Ward Mountain Campground — Hotel in Ely

UPDATE 2022: It's now $12 a night to stay here, no water that I could see. I didn't look that hard, but the nearby spigot was covered in weathered burlap so I assume there's still no water here.

This is a popular campground, if you can't find a site, be sure to talk to the camp host, he might know something you don't. When I saw him this morning it was 5:30, and I think he goes to bed early, so don't wake him up.

There are some sites with reservations so look at recreation.gov

A few years old: Awesome campground, especially for RVs, recently renovated so has many nice level sites with clean tables and BBQs. Currently NO WATER so come prepared and it's half price (normally $8 as of this review, reduced to $4 a night.)

This CG is about 7500 feet and we saw freezing temps and snow in mid-June but otherwise it was hot during the day. Not a lot of shade, despite an abundance of Great Basin junipers and pinion pine. Very nice camp hosts!

Also excellent location just 5 miles out of Ely, with Ridley's market, Hotel Nevada (with new Denny's), Ely library for Internet access, and one of the best historical railways in the country, the Nevada Northern.

NOTE that recreation.gov did not have accurate info about this CG, they did not know about 50% discount due to no water and had other bad info. I called and spoke to three different people at recreation.gov who were not helpful, then I asked for a supervisor who said he would look into it. No response a week later :( Great CG, if you can just show up and try for a walk-in site, I suspect this CG only gets really busy around...

We were passing through on hwy 6 en route to Moab and this campground appeared at 6 pm, a serendipitous occurrence that often happens for us. It's 6 miles to Ely so easy to get supplies. The first loop A has several pull through spots which we availed ourselves of. $4 per night with our senior pass, the campsite is spotless, like it opened the day before, with 2 picnic tables 2 stove stands, steel firepit, steel barbecue, a fancy tent pad, the entire campground is spotless and laid out like a new high end suburb (not really our thing but impressive nonetheless). The pit toilets are sweet smelling and literally spotless, amazing!

Best of all they have great bike/hiking/ski trails out of the campground leading up and around Ward Mountain. Apparently there was a ski hill here at one time, there is a well maintained dirt road just north of the campground off hwy 6 that leads up near the top of the trails and you can bomb down the road or access the trails near the top. I climbed the G loop right out of the campground, it was a bit of a grind up on warm day at over 7000 ft but the views and the downhill were well worth it.

We ended up staying 4 days since this place was so enjoyable, weather perfect, biking to ourselves, probably 5 other people in the CG mid week, in the...

This was a nice campground, with the cleanest bathrooms of our entire trip. It’s a little less conventional compared to the wooded forest campgrounds we stayed at in Yosemite and Lassen, but it was enjoyable for the most part. Not too far from town, and with convenient, close parking, it’s a great option.

The only downside to our one-night stay here was an extremely loud and obnoxious wedding that was being held in the campground in what looked like a community/ group area for reunions are large groups. I’m not dissing the fact they held a wedding here, but when the ground shaking bass and singing went on well after midnight, we were shocked that a camp host or someone in charge, didn’t tell them it was time to settle down. There was no chance of sleeping in a tent with that level of noise and partying. I’m hopeful that type of partying isn’t a frequent occurrence here. Other than that slight inconvenience, we enjoyed...