Loved camping here, but I am very sad that the water level has been too low for years to cliff jump. I remember when Pace Bend used to be THE cliff jumping spot. I couldn't even get a campsite reservation because it was so popular a few years ago. It is truly past its prime now, and not just with the lack of cliff jumping. The campsites seem to be at about 50% capacity. We drove past so many camping areas that were closed. They're not using their usual online reservation system, and instead you have to reserve by emailing them and requesting specific sites. This is very inefficient as I saw quite a few vacant sites in person that were supposedly taken according to the website.
We stayed at Kate's and Johnson campground, which is a primitive car camping site with pit toilets. There were no sinks, but there was hand sanitizer, and the bathrooms were quite clean for pit toilets. The campsites each had a grill and fire pit, but there was a burn ban so we couldn't have a ground fire. There was also a picnic table at each site. They limit each site to two cars, and they told me I couldn't park elsewhere in the park or pay for just the parking for an additional car. I would have had to pay for another site just to add one car. There's a lot of land in this park and not a lot of people with plenty of empty campsites even on a weekend, so I thought this was a little unreasonable.
We went hiking on the blue trail per the recommendation of the lady at the lady who checked us in at the entrance. She told us it has the best views of the park. We certainly reached the highest point of the park, but there were no views. It was all rocks and trees. The trails are all pretty short. We went up the blue trail and down the yellow from the southeast trailhead, and it was a total of 3.6 miles. I liked the hike for a bit of exercise, but there wasn't really anything to see, so we felt deceived.
My friend went swimming in the lake, and he seemed to enjoy it except for the sharp rocks at the bottom. I didn't go swimming, but I'm sure it would be enjoyable on a hot day. read more