Tule Recreation Area Campground

First of all, if I'm going to drive an hour away from civilization, I expect the site to be awesome. But this is a huge concrete pad (think gigantic parking lot) made for gigantic rigs. I was there to see the pelicans, which were not there. I would not go back again. There was a family reunion going on right across from my site and I'm not kidding when I said that those folks stared at me for nearly an hour. It was creepy.

Lots of sites available without reservations. Took an unserviced site overlooking the lake in the distance. Common areas have traffic during the day, as does the highway, but all traffic slows down after 11pm. There were some people in tents that were noisy during the evening but we camped away from them. You have a choice of north and south campgrounds, so lots of sites to choose from. No OTA TV stations to speak of.

We generally enjoy COE parks but this one let us down. The park itself is nice and has great potential. However, there are no enforcement of the rules. There are a lot of people living in tents that stay here for more than 14 day limit. They would be up way past quiet hours and were very loud. Park rangers or camp hosts were no where to be found. Some of the other campers were outside drinking and smoking things - I have no problem with this as a life choice but when you become loud and obnoxious, it's a problem, particularly since we have a young child with us.

The park itself is nice and the sites are HUGE but some are very unlevel. We had to use a lot of blocks to get our front end up. At sites with power, the pedestals were quite a bit away but our cord just reached. There are water spigots scattered around but instead of stretching hoses we just used our tank. No big deal.

There are coin showers and they are average. My wife found a syringe cap in one of them. We've heard that there is a drug problem at this park so I guess we heard right. The showers aren't particularly clean but I've seen worse.

If we needed to overnight somewhere, I would consider here but not for more than a night. If the rules were enforced this would be a great place.

Nice large spots to back in. Water hookup on most sites is very far away and must have 2 long hoses to reach. Luckily we found a site that was closer and used our 50 foot hose to hookup. No sewer connections which would be hard for a longer stay but they did have a dump station. Absolutely no verizon service, so plan on being off the grid while you are there.

We stopped here on a whim. We generally have great luck with Army Corps campgrounds. They are usually clean, spacious, and well maintained. We were pretty much by ourselves except for a few other occupants. Turned out after talking to a ranger that they get quite a few homeless people making camp here. Had quite a few cars come into the Campground really late, like 2am and shine lights into our camper. Not great, when you have no cell service and you find out later that it’s a pretty regular occurrence for drug users. Proximity to Sequioia NP was bonus, 60miles or so.