KAYAK STARVED ROCK CAMPGROUND - Ottawa, Illinois

Al Y.

Absolutely an amazing experience! The campground is well maintained, the staff is very accommodating and friendly, the kayaking is really fun and interesting, and the views are outstanding. It’s a 10 minute drive to Starved Rock State Park, and there are food options within 10 minutes if you don’t want to cook. The bathrooms are porta potties but they are easily the cleanest and nicest I’ve ever been in.

We had a good sized group here and everyone loved it. If you have any issue or question, text them and you’ll be amazed at how quickly you get a response. Highly recommended!

Itsme

Great wide place compared to the other campsites for nature tripping and camping. The only challenge was there are no shower rooms, toilet (only porta potty) and even water faucet available. But it did not discouraged us from enjoying the experience. Just bring your own gallons of water for drinking, cooking and washing. The camp staff are helpful too. We will definitely going to come back again next year. Hopefully the management can install bathrooms one day.

Grace D.

We drove in for the kayaking. We did not camp overnight. The staff was so friendly. Also, they pretty much did all the work for us in terms of getting the kayak in and out of the water. Beautiful views and peaceful experience. The kids loved it.

Susan G.

DO NOT BRING YOUR OWN KAYAKS. Absolutely miserable experience. Owners and staff do not enforce the right rules here. Campsites are way too close to each other with no brush privacy between them. Enjoy the beautiful sounds of screaming children during quiet hours, dogs running around without a leash, and if you're lucky like me you get to set up your tent on top of dog feces too! Love being woken up at 3am with cars entering the campsite. Truly enjoyed having to clean up the previous campers' garbage before we left too. If you bring your own kayak, get ready to obey all their rules as if they own your vessel and the government waters you launch them in! You're stuck kayaking the small enclosed area they designated for kayaks, you'll hardly see any of the real beauty starved rock has to offer. You can't kayak after 5:30 unless you pack up and drive across the river to the public boat launch, that's where you'll be able to see the beautiful rock formations without the owners yelling at you all the time. Truly a cash grab operation here. Save yourself the trouble and rent a campsite from the Starved Rock State Park website instead, they're better maintained and you'll have better access to nature there. Thanks for nothing Sarah and the rest of this miserable staff.

Bob S.

We camped/kayaked here this weekend. The owner was extremely accommodating. Moved our campsite to a better location. Brought her truck to our site so we could get power to fill our air mattress. Although it was very busy she took the time to show us different sites we might like better and had very nice conversations with us. Kayaking was beautiful. We saw beautiful bald eagles and other wildlife. The rocks were gorgeous. Our site was right on the river with tons of room. We had two large tents with a crazy amount of room to spare. Sites were quiet at night. Couldn’t have asked for a better time.

Kiel S.

EDIT: Added a star because most of these problems weren't the fault of the campground itself and the owner was pretty responsive to complaints.

It is a nice campground, but the sites are close together, with little to no separation. Unfortunately, between the live music at the neighboring marina until 11pm, and campers playing loud music it was hard to have an enjoyable experience. I will give the owner credit and she did tell the campers to turn the music off when we texted her. Which they did, but then spent the next 30 minutes yelling and swearing about her.

The lack of access to potable water is an inconvenience as well.

All-in-all this place could have been a great camping experience, but the marina next door, barges, bad camping neighbors, and early morning gunshots made it difficult to enjoy our stay.

shubham R.

Great fun and memorable experience. We did not book ahead of time as we planned it on the spot. After reaching the site we paid and filled the waiver online as suggested by the staff. As we did not book ahead of the time we weren't going to be on the guided tour. But fortunately our guides Ritchie and Jeremy were very accommodating as they included us in the tour as well. The most memorable experience was that it started to rain after half a point but we still made it back. Along with other scenic spots we also saw an aquatic snake sun bathing on one of the logs in the water. Very memorable experience!!!

Jennifer J.

I would not recommend this place at all. I have kayaked a lot around ottawa. I’ve been to Ayer’s landing and the prior kayak starved rock (off of Rt 71.) Kayak Starved Rock at this location is incredibly rude. They close at 6pm and I was told to be back by 5:30. I paid for a half day which is 4 hours. I paid for 4 hours and got 2 and a half. Totally fine. I completely understand that being late is on me. I showed up at 5:35 with the kayak…after 2 phone calls and 2 text messages. I was 5 min late. I apologized again, and I apologized to the girl working. I stated that I could see the end of the route, but I wasn’t quite there. I apologized to the girl when I returned, and she said “I’m sorry, I’m sure the owners are calling you and texting you.” I had 2 friends with me that had their own kayaks (they paid $10 each to launch.) We had to load them up onto their vehicle after getting out of the water. The owners text me again stating that we needed to leave because we were going to make their alarms go off. This was all still before 6pm. I text back that we had an issue with the kayaks but we were leaving. After we were driving away the owner text me yet again. I stated through text message that this was ridiculous and I would never be back. She proceeded to call me, yell at me, laugh at me, tell me there must be some miscommunication on my end…and then proceed to hang up on me. Please don’t go here unless you would like to be harassed. The locations are not clearly marked and you’re right in the channel with a lot of boats. The staff was great. The owner…not so much.