Keough's Hot Spring

Arrived without reservation but accommodated in fairly level site. No Verizon service but the do provide a good wifi. Our site. #5c had 30 amp and water, but site plug had an open ground from a broken plug. Hooked up electric to next site unused. Camping fee is $40/ nite with a $2 discount for the daily pool fee of $10 instead of 12/ day. Many children under 10 in water with parents. Gave 4 stars because of that. Both hot and warm pools refreshing and clean. Lots of birds in the nearby trees chattering.

I have such mixed feelings about this place. On the one hand, we'd been camping in the desert for the last 6 months and our site at Keogh's had lush green grass, tall shade trees, and a burbling brook. That part was pretty magical.

Everything else about our stay just left me feeling irritated. When you arrive it's not clear where check-in is. When I went to the pool house check in, the woman there didn't know how to check me in. She couldn't reach the woman who knew how and sent me out to drive around the campground looking for her. The check-in lady eventually showed up at the pool house but waiting & looking for her wasted about 40 minutes of my day. We had assumed that the campground would at least have a dump station, but it doesn't. So that wasted another half hour of driving time to go to Brown's Town to dump the tanks. No one mentioned to us that we could get a discount there, so we paid the full $12 to dump on top of the $33/night to stay in an electric/water site in the campground. (Dry sites are available for $28/night).

The hot springs pool area is okay but has seen better days. Daily rate for the springs area in May of 2018 was $12 for non-campers and $8 for campers. The floor boards in the ladies' changing room were rickety and a couple of them felt downright dangerous. You must shower before entering the pool and there are only 2 showers available for this. One of them was cold water only. I would have waited for the other free rinse shower, but someone was in there with 2 toddlers using it as an actual family bathing experience. I suspect this is because the campground charges $2 for a six-minute shower at the bathhouse. I don't object to campgrounds charging for a shower, but in this instance I felt totally cheated. The hot springs at Keogh's has enough volume that hot water just flows down the creek by the road, and more hot water gets dumped from the outflow of the swimming and hot pool areas. They have no shortage of free 104 degree water. So by all means charge $2/shower to cover your cleaning costs, but could you not give us 10 minutes to shower? In addition, my hot water ran out before my 6 minutes was up (I know - I had just looked at my phone), so I rinsed in very cold water.

So I'm on the fence with this one. I may stay here again for the shade and green grass, but I have stayed at campgrounds that charged me way less and gave me way more than Keogh's did.

The lawn was well kept and the spots were nicely shaded which was nice in the early summer. We used the 85 degree pool which is an extra fee but worth it for late day of swimming in the warm water.

It's close enough to town for groceries and gas and served as a nice home for us to visit the Bristlecone forest.

The tree in our site was a roosting tree for a bevy quail which we watched come down from the mountain every evening. They were really a site to see all at once, swooping and cooing over our heads!

There was a trash can in our site that several people used which was a bit annoying especially when it became full. But it is a small thing to complain about.

Stayed here on a Wednesday 9/2/22015 as a quick overnight stop on the way up 395. It was a little confusing checking in, but the staff were friendly. We had a nice campsite in grassy area with water and electric. Pretty idyllic with shade trees and a nice little hot creek behind us, then the neighbors showed up. They were nice enough but their trailer was not more than 8 feet away in front of ours. Too close for my comfort. The saving grace was the nice lawn in back of our trailer since we were the end site. There is no dump station at the campground, but you can dump at their sister campground called Brown Town just south of Bishop for a reduced fee ($12 reduced to $5) The dump station at Brown Town is easy access.

There is an extra fee of $10/person to use the hot springs. If you pay for this when you register for camping, it will only cost $8/person. The staff are pretty easy going and it's a relaxing place to be. The hot springs building is pretty old and funky, but the hot pools more than make up for that. There are two pools, one hot (104 degrees) and the other big one lukewarm. the water is very clean and they have showers right there at the pool. There is also a snack bar and a small store onsite.

We had no cell service for either Verizon or ATT but they do have an open WiFi connection available. It worked fine at first, but when more campers showed up, it slowed down considerably.

"I wanted to talk to you about what happened in the pool," he said, walking up to our campsite nestled firmly between two neighbors, but still with enough room to not feel completely packed in.

"What happened?" I asked, oblivious to the events earlier that day.

"About why your wife and the kids left," he was the campground host and rode around the grounds on an electric scooter he called a Hardley-a-Davidson. Smiling and jovial, I'd spoken with him the night before when he told me not to worry about paying, someone would be around to collect my credit card information.

The story unraveled. Apparently a kid--someone else's--had thrown up in the always-85 degree pool. She hadn't told me yet, but this prompted my girlfriend to remove herself and my son, and as the tale would have it, several other swimmers as well. He felt bad, quite so judging by the way he went on and on.

The pool costs extra, $10 or so depending on your age, and he was quick to refund us.

"I still haven't paid for camping though," I mentioned.

"Someone will take care of it," he assured me.

Our stay came and went, and we were all packed up and ready to leave. I looked around for the hum of his scooter and surely enough he came whistling around the corner. I inquired again as to how I might pay.

"I called the phone number but they're not open until 11 and there's no answering machine," I told him. He leaves on his scooter and shows up a few minutes later.

"They'll take care of you in the office now," he assures me. And then goes on to tell me about great horned owls that hunt quail in a cypress tree that's part of our spot. He talks of a young hawk that's trying to compete, unsuccessfully, with the owl. How they drain and clean the pool every week. How the local high school kids get hired for the summers to work the place, but as soon as they finally get it down, it's time for them to head off to college. I like him immensely and if it weren't for the price tag--higher than that of all the free BLM land but on par with the various other campgrounds in town, all owned by someone named Brown--I would stay longer.

As I go in to pay, the girl working the office tells me she swore we already paid. Then she checks the register, and apparently we weren't ever even recorded as having been there. I feel like a ghost in the desert. A combination of remorse for announcing my desire to pay and satisfaction at upping my own karma ensues.

She gives us a slip of paper good for a discounted dump at the nearby Browns Town Campground ($5 instead of $12).

I spent the entire time working, sucking up the gracious AT&T service and campground wifi, and so never even got to experience the hot springs or pool for myself.

I hear the mother of the kid who puked in the pool never 'fessed up. If we're in the area again, I'll gladly return for the same experience again, next time hopefully that mom and her poor nauseous child will have scheduled their vacation plans differently.