10/7/23 We were…read moreassigned a site in the "G" pinwheel. Very spacious between sites, with tons of grass and trees. Concrete pads. Good hook ups. Very very nice, especially since it rained a couple days. Didn't have to deal with mud. Most of the park is beautifully landscaped. It must take a small army to keep it looking so good. There are three friendly, absolutely gorgeous horses near the park entrance. We asked the owner if they like apples and carrots. He kind of smiled and said he didn't know if they would, but that they like peppermint! We tried to go the apple & carrot route, but had no takers. Didn't try anything peppermint. There's a huge pond with fountains on the property. It's quite nice. One of our neighbors trotted off with his rod and reel one day. Don't know if he had any luck. The larger community building has three toilet stalls and three private showers. Two of the showers are small. The larger (for the mobility challenged??) has no hand rails but the larger toilet stall does. The sink area has an outlet on each side, but there's no place to hang your jacket while you wash your hands. Very inconvenient. There is a shuffleboard table, pool table and two video games, as well as a tv. The laundry room has 4 washers and 4 dryers. There's a nice big room with a sweet kitchen for private parties, as well as a lounge area. Someone used it for a Sweet 16 party during our stay. There are no fire rings or picnic tables at any of the sites, and there was no easy route to the community building from our area. We either had to haul all of our laundry gear using the streets, or take the truck. Cutting across someone's site would have been rude but much faster and easier. There is an overflow parking area for guests with more than one vehicle next to the "G" pinwheel. I wish some of the people who were in our pinwheel would have used it, as they parked their extra vehicles so they were partially in the driving lane. One pickup was parked nose-in to the site, but the back of the truck was so far into the driving lane it was hard to get past it. Bad form. The park is close to all the stores and restaurants in Altoona. It's a good location, and it really is a nice place at a decent price. I would definitely recommend it to anyone coming to this area.

We stay at Griff's regularly when visiting our daughter's family. An A+ in my book. Clean, nice…read moreamenities, best RV bathrooms and showers I've seen anywhere. Open year round. Fair prices. Propane for sale. A couple of reviewers have called the owner rude. Gruff may be closer to the truth, but extremely helpful.

We got in too late to truly enjoy the camping, but we did have a lovely hike in the morning before…read morewe left. The parts of the park we saw were clean and the trails were well maintained. Hopefully we can come back in the future- I feel like there is a lot left to explore!

What a hidden gem of a campground. Beautiful spot. Nice level campsites. I can't wait to come back.read more

We used the campground as our base of operations. Easy drive to Pella and to Des Moines. A nice…read morequiet campground and very restful. They have a very nice bathhouse and I would not hesitate to stay again. Even the 3 or so miles of gravel through the fields on either side was nice.

Great RV campsites that over looks the Des Moines River and has a pond w/fountain that is stocked…read moreyearly. New shower house and laundry facilities. If you love to listen to frogs and critter sounds in the night you'll enjoy it here. And YES, we now have Wifi. Well maintained and a very accommodating management team. Quiet with beautiful views of Iowa countryside side yet only minutes from town. Wooded trails, dog friendly and an upcoming dog park. I am a long term HAPPY CAMPER with two happy dogs.

Variety of camping options at Acorn Valley. There's RV spots and a lot for tent camping, you can be…read morein the shade, tucked in the trees, or out in the open. $14 for one night but if you have some pass you can use that and not have to pay. With the variety there are some spots much closer to bathrooms than others. Some spots you'll have a little trek to your site and if you do drive in closer the rangers will ask you to move your car. Nice playground, big shower (singular.. one shower per bathhouse). Bathrooms were pretty nice for a campsite. Drinking fountains were closed. Bugs were pretty pesky in the woods, to be expected with camping. There was a little path to a fishing area - we swam and it was no beach but it was good enough with some shoes that work in water. Decent option for Saylorville lake.

Watch out if u have your kids or pets camping with you if you have to run anywhere because they…read morewill call the cops and dhs and they will come take your kids and pets and take you to jail my daughters almost 12 and they had a cell phone and everything

Do not stay if you expect to treated with even an ounce of kindness (or aren't rich, because that…read moreseemed to a problem too). The woman running it was one of the rudest people I have met in my entire life. For an incredibly small misunderstanding (and during a storm), she berated my family to the point that when we left I had actual tears. Genuinely, this was one of the most condescending, rude, judgmental, disrespectful, and to be honest just plain mean, women I have ever met. When we left we went to a hotel 20 minutes away instead, and without us saying anything about our experience with the fairgrounds/that woman, he told us about how he sees people come in all the time who are treated badly by her. We ended up speaking to more people who did actually end up camping, Also, the last time we stayed there (summer 2024), every single bathroom/portapotty was locked after 9. So that was incredibly frustrating considering we we not warned about that AT ALL (and in the morning there was feces all over the inside of a stall, unfortunate I never got a picture because I was so disgusted I immediately walked out).

We came here for a sports event from about 1500 miles away. We didn't make reservations and pretty…read moremuch winged it the whole way here. We were concerned about the location after stopping at some not so great places on the way here. We checked some of the local places but of course they were all booked. When we arrived we had to drive through the fairgrounds to get to the camp site. We didn't know there were two entrances. But as soon as we drove in, we were really surprised. The campground itself is in the middle of several little hills. There's tons of sites. We stayed for 5 days in a full hook up site. $30.00 a night. Where I'm from, this is ridiculously cheap. We found a site with quite a bit of trees. It was great. Fireflies all around our trailer every night. The only drawback was not having a fire ring. Everything else was really great.

It's a wonderful park that has lots of accessible areas and point of picnic, parking areas…read more They have river access, there's a shelter available for rent, end the camping area that accommodates some r v's. I enjoy the park for the birding opportunities that provides. It has an accessible bird viewing area with easy access for wheelchairs. I've seen red headed woodpeckers there , downey , woodpeckers , flycatchers , wobblers , finches , lots of variety. I also enjoy hiking the trail that's next to the bird area.For a wonderful walk into a burr oak forest with many of the trees looking like they're a several hundred plus years old. It's quiet and cool.Because the trail shaded. The other thing of note is that cut the trail wide enough that you can reasonably avoid ticks. I wish they would create a loop on that trail that would end up , so you would know that you've walked a mile or two. Maybe some volunteers could create it

We stayed here on an RV trip across the country. It was a great site. A load of trails and…read morefriendly people everywhere. Also, as you're in the middle of des moines you can get delivery from the town. The tree coverage is very nice and keeps the place cool during the day and the prices are super reasonable. We really enjoyed our stay here and I would suggest it for anyone looking for an RV campsite in or around Des Moines.

Kai, Izzy, and Nick assisted my family with a cabana rental. They went above and beyond to ensure…read morecomfort and satisfaction. Their customer service skills were above par! Thank you so much!!

I work at Valleyfair and am a bit of a coaster enthusiast. This summer I decided to try a park I'd…read morenever been to before. I made the three hour drive down to arrive close to opening, spent the day, then made the three hour drive back up to Minneapolis. All in all, it was an enjoyable day! The price for admission and parking was okay. Not great but not bad. They were really pushing their deal to visit two days in a row, but the park isn't really big enough to justify needing a return trip. Though the fact that they have an attached campground is a cool feature. I'd purposefully chosen a Monday to go so that I wouldn't have to fight any large crowds or lines to ride rides. I managed to ride almost everything there during my eight hour visit; the things that I missed don't really warrant a return trip. I might've been able to ride everything except for the fact that lines were artificially long due to only having one train running on all the coasters, lots of broken units (I shit you not, Outlaw had FIVE rows that were blocked off, which is almost half the train... like wtf?? Do they not have maintenance staff?), employee shortages (Flying Viking had the control booth operator leaving the booth while the ride was in motion to do turnstile... which is a pretty major safety violation by iROC standards just to not have to staff one additional employee at the ride area; concerning), and a policy that does not allow single riders to use the fast lane (I was forced to wait and watch dispatch after dispatch go by with multiple empty seats I totally could have just ridden in because the employees were too lazy to group people to fill those empty seats). In terms of rides, they do have a few solid ones that stack up with larger parks, such as Monster, Dragon Slayer, and Storm Chaser. My two personal favorites that made the trip worth it were the Underground (excellent theming and a unique coaster ride all underground, thus the name) and Junior Jockeys (the staff were kind enough to offer me a ride despite it being in the kid's playground area). I also appreciated the Carousel (sadly fiberglass horses, not wood carved) and the A-Train. I was definitely disappointed that Parachutes was closed, but at least I got to ride Tornado. As much as I like thrilling new rides, I also have a deep appreciation for old-school original rides. I also briefly enjoyed the waterpark for about an hour. There seemed to be a requirement to rent a tube, so I was not able to do the majority of the available water slides. This was definitely frustrating to find out there was an additional charge I hadn't counted on. So I simply floated the lazy river (which was quite long and enjoyable) and did the kiddie slides in the center section, then left. I wanted to keep my costs down, so I did not eat much while there; I only purchased a bag of kettle corn for $6. It was yummy and good for munching while I wandered around. I liked that this place had various specials depending on what day it was. Mondays are $5 ice cream cones, and while I was tempted on a hot sunny day, you can easily get a half gallon for that price at the grocery, so I resisted. Their boardwalk imitation with all the stores up the center was cute. Definitely not the same as a real boardwalk, nor does it compare to say Disney's main street, but they tried and honestly I think that's cool. They could've not bothered and used that space some other way. I had fun looking through the shops (though again, didn't purchase anything) and arcade, which had comfortable A/C blowing. I kinda wanted to play one of the games to win a cute fox plushie on display, but the employees said they couldn't give me any of the display pieces and they were otherwise out of the plush I wanted. So that was lame as heck. The bathrooms were decent and were spaced out okay across the park, along with water bottle refill stations (which I extremely appreciated since I had my Hydroflask along with me). The parking lot was actually pretty easy to navigate. I was given a paper park map upon entry, which I appreciated considering a lot of parks are trying to force people to download their dumb apps on their phone instead. I also liked the historical billboards and giant pig. Lotta pros, lotta cons. But I'm glad to have crossed another park off my to-visit list!

Cherry Glen Campground is highly recommended. It's very clean and the area we reserved was very…read morespacious. Our site number was 55. It was on the curve of the road and we had lots of grass on both sides. The area was pretty level but did need to bring out the leveling blocks. Cute and well kept playground for the kids. There are some campsites where you can have a lake view. Overall this was our first visit here and we enjoyed it. Most likely will come back.

We love camping at this family-friendly campground right on Saylorville Lake. The people are…read morefriendly, the facilities are clean, and the camp sites are large. It's a peaceful retreat right out of the city, and has access to hiking and bike trails and boat access nearby. TIP: there's a playground right behind site 66 that's not listed on the map, so if you're looking for a quiet trip, choose a site farther away.

This is a lovely campground with beautiful mature trees and roomy spaces. There is a short walk to…read morerestrooms and showers which are very nice. Some spots are right on the river (look at site map) so are difficult to get especially on weekends. Used our sr. cards and got a great rate. Negatives: sites don't have septic and you have to book thru recreation.gov which is not the easiest site to navigate. All in all, well worth it! Camp host Frank is wonderful!

This is a great big recreation area that is broken up into three parts. When you first pull in you…read morecome to a stop sign and if you turn left you go into the camping area. If you go right you go into the picnic and playground area. If you go straight it takes you down to the boat ramps. I have never been to the campground portion of the rec area so I will leave that part to be reviewed by other people. The boat ramp area is very nice. They have two different sets of boat ramps. They have an upper set of boat ramps which are very long and very steep. They have a lower set of boat ramps which are your standard length and grade. The parking is down by the lower ramps and there is a pretty large parking area. The picnic area is very nice here. They have six shelters and two play areas for kids. Shelter 6 is arguably the best shelter area as it has the nicest playground close to it, a horseshoe area, and it also has an amazing view of the lake. By shelter 1 there is an entrance to the bike trail heading north with plenty of parking. There is also an entrance to the bike trail heading south near the entrance to the campground area. Overall this recreation area is a great place for the family offering lots of different options.