Customer Reviews

Utah Camping: The Complete Guide to more than 400 Campgrounds (Foghorn Outdoors)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Foghorn series of campground guides is not without flaws. Even so, we know of no directories which do a better job of addressing campground aesthetics than these wonderful guides. In our experience, the look and feel of a campground is often the single greatest factor influencing the quality of a camping experience . . . and the factor totally ignored by nearly all other campground guides.

There are a number of directories which rate facilities, provide directions, tell you how to make reservations and give you an idea of the cost for a night's stay in a specific campground. This series gives similar basic information and then goes beyond that. The Foghorn guides actually give you a feel of what it is like to stay in a specific campground - a bit of a narrative description and a "scenic beauty rating" for each campground plus information about nearby recreation opportunities. We like that a lot.

Have we found instances where we liked a campground more or less than the book's author? Of course. Tastes differ and things change over time. Even so, we would rather have an admittedly subjective rating of a campground's intangibles than to have nothing to go on but a recitation of facts and figures.

Are the Foghorn Outdoors guides the only ones we use? No. But they are ALWAYS the first place we turn when selecting a destination campground.

We used this book extensively for a Utah car camping trip last month. While it does offer a lot of useful information, we found that we could not rely on the ratings given the campgrounds in deciding where to camp.

In the other foghorn guides, a 9 or 10 rating is relatively rare and usually well deserved. In this guide, however, they are dished out quite often in campgrounds other than private ones.

For example, if you look at the campgrounds along the Colorado outside of Moab, almost all are 9s. Yet these are located right by the road, have little shade, and very little privacy. Yes, the view in front of you is very nice but the road noise is very disturbing.

Also, in Capitol Reef, they awarded the Fruita campground a 10. This might be a 7 or even 8 but it's not a 10.

As far as not including Navajo National Monument as another reviewer complained, I believe NNM is located in Arizona and not Utah.

Other than the generous ratings, it's a fairly informative guide.

This book has wonderful information about camping in Utah. Slightly outdated but everything I have checked so far is still pretty accurate. I highly recommend this book to everyone, but act fast as it's no longer in print and being substituted by some vendors with a very similar book.

I BOUGHT A PRIOR EDITION OF THIS BOOK AND FOUND THAT IT DOES NOT LIST ALL THE C.G'S. MAYBE IT'S ME BUT, I COULDN'T FIND ANYTHING ON NAVAJO NAT'L MONUMENT! AGAIN, THE SAME CAMP GROUND HAS BEEN LEFT OUT. MAYBE IT'S A WELL KEPT SECRET. A WELL MADE EFFORT TO DUPLICATE "TOM STIENSTRA". NOW I SEE WHY TOM STIENSTRA GETS AWARDED "OUTDOOR WRITER OF THE YEAR"!!!! COM'ON GUYS, GET OFF THE ARM CHAIR AND DO SOME EXPLORING. GET OUT THERE!!! LEAD ME TO SOMEPLACE THAT I'VE NEVER BEEN TO BEFORE. SOMEPLACE WHERE I CAN SAY, WOW! I LOVE THIS BOOK!!