Jackson Lake State Park

I would love to give Jackson Lake State Park a high review. It has so many things going for it. However, poor state park management ruins it. First the good. It is very pretty. There are many, many camping sites. I would not want to be there high season as it would be way too crowded. We headed out on a post Labor Day weekend and found that almost all of the lakeside electric sites were taken. There were a few open but we bypassed them to stay in the non-electrified, almost empty campground. We always prefer less people.

We came late and got a site with no immediate neighbors.

 A path from our site lead down to a pretty beach.

Sunshine and Blossom sniff the pretty beach with a path right from our site.

Max got his kayak out on the water even though it was late.

Our fire pit and view of the water.

 The sky at night was stunning. We had no moon and the stars were great. The campground lights at the bathrooms however were very poorly done. They weren't directional and aimed down. They sprayed light in all directions. But the sky was stunning anyways because there are no cities nearby.

View of us from the campground road.

Really nice trail to the visitors center.

On the way to the visitor center an annoying ankle biting dog tried to bite Blossom. At first Blossom turned away but when the dog came at her flank she gave a very appropriate air snap. The owner apologized but had no voice control over his off leash dog.

Really nice because it was half in shade which we all appreciated.

Beach area near the marina.

Kayaking the next day.

The next day a truck showed up next to us with a boat trailer. Ok, no big deal. Then a boat docked at the beach with kids. No big deal. Then the truck was joined by a SUV with a couple with an unleashed pit bull who immediately ran up and got in a fight with my on-leash dog. I tried to get them to call her back but they had no voice control. After they apologized they continued to let her run around unleashed. She tried approaching us again but I yelled at her and she turned away. This happened again. I think she wasn't particularity aggressive but since they had no voice control she should not have been off leash. Needless to say we packed up and moved to the other end of the campground.

View back toward camper from our second site.

The dogs love to explore beach areas.

Beach area from second site.

View out to the water. You can see how green it is from algae.

Path to beach from second site.

We had a nice tree at the second site.

Nice beach walking area.

Blossom braves the yucky green water.

Our picnic table from the second site.

We had a very good time at this beautiful campground. It is very, very buggy. Lots of flies and gnats. You don't want to open your mouth when they are around. They are thick and you can hear the buzzing when they swarm around your head.  However we understand water = bugs.

The part I didn't like is they charge $20 for electric or $16 for non-electric with $7/day fee if you don't have the state park pass which we do. But they don't clean the sites, beach or pick up the old tags. I picked up dog poop around our site so we wouldn't step in it. They answer your questions much in the way a teenager would answer your questions if they thought you were stupid. They don't enforce the on-leash dog rule. They don't keep large groups from parking at camp sites and using them as day use sites. Overall the management team of this park gets a big thumbs down.

Edit: I forgot to mention that this is apparently duck hunting season. Across the lake there was alot of noisy shooting from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. Pretty much woke everyone up and was a topic of complaining conversation amongst all the campers.