James Delli Gatti
This past August our family was able to take our latest adventure together in Jackson County Oregon’s beautiful and scenic Union Creek Campground, which is situated between the small town of Prospect and Crater Lake; one of the great natural wonders of the world. This section of Oregon is a perfect balance of Oregon’s Rainy and heavily wooded North and its warm and much drier south. The Union Creek Campground is a very green and majestic space; perfect for a week of camping. Tents and campers are nestled beneath lush, green, and towering trees that are teeming with wildlife. To complete this little gem; running right through the middle of the Union Creek Campground, is the powerfully crisp, clean, and clear Rouge River.
The campground features clean, well maintained, and family friendly campsites. We chose Union Creek Campground because we felt that this place featured a good balance of basic amenities. Amenities aside, it still felt like it was in harmony with the raw nature that we loved and enjoyed so much. The amenities featured here featured a potable and clean drinking water source, clean private outhouses, and established fire pits.
These amenities allowed our family; with younger children, to enjoy the tranquility of nature, while removing the stress and anxiety of “roughing it” in the great outdoors. Some of the sites at Union Creek Campground can be reserved in advance, while others were on a, “first come, first served” basis. You can go online and see a diagram showing you where the sites are located and which sites can be reserved in advance. There is also a fee per additional vehicles (more than one per site) and free available parking outside of the campsite, which helps keep the vehicle traffic to a minimum.
Not far from Union Creek Campground (about a ten minute walk) is the Union Creek Resort. It features a country store, a small CONES & CO. ICE CREAM SHOP, and a quaint (but well known) restaurant called Beckie’s Café. Beckie’s serves some infamously delicious and well known pies. We mostly go for pie, but they also serve an amazing breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu.
Some tourist hot spots that are close by are also fun to visit. Take a brief hike on a well paved path to Natural Bridge and the Gorge. A little farther off the beaten path (about a forty-five minute drive) is the spectacular Crater Lake. Crater Lake is created by a volcano.
You can take a day trip to Shady Cove, for a small mom-and-pop style raft rental company called “Rapid Pleasure Rafting co.” We could not have asked for a better rafting experience and this place offered everything we could think of for our rafting needs, from life jackets to squirt guns, and tips on great places to stop for lunch on our way down the river. The river was refreshing and provided us with ample stops along the way to pick fresh and ripe black berries. Mid-way down the river we stopped for about an hour at a small country store called, “Sunset on the Rogue Country Store” too warm up and eat some lunch. This store caters to rafters and offers hot freshly cooked hamburgers, finger foods, and a myriad of other snacks to not only warm us up, but to feed the appetite we worked up on this river trip. The Rogue River was a very fun and easy-going river trip (mellow enough for an adventurous six-year-old) which took us about four hours from start to finish (including our one hour stop for lunch).
After rafting we changed into some warm comfortable clothes and headed to a family friendly pizzeria called, “Pizza At the Cove“. They feature a great selection of hot and freshly baked pies to choose from, as well as offer a decent selection of beer on tap for the adults. All of the kids loved this rafting adventure, the pizza, and the family time. They all had their fill of fun and adventure, and fell fast asleep as soon as we hit the road and headed back to Union Creek Campground.
I would highly recommend this adventurous and majestic trip to anyone looking for lasting memories and an experience of a lifetime. You don’t have to have an adventuresome and active little family such as ours to enjoy most of what Union Creek Campground has to offer. You won’t want to miss all of the amazing adventure, wonders, and discovery that is contained within it, and all of the beauty that surrounds it.