French Creek Campground

We were here during fourth of july weekend, so caveat on busyness - every campground is crazy for the Fourth. Especially at the lake.

So this is two campgrounds across the road from each other. Recreation.gov's list of FCFS sites doesn't really match what's there. We were lucky and early and got the last FCFS site. Water is available, vault toilets. We were in the upper campground; there is a boat launch on the lower campground. It can be buggy, we used our gazebo quite a bit for the mesh screening. Road noise is audible from the campsites but it isn't awful. Tons of ATVs and OTVs, more than cars most of the weekend.

it's 20 minutes to Cascade and to get in and out it's a mostly dirt road. Washboard in many places but plenty wide. This side of the lake does not have beaches, it's marshy so if you want a beach you go to the Lake Cascade State Park side - there are about 7 sites to choose from. You need an Idaho state parks pass (which is surprisingly reasonable at $40) or to pay day use fees. There were a TON of paddleboarders, kayakers, and motorboats but again, the fourth. Cascade has a decent grocery and a gas station or two but isn't huge. McCall, 45 minutes north, has a few more amenities and Payette Lake is also lovely with clear water.

Amazing cell signal all around the lake. 5G. AT&T and TMobile. Didn't even need our antenna.

The campground has 21 sights split into by the somewhat rough dirt access road. We stayed on the lakeshore side. About half the sights are reservable and the other half first-come, first-served. This is a secluded campground on the west side of Cascade Lake. It is very quiet even with the campsites being a little to close to one another. It was hard to get the rig level as none of the sites are all that level. All the sites have ample tree cover and solar was an issue even though site #1 is one of the most open. French Creek runs directly behind site #1 and the other sites on the south side of the lakeshore part of the campground.

The lakeshore is beautiful and we even had a snowstorm in early June which was a nice surprise. The bathrooms are drop toilets and when we were the inside of the outhouses were clean. There are water spigots in the campground but no hookups. There was a lot of what we thought was mouse poo near the bathroom but it turned out to be bat guano. Very interesting to find bats roosting on the side of the outhouse. I think they were trying to stay warm during the snowstorm.

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We stayed here for 1 night enroute to San Rapheal Swell. Talked with a really helpful and friendly front desk guy at Cascade Ranger Office. He was very helpful about directing us to good camping options. The campground was totally empty. The park is well maintained, clean and very quiet. We'll be back to visit this one again.

The only slight downer was the gravel road leading to the campground. Very rough and washboard bumpy. Road goes from decent pavement to washboard gravel for about 1 or 2 miles.