Baker Creek Campground

This campground is located in Great Basin National Park. Currently the campground is FCFS. There is inaccurate/conflicting information on the NPS and Recreation.gov website. It was showing that all the campgrounds in the park, except Lower Lehman Creek Campground are closed. I called the park to confirm that the Lehman Creek campground is FCFS and to find out if it had been filling up. The ranger acknowledged that the information online was inaccurate and 4/5 campgrounds were open. Currently the only campground within the park that is closed is the Wheeler Creek Campground. That campground is located at approximately 10,000 feet and there is still snow up in that area. Nothing larger than 24 feet allowed up that road.

Now onto the actual campground review. The campground has 37 sites. Cost is 20/night or 10/night with senior or access pass. They accept cash or credit card only, no checks. There are no hookups. Currently water spigots remain off. Not sure when when they turn on for the summer. It did get into the upper 20s the last two mornings I camped here. The dump station is located near the Lehman Cave Visitor Center, sign says 10 to use. Dump station also remains closed at the time. To get to the campground you must travel 2.9 miles on a well maintained gravel road. The roads within the campground and sites are also gravel. Most of the sites are not very level. The whole campground is on an incline. Some sites are more extreme than others. The sites are well spaced out and all have a nice picnic table and fire ring. Lots of trees. My particular site had lots of privacy, some are a little more open. Multiple vault toilets located throughout the campground. There is a site designated for a host, but no host was on duty while here. Did see rangers drive through multiple times during my stay.
I did have some Verizon signal while at the campground. It was mostly on 3G extended network. Able to send and receive some text and search internet, but without any consistency.

Was looking for a site for a night before hiking Wheeler Peak. I found a site on a Saturday around 4:00. I think it was number nine. It was small, room for one car and one small tent. I stayed in my car so it worked fine. The parking area was nice and flat. Campground is very pretty. About 3 miles up a washboard road from the main paved road.

This first-come-first-serve campground consists of two main loops plus additional areas designated for tent camping only. We arrived late on a Thursday afternoon in late September and got one of (if not the) last available sites. To get to the campground you drive about 2.5 miles down a dirt road which should be just fine no matter what kind of vehicle you drive, but as with any dirt road, you should expect your vehicle to get dusty. The campground is very quiet at night with just the chirping sounds of the crickets and the babbling of nearby Baker Creek. And there are so many stars at night you'd think you were on the red carpet at the Oscars!

We stayed in Site #6, which was not only the perfect size for our 16' Airstream Basecamp and our Jeep Grand Cherokee, but also had a large picnic table, fire pit with grill, and an extra area of smoothed dirt surrounded by a small rock border and tall trees (we called this area our "living room"). Unfortunately, there is a fire ban in effect so we were unable to use our firepit.

We work while on the road and had one bar of T-Mobile service, which improved to almost full bars with our WeBoost. There was no Verizon service on our hotspot, even with the WeBoost. Still, the T-Mobile service with the booster was perfect for working and was fast enough for Zoom and Teams video calls.

The site is mostly level side-to-side, but not at all level front-to-back, which meant that our trailer tongue needed to be mere inches off the ground. Not an issue for our short trailer, but camper emptor! The freshwater spigot was adjacent to our site, which was convenient, and the bathrooms and trash receptacles were just a short 30-second walk away.

Let me preface by saying the summer 2020 camp host is awesome - make friends with him. I got one of the last sites - #33. The campground itself is great and the sunrise from this site was fantastic, but it’s directly across from bathrooms (which I normally don’t mind for those middle of the night visits) which needed attention. They’re clean from outside the toilet, but need to be emptied. My site was downwind of them and I smelled camp bathrooms the entire time. Not ideal. I think the park has had way more visitors this summer than they’re used to, so I sent them a note letting them know about it and will give them the benefit of the doubt.

They say thirteen is an unlucky number. They say you shouldn’t gather firewood in the national parks, because trees are cannibals and that’s how forests grow. They say that the sites here aren’t level. They say a lot of things.

But none of these are said at site 13 here at Baker Campground, no doubt named for the first settler to bake a pine nut and clean his baby’s bottle with a bristlecone twig (his name, matter of not-so-factly, was James T. Bristlecone-Baker the 4th, on his mother’s side.) Site 13, while perhaps better known as a tent spot, for our Ford Extended 20-something foot long van was perfectly level. The regulations state gathering downed and dead wood was legit (and ridiculously abundant in this campground) and to boot, a babbling creek set the tone for one of the most pleasant nights I’ve ever had in the forest. Site 13 is also in an “RVs and trailers not recommended” area, and Baker Campground itself is more or less the least visited of the five campgrounds, thanks to a short washboard dirt road that separates it from all of the other paved roads leading to the Lehmans and Wheelers, while still being first come first serve.

As a national park, one might say Great Basin is pushing it. And it’s far from anywhere. So it’s easy to get a spot. That said, and even in late September, we couldn’t snag a next day reservation to any of the park’s fairly priced impetus, the Lehman Cave Tours. But despite not being underground, or seeing a truly gnarly Bristlecone Pine, it’s a lovely setting exemplifying similar terrain for 100s of miles around.

One tip that may be welcome for those coming from Utah, who stopped at the Border Inn thinking it was the only spot to buy beer but who are also interested in finally getting an IPA that isn’t 3.2% (#oxymoron) there’s a cafe at the Lehman visitor Center which sells them. And really cool shirts for kids. So now you know!

Best campsite we've ever stayed at! I almost want to give Baker Creek CG a bad review so that I can keep this secret to myself, but I just can't say anything bad about this place, other than if you don't like turkeys, then this isn't the campground for you.
I've never had so much privacy in a campground before. We were there in May, during the off season (we pretty much had the park to ourselves!), so there wasn't any water turned on and the dump station was closed. BUT, at the one gas station in Baker, there is a dump station and a water spigot. In the summer the water spigots are turned on, and there is a dump station and water fill station located outside the Lehman Caves Visitor Center.
Not all of the sites at Baker Creek are big enough for an RV, but there are a few pull through sites. Bring your levelers though because the sites are not flat.
Watch out for marmots on the drive in.

Nice location for visiting Great Basin! Close to dumpsite, Lehman caves visitor center and some nice hikes a half a mile up the road that also has better access to Baker Creek. Rigs longer than 30 ft might have a problem getting around the campground and be prepared to get a few scratches from low tree branches. Water spigots, trash cans and bathrooms nicely spread throughout. If you like turkeys this is the place to see them!

The gravel road into Baker Creek Campground is graded and doable for any size rig. However, don’t bother with the car wash before visiting, your vehicles are guaranteed to be coated in a thick layer of fine white dust. We could barely discern the color of our toad. Lol. The campground roads and all sites are gravel, pay attention to the trees and brush along the road too, some spots are narrow.

The campground itself is lovely. Each site has a picnic table and firepit. Many are large enough to accommodate any size rig and there is a mix of back-ins and pull-throughs. The sites are widely spaced, with lots of vegetation between for privacy. We couldn’t even see our neighbors. The biggest knock is how difficult it is to get level. We abandoned our first site (#19) as too narrow and sloping and moved to #26, a pull through that still proved a challenge for leveling. Bring your blocks and some patience. It’s worth the effort however for the forested setting, views, and access to hiking trails.

There are no hookups or water at the campground. There are pit toilets and garbage cans, which were serviced daily. There is a central dump station close to the visitor’s center with potable water and recycling for aluminum cans and cardboard.

FYI – while we’ve had the occasional mousie hitchhiker, we were under siege at Baker Creek. In under 24 hours we trapped 11 mice in the coach! Not sure what triggered the invasion, but we ended up with a tally of 16 mousie casualties. These were tiny field mice, not large or destructive, but the numbers were unbelievable!

We had 2 bars of Verizon 3G unboosted.