Drinks Canyon Campground

This place was the best yet of our travels! If you can score any spot in the 3 Dinks campground don’t even look any further. We had initially planned on staying one night but when we got there we decided to stay 2. We were right on the CO River. Each site has a picnic table right by the River Pit toilet was super clean. We stayed in Site 16

We came from the arches/Moab area and this was the first campground with anything still open. It was a Tuesday night and I believe we took the last available site. The sun setting behind the red rocks was amazing! We also had a pit toilet nearby which was fairly clean at the time. Very limited cell. I could get a text once in a while but no pictures in/out. Which was fine with me. Enjoyed the peace and quiet.

It is no longer free to spend the night in these little camping areas along the river but at $20 a night FCFS you can’t beat the view! There are no services except a vault toilet but you can get water and cell service at the parks at the entrance to Rt 128. The beauty of Rt 128 is something of a hidden gem that I don’t think many of Moab’s visitors are aware of being more concerned with visiting the national parks. We stayed in site 11 and in our opinion it’s one of the better sites there. We were there in middle September, if you want a site for the weekend you need to be there Thursday morning and stay the weekend. Mid week you should be able to find a site at one of these campgrounds (there are several). The night sky, being in the canyon so very little light pollution, is absolutely amazing.

We were looking for spots to accomodate 10-15 people for memorial day weekend and found this gem around 9 am on thursday morning- the campers had just pulled out before we pulled in and as we were scoping out the spot the next spot over was packing up to leave as well- so we ended up with spots 12 and 13 which are at the end of the Middle Drinks area and theres a cul de sac turn around- this was great as our large group was not disturbing other campsites and it gave us more room to park all our tent camping friends cars.

This is more of a tent camping campground, but smaller rigs can fit. Our sites had a short path down to the river and there were more spots to put tents there and feel less like you were in a campground. We also had one of a few places along the river with a "sandy" beach area that made getting in and out of the river much easier and allowed us to set up a few chairs on the shore to hang out by the water. We floated in our tubes the 5-6 miles down to the bridge at 191- we learned that life jackets were required as we were getting out- oops. The water is pretty calm around this stretch with no rapids and a slower flow rate- so it is great for a lazy river float. There were also a lot of people kayaking and paddleboarding this stretch.

Site 12 was right next to the bathroom and you could definitely smell it- we used that site more for parking and storage and hung out and used the picnic table at site 13 and down closer to the river where we were not affected by the smell.

The site is in between 128 and the river going through the canyon- this is a well trafficked road and you can hear the road noise- we noticed it a lot when we were holding the fort down before everyone arrived- but once we had a large group we were noisier than it.

There is no cell service at this campground- if you drive back towards 191 you get service around goosenecks campground and have great perfect LTE at the parking lot at the intersection of 191 and 128- this is also a great place to fill up on water- there are some spigots in the parking lots, or you can cross the street and get in directly from the spring.

There is also no dumpster at this campground- but there is one at big bend about half a mile farther up 128 or at goosenecks about 4-5 miles back towards town.

We're still not sure how we pulled off a spot like this with such a big group for a holiday weekend in a place as popular as Moab, but boy are we glad we did!