Lower Tonto Creek Campground — Hotel in Payson

This is a decent camp ground. If your just a regular camper or part of a group looking for a simple camp Experience..meaning you have vault toilets, fire pits, picnic tables, a paved path to walk and a parking lot to park in, then yes this camp ground is great.

I gave it 4 stars for a few specific reasons.

1 - the highway is right there. You can hear it at every camp spot, day and night. You can see it as well.

2 - the parking lot. This is not a camp ground where you can “pull in” to your campsite. You have to park your car in the lot and then haul all your stuff to your desired site. This in specific made the trip a little undesirable. Since they do the parking situation like this, you can not run electricity to your tent from your car to inflate air mattresses. It’s also a pain to get all Your gear to your site..I even had a wagon with me which made it much much easier..but still a pain.

The positives of this camp ground are the amenities and closeness to water. Lots of trees to and clean bathrooms. I really wish you could pull into your site..that would have made this campground 5 stars easily.

*came in April and it was to cold at night. Too cold to be comfortable. Would have been better if I had waited 2...

This was a pretty good campsite that wasn't too busy. We initially had plans to go to Upper Tonto Creek but it was full. Really though, this campground was more spacious with much better parking. We caught some really good skies while we were there as you can see in the pictures I shared. Only downside was that it is pretty close to the highway and if you are a light sleeper semis and motorcycles will keep you up...

Campsite was clean and we were the only ones there until late. The space was nice too though close to a busy road so we heard cars all night long. We couldn’t figure out where to get fire wood and the park Marshall was a bit intense. Not very friendly or helpful but very aggressive about yelling at people...