even a Bluetooth speaker in the paved area of our camp, on top of the picnic table, not in the grass. It was all soaked. It turns out the sprinklers spend an hour creating mud and following you around camp all day long, On the second day I had just gotten out of the water and decided to sit on the picnic benches by the waterfront. The time was 3pm. The sprinklers started going off and soaked both picnic benches for an hour. When the soaking was done the entire area was a flooded, muddy mess. We were going to stay for two nights, but instead packed up and just hung out by the waterfront the second day, leaving in the evening. The camp wasn't worth staying at. There is no way I want to pay a daily rate equivalent to $806 per month to park my trailer with no shade, no bathrooms, no showers and a basically unusable campsite both day and night.....day for the heat, night for the bugs. I may come back here for a day trip. But camping just isn't anything worth paying for. There is plenty of forest service ground around southern Idaho that is nicer, quieter, shadier, free, and less infested with bugs, both of the insect kind and the Utah kind.

Emily Roseborough

We stayed at a tent site while some other family members stayed at a different tent site and in a cabin. One thing that wasn't clear from the reservation was that you cannot drive up to your campsite and you cannot park at your campsite. Fortunately, a parking lot is pretty close to the campsites, but it was a little disappointing to have to pack in everything and then pack out everything after. Second, the campsites are not distinct areas. There are signs that denote your campsite number, but that's the extent of the boundaries. All the campsites were very close together where you could very easily hear people at other campsites. There were a couple bathrooms in easy walking distance to choose from. It's very close to the lake and a couple docks. We ended up having to leave early because of storms, but it was a beautiful place.

Gabe Beebe

Beautiful spot to go fish. Walk. Grill up some hot dogs with the family. First time fishing was a success.