We’ve been coming to Donner for years. This is our go-to place. We’ve camped with family, friends, taken bike rides, swam, hiked and had crawfish feasts caught from the creek. I thought I knew this place. Well, well look what we discovered this trip.
We’re at campsite #99. It’s a HUGE site. Look behind Ned and you’ll see a split rail fence. Guess what’s behind the split rail fence?
A little lake! We’ve hiked around this lake before, but in my mind it was located farther away from the campground. There was no one in sight. I asked the campground host if one could swim in this lake (I wanted to make sure it wasn’t a drainage ditch or an old toxic mining site, you never know around these here parts). She assured me that it was great lake and people swim in it all the time. Mind blown.
So yep, that’s pretty much where we hung out the last couple of days and we had the place to ourselves! The water temperature was about 10 degrees warmer than Donner Lake too. What a bonus. So fun to just read, take a dip a few steps away from our site and repeat.
Really appreciate that we didn’t have to haul all our picnic supplies back to the campsite too.
Or course we did manage to rally and get in some bike rides. This park has so many fun trails to ride.
We even did a ride around the lake (and some of those hills are no joke).
We still went swimming and goofing around in the big creek. The people watching is just too good to pass up. So fun to watch people learning to paddle board, kayakers dodging the swimmers and kids jumping off rocks. This state park is awesome and we so appreciate that it’s so close to home.
One last picture…biking along a trail at dusk. Great two days camping here.
