Kelly's Beach

THESE PEOPLE ARE EXTORTIONISTS!!

My friends and I paid to park here to get out after floating down the King's River. After being on the water for 3-4 hours we were immediately greeted by men yelling at us. The man told us that if we wanted to get out of the water we needed to have a wristband of pay $5 per person. We tried to tell him how we had paid for parking in the front office and never received wristbands, but he argued with us to try and get us to pay more money.

Eventually he told us that if we wanted to get out of the water, we needed to swim UPSTREAM and get out on the other side of the bridge. Are you kidding me? So we go upstream a little bit and get out on a storm drain and start walking to our car. Again, the man comes over and starts yelling about how we can't get out there and it's private property. We tell him that the storm drain belongs to the city and we can walk on it if we please. He GETS IN OUR FACES and continues to yell, at which point I tell him to call the cops if he had a problem. He left after that.

I seriously don't know where to begin discussing my experience @ Kelly's Beach. I have VERY mixed feelings about this place.

I guess I'll start with the positives:
I love the fact the site is right on the water... it was beautiful! I also love that they offer a bus ride up to a drop off spot and you float right back to your campsite. The site we were placed in was at the very south side of the campground, and it couldn't have been a better spot for us. We had a huge tree, grass, a fire-pit, two picnic tables, and a water spigot right there. Plus we weren't jammed in amongst the other campers, we got plenty of space. Lucky for us! And our camping neighbors happened to be the nicest, most down to earth people we met in the entire place!!

The negatives, and oh my they are a plenty:
I would gladly pay more per night to tent camp here, if they would remodel the bathrooms. They are run down, and disgusting! First there are only three bathroom stalls and three shower stalls. The toilets were on the outs and had duck tape and towels wrapped around them to prevent leaking and/or breaking, I'm not sure. None of the three stalls could be locked, and half the time they were out of toilet paper. You definitely need to bring your own TP, soap and a hand towel inside with you. As for the showers, Friday night only two of the stalls had curtains, and by Saturday night, there were none, which I'm sure had something to do with the drunk girls rinsing off the grime after the float down the river. The floor is constantly wet, and there is a real plumbing problem with the toilets and the showers. Don't expect a hot shower either... there is not enough hot water to go around for the campsite, which sucked! The water in the shower was colder than the river water temp! Also, in the early evening Saturday they had no power to the restrooms, so you had to do your business my flashlight until they finally turned the switch. :(

Also, the website claims "No excessive noise after 11 p.m" and "Lights out in park by midnight, except when setting camp." -- Those two rules are NOT enforced in the least! Saturday night people were up playing music, singing, talking, and just plain being obnoxious until nearly 5am. It made for a really shitty slumber, and a rough ride home on Sunday. I don't mind people having fun, but that was an insane amount of noise until the sun came up.

In addition they cut the water supply to the campsites sometime Saturday evening around dinner time, and they still weren't up and running when it was time to clean up and head out.

I really wish they would make some changes, because I would really like to make this an annual trip, and Kelly's is so convenient in many ways. But the excessive noise made it difficult to get any sleep, and I felt dirtier once I left the bathrooms than I did before I even went in. Kelly's has such great potential, I just really believe they need to consider how they can make it a better experience for the campers/floaters, even if that means hiking the price up a bit to do some repairs, as well as enforcing the quiet rules at the same time!!!!

The only reason we had a good time is because we made the best of it. To start the weekend, the reservation people f... up the bus tickets on us. Mike did not read the departure times right so we the paying customers had to site and wait because he fucked up. The bus had to be jumped started that looks great infront of a paying customer. And Mike if you are going to walk around and Bitch at people about little things, pick up the dog shit your dog is leaving around infront of peoples tents. I could go on, but last when you look t the facebook page it is reaching out for people to say good things about this place. The only good thing was is we met some great people next to us and had a great day floating the river with them.
I am giving it one start because that is the only way I can post something