By:
Submission
Located at the confluence of Snow Corral and Deer Creeks along the McKinley Grove Road, Buck Meadow Campground lies on a large flat sandy area adjacent to Deer Creek. Some shade provided by large lodgepole pine trees. Access is on paved and dirt road.
In Shaver Lake, CA, at intersection of Tollhouse Rd (State Rt. 168) and Dinkey Creek Rd., take Dinkey Creek Rd. east 11.9 miles to McKinley Grove sign. Turn right onto McKinley Grove Rd. and go 10 miles to campground on left.
Remote but clean, suggest a truck or high clearance car for spots 5 or 6. Bugs are crazy in late spring. Don't wear bright colors too, they loved my purple shirt. 5 was missing the fire ring but the rest of the spots had everything
This is a "first come, first serve" campground at $22/night and we had a very enjoyable stay here. We were lucky enough to get one of the larger sites for our family, and then our nice neighbor told us he was leaving the next day, so we were able to get his site for our friends the next day. That site was next to the river, which gave some nice ambiance and fishing (caught and released a couple out of there). We arrived on a Tuesday, which made getting a camp site easy. Come Friday night, people were driving in and leaving because there wasn't any more space. Saturday morning I flagged a family down to say we were leaving, so they got lucky. Arrive early to get a spot... no later than Thursday night or Friday morning.
The site manager, Curtis (Curt), was a super nice guy who was very accommodating at the site and for ideas of places to go. I told him I was impressed how the toilet didn't smell bad like other sites I've been to, and he bragged about how he uses a combination of pine and cinnamon to keep the smell down.
The bear lockers are very small, so don't expect to be able to put a large cooler in them; however, Curt said he hadn't seen or heard a report on a bear in that campground for 6 years, which is when he started. So, we kept our large coolers in the back of my truck, but still covered them up with a tarp and net at night.
There is No Running Water on this site... you must bring your own clean water. I almost gave this a 4-Star because of this, but since we had such a nice time, I couldn't do it. Curt told us we could use water from the river if we needed to, which we did do once. We did empty a container and brought a drinking cooler and a shower bag to Camp Edison and Dinkey Creek campgrounds to fill up when we went there for a day-use (highly recommend). We used the shower bag for washing our hands, but for showering - we did that at Camp Edison.
My wife has all of the pictures, which I will try to post later.
