Lava Campground — Hotel in Soda Springs

Really cute RV park, that the owners are definitely putting some work into to make it the best in town. They are building a store that will have a laundry facility (currently there is none) - so, that will be great when it's complete (maybe next year?). There are plenty of RV spots, some cute little retro trailers to stay in, and looks like an upscale cabin and vacation apartment has been built. However, there are some down sides that the owners should address to make it even better - so this feedback is mainly for them. 1) Please enforce the quiet hours that are stated in your check-in rules! Many travelers expect a quiet night's sleep at the end of a long day, and when you do nothing about loud, rowdy groups outside yelling / partying / playing loud music after midnight, then you let the few ruin it for the many. 2) It's great that you have all that beautiful green grass - but, your watering methods leave a muddy sloppy mess on the dirt roads and in the spaces, that also gets tracked inside our campers. 3) Speaking of the watering methods - your watering 'stand pipes' are a genius idea....except they aren't - and here's why - first, because of the height created, you are watering not just the grass, but also the roads, which is a complete waste of water (and I'm sure that cost is passed on to your customers), yet you have a sign in the showers to conserve water with short showers? Next, these permanently installed pipe stands are in the way of motorhome slides in a lot of cases - because your spots are just wide enough for the wheelbase (in some cases), but not wide enough to also put out slides and avoid the water stand pipe....so, you have to shift forward or backward if your slides are on that side - then there may not be enough room to park your vehicle without driving on the beautiful grass. 4) If parked on the 'inside loop' of 57-74, it's nearly impossible to safely get out unless there is an empty spot you can use as a road. Your map shows plenty of space between spot 57 and the shower house - but, that isn't the case in reality. Space 57 was completely filled with a large permanent 5th wheel complete with dog fence, large truck, golf cart, then railroad ties to block any other way through there to exit around the volleyball court, as the map shows. 5) The motion lights in the handicap shower are focused the wrong way, and the light goes out when you are showering....to get it to come back on, you have to walk out in the dark to the opposite corner before the sensor sees you to turn the light back on. Potentially dangerous. 6) We love how you have improved the landscaping by adding more trees, but we think the placement of the trees will be an issue in the future - like blocking easy access in and out of the spaces for the larger motorhomes. If you are trying to eliminate the big rig customers, that's the way to do it. 7) Finally, there is a beautiful night sky in Lava Hot Springs, and we were expecting to enjoy some star-gazing....but, several of the RV's in the park had obnoxiously bright exterior lights all over their rigs, and left them on all.night.long! I know it's the new 'thing', especially with 5th wheels - but, there should be a 'dark sky' / 'light polution' rule, so people could enjoy the stars as well. At the very least, there should be a rule that says your lights can't keep your neighbors up all night. I've included pictures of a couple of them, taken around 11:30 pm, and one of them even shows the all night watering of the dirt roads. The third picture shows another situation near the retro trailers...looks like a potential circuit overload situation, where more than one extension cord is run into one outlet for the AC's in the little trailers - but, it is also being watered by a sprinkler. Yikes! This is shocking, both figuratively, and potentially literally....children play in this area, but this is also...

Ok. Honest review. Took a scouting troop up here and stayed at the large group site. The location was great. You didn't feel like you were on top of other campers like it feels at some KOA's. The porta potties were spot on. They were so pretty, nice, clean and they had lights and fans so you weren't getting stinked out. There were people out every day cleaning the porta potties, the fire pits, garbage's, and general maintenance. We were right next to the river and yet we had very little mosquito problems. I did see them go around spraying the perimeter so I'm assuming that has something to do with it. The downfalls. There are NO trees at the large group sites. None. There are huge bushes of stinging nettles separating you from the other campsite but no trees. And when your camping in summer that becomes a huge problem. We did bring canopies but canopy shade and tree shade are a lot different in how well they cool the area down. Looking at the pictures it seemed like there would be trees but I was mistaken. There were a few on the smaller campsites but that's about it. We did have some kiddos and one adult who ended up with heat exhaustion and so we had to take everyone out of the campsite to go do other things that would keep them cool and not do a lot of what we were hoping to do at the campsite. So bring your canopies and leave your tree hammocks at home. Another downfall. The fire pits were deep but small so you wont be able to do any campfire cooking on them but you do have access to a couple of tiny coal grills so that's helpful except when your trying to cook 16 tin foil dinners; then you end up eating at 11:30 at night. Really that's about it on the negatives. It really was a great place. I really think if there was better natural shade and a bigger fire pit or bigger grills this would have hit my number one all time favorite campsite. As it is I highly recommend going, just not in...

This review is based on our experience with our 40ft fifth wheel with 4 slides pulled by a dually pickup. ||This is a newer park just past the busy little town of Lava Hot Springs. From the park there is a nice little trail along the river that is an easy walk to the Hot Springs. The west end of the park (with water and power sites as well as a couple sites with FHU) has a number of small trees but the east end sites (with only power) have none. We were in site 53 and it was roomy with nice green lawn, a fire pit, and a picnic table. It will be great when the trees get bigger. Our site pad was very thin gravel and we did needed a little leveling. The roads are easy to navigate and we had no problem backing into our site, although the roads are a little confusing when it comes to finding your site. The park was quiet during the week and quite empty. We left on Friday and it was filling up quickly with numerous families groups. Road noise wasn’t the best. Not a lot of traffic but a number of semi trucks using engine braking coming down the hill on highway 30. Most all the parks in town seem to be along Highway 30 so more than likely noise is an issue at most. There is also a train near but turns before passing this park with minimal noise and only a very distant horn now and then. The owners are very helpful and friendly and they have a lot of pride in their park. They are working hard to continue expanding and developing Lava Campground. We would...