Our next nearby camping experience while visiting our daughter's family in Grand Junction, CO was at Highline Lake State Park in Fruita. Fruita is a neighboring town west of Grand Junction. As we did prior during this visit to Grand Junction, we spent the weekdays camping. We stayed at the Book Cliffs Campground instead of the other option, the Sunset Ridge Campground. The Sunset Ridge Campground opened in the spring of 2025. It has full hookups but the sewer access closed possibly for the winter or that amenity is still not functional. We never saw any campers at that campground. Where we stayed, other than the campground hosts, of which there were two, there were less than three other campers. They only seemed to be passing through as they only were there for one night. The Book Cliff Campground doesn't have electric hookups and the weather was unusually cloudy/rainy as well as the the low solar intensity of late November so we put out our two deployable solar panels that are rated at 400 Watts each. Jane was able to sew without restraint that way. Here is the camper at the campground.
The lake was closed to surface activities so as not to disturb the migratory wildlife. Although, there are seven dedicated duck blinds at one end of Highline Lake for hunters. The park had a nice network of multi-use trails. We used them as bicycle trails. The main trail was relatively dry and some sections had hard packed gravel and/or were double wide. The secondary trails were single width and had wet spots. The mud in this area gets very sticky and slick. So when you ride in it, it accumulates on your tire like wet snow and it is just as slick if not more. So I rode a few of the secondary trails but they weren't as enjoyable as they would have been had the desert been dry. Fortunately, the park had a designated bike wash station to clean off my bike. It was just a water spigot with a sign that said "Bike Wash". So after my first day of using the wash station I brought a brush to help scrub the mud off. The trail network wasn't extensive, so I usually rode the main trail around the lake twice. I didn't ride the first full day at the campground since it rained the first night and then on and off the following day. Here is a photo that shows one of the trails and the type of desert land. It shows the intersection of the main trail with one of the secondary trails. That is my bike laying on the main trail. As you can surmise, the trails were virtually empty and I didn't need to worry about my bike blocking traffic.
The lake is man made and the top of the dam is part of the main trail around the lake. At one end of the dam are some placards explaining the past geology of the area and also the fish nets they have in place to keep non-native lake fish from accessing the Colorado River. Here are pictures of those placards.
I also took some pictures of the lake from the same vantage point. The third one is a panoramic picture so it includes all of the lake including the top of the dam.
One of the park kiosks near the lake had six sections for displaying informational signs. Five of the sections were completely blank except for two that said new signs were coming. I thought it was humorous it said new signs were coming in 2024 and here I was looking one year past in 2025.
That is all the local camping we have planned for this visit to Grand Junction. Currently we plan on heading to Arizona the first week of December and then returning to Grand Junction in January. We will see how that pans out. I'm writing this on Thanksgiving day so I hope everyone had Happy Thanksgiving.
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