Sunset-Union Valley — Hotel in South Lake Tahoe

The lake is full! This campground has been renovated with plentiful new modern double restrooms.

Every campsite now has a bear box colored brown. Double and triple campsites have two and three bear boxes respectively.

The parking areas for the (generally quite large) campsites have been enlarged and have fresh blacktop. One large double site somewhat across from mine had room for two tent trailers and a massive total of five SUVs, etc.

The literature on Recreation.gov is now erroneous. It still says there are no bear boxes and has all the campsite numbers off by around five over or under. We happened to end up with the best site in the campground (number 53 - formerly 58).

If you like hot sun, a tiny paved area right next to the road and across from a huge double site then you want site 51-formerly 57. That site was vacant most of the busy 4th of July weekend likely due to its relative undesirability (worst in Meadow Loop).

A new large shower building is now completed for this campground across the street from the Meadow Loop and is merely awaiting usage approval from some form of bureaucratic regulatory agency.

If I get around to it, I will post a map with the correct site numbers and locations of the new restrooms. About a third of the campsites are walk in. Sunday afternoons are recommended for arrival to obtain a walk-in site as so many clear out that day.

It was a mad house for the 4th of July weekend with frequent toilet paper shortages and the dumpsters (empty at the beginning of the timeframe) now filled to the brim. Some groups greatly exceeded the maximum supposed limit to the 12-person double campsites with perhaps 20 to 40 in these sites.

The massive number of campers in the double sites combined with their attitude of dumping their trash everywhere (but in the dumpsters!) made it a challenge for the campground hosts.

Absolutely NO rangers were ever seen at this campground for the entire 6 days we were there to perhaps address the overcrowding issues and those same folks throwing bear bait (food and trash) all over the campground.

On occasion some of the campers failed to make it to the nearest restrooms or were returning to acquire emergency toilet paper (due to the frequent outages) and apparently had accidents half way back to their campsite. We witnessed such an event with one camper calling for his mother to rescue him after such an accident. We learned that the resultant mess and toilet paper (TP) was left at the spot of the accident for the campground hosts to deal with.

Bottom line is this is a great campground with spacious sites but if you are there on a busy weekend you might want to carry emergency TP since the new toilet houses only have room for three rolls of single ply TP and this is quickly exhausted by the "MASSIVE" numbers of campers in many of the double sites.

I would say everyone there had a good time with one exception. The huge numbers of campers at some of the double sites created quite a job for the poor campground host(s) trying to pick up after them so as to not have bears attracted to the campground. At Yosemite National Park folks leaving food out and/or throwing it all around would likely be fined and kicked out by the...

Sunset is the A typical weekender and holiday camping spot for the casual camper. Probably the go to for families and groups with boat launch and showers nearby.

They recently refurbished the entire 3 loops of the campground, making the road improvement, camp site improvements and bathroom improvements (bathrooms can smell a little harsh with you know what and also the chemicals they use, so my advise would bring some air freshener with you. I usually come up with some and leave in bathroom for everyone). I thought when they said they were refurbishing everything, they were going to ruin the experience but I have to say, they made improvements without taking away the outdoor experience (leave that to your neighbor running their generator first thing in the morning).

There are several trails from the campground area down to the lake. The campsites are all really Handicapped accessible in my opinion, but there area also designated sites too. Trails leading too the lake are not wheelchair accessible but you can easily go to the nearby boat launch area and find some access.

The road around the campsites area very wheelchair accessible and also for kids if they wanted to ride a bike. For those inquiring, yes, a beach cruiser would be fine. There's actually several nice walking/bike trails near the boat launch for those who want some exercise or just a nice paved path to walk on.

There are Fire pits (check on status of fire use, as with recent fires, they've limited fires. A great idea is to go online and buy a propane firepit, which work great and you can use when they don't allow regular fires. They're not to pricy, smokeless, not to heavy and work like those you see in someone's backyard. Be sure to check with camp host or information office on way up, as you'll need to fill out a tag for it (free!).

There are bear boxes at each site. Lock you stuff in bear boxes!! I have had 3 bears in my site during my 30 years of coming up here. The Bears scare off easy. They're not here for you, just your food, so make some noise and the black bears will go elsewhere.

Be respectful to your neighbors with noise during quiet period 10pm to 8am. I'd bet your going to meet some nice, weird, cracy (in a fun way) people you'd never thought to. A lot of great people from everywhere come up here...say hi to a neighbor, I'd bet they have extra of something you forgot

There area bbq's at the sites but I bring my small BBQ because I like it with a cover for tri tip! (p.s. shout out to Swingle Meat Comapny in Jackson, CA ...marinated tri tip "mother lode" and "Whiskey River" are awesome!!).

I have AT&T and have perfect coverage (5G). I know other people with other carriers and they have decent coverage as well but AT&T is strongest here from my knowledge.

Added some pictures of our travels here later in the winter time, as we like to walk the dogs and see the snow..12/28/20 (usually more snow than this but we took advantage of the...

This place is breathtaking. I loved everything about this experience except 1 thing. We arrived there on a Thursday evening, specifically my birthday, and had practically the entire campground to ourselves with the exception of a few occupied sites. On Friday, people came POURING in. Particularly younger folks with big loud trucks, kids, etc. But that wasn't what bothered me. We were woken up at 6 am on Saturday, the day we were leaving, by all these extremely obnoxious neighbors. There were probably at least 40 of them packed in 2 spots next to each other with 6-7 cars and even more tents. I believe camp quiet hours are between 10pm-6am. Well what do you know, right when 6am hit, they were playing music, throwing footballs around, letting their kids run around SCREAMING, and they were also yelling at each other so loud from across their site it was literally echoing through the entire campground. You could hear all of their conversations word for word. Now don't get me wrong, I understand most of us are on vacation and just want to enjoy ourselves, but there are some boundaries for common decency and respect. We are all PAYING to be here, yet you are ruining it for others because you have no consideration for those around you. Camping is a retreat for me, and on my birthday trip, all I wanted was to hear the sounds of the nature and enjoy some peace and quiet. Unfortunately that all ended on Friday when everyone got there and it only got worse from then on. So if you're reading this, I'm asking you to please be mindful of other campers. Not all of us are trying to party, in fact most of us are trying to escape that scene by coming out to the middle of the wilderness. I find it incredibly disrespectful and I truly don't understand how people can do these kind of things without an ounce of consideration for others. Other than that aspect, I had a wonderful trip and would highly recommend this campground to anyone. We might've just gotten unlucky this time by ending up next to...