Monument Lake Campground

Second time staying here; can’t recommend it enough! Nice to see the gators in the lake and hear the birds at night. The showers and facilities in general are very good and the hosts are attentive/helpful. 10/10!

We’ve been staying at this campground every year for the last 20 yrs. Never have we had any issues however, our recent stay was a bit of a hassle. To our surprise, when we got there, we were told we had to keep our cooler in our truck b/c of bears. Had we known this ahead of our stay, we would’ve planned differently. Our truck could not fit our large cooler & we use the bed of our truck as our “tent” as we have a topper on the bed. We had no choice to leave our cooler outside and we did not stay in the tent area (where apparently are bear proof lockers) as our preferred spots are by the lake. We were told we would be fined if we did leave our coolers out but the NPS needs to do better with communicating these new rules in advance not spring it upon people when they arrive. We will be reconsidering our stays at this campground going forward. Shame b/c the campground is beautiful, peaceful, and bathrooms are always clean and hot showers are always available.

A very pleasant 2 nights! The restroom & shower facility was excellent! No bug problem. Wish I had brought my fishing gear, the lake was a real plus. Saw several folks catch fish.

I'm a frequent visitor to this particular campground. Having camped along the Cypress Preserve and the Everglades, I keep coming here for a number of reasons. First is the ease of access, it is on US41 with direct access from Miami and Naples/Marco Island area, also has a connect to I-75 thru US41 at the junction leading to Everglades City. Second, the grounds are well-kept, the restrooms are clean and well lit, and there is potable water available on site from a well dug into the Biscayne Aquifer, and third, there are excellent communications due to a cell phone tower right off the campgrounds, so one never loses contact with the outside world. This may seem not important to some, and important to others, myself included.

Quick drive down to the Florida Trail

We returned to this campground 5 or 6 years after our prior visit. The campground was significantly reworked in that time. The new layout provides more separation between the campsites and the pond. Given far more gator activity than when we were last here, that seemed quite prudent.

Attention to rules appeared lacking, with folks fishing near alligator activity. We also witnessed a camper toss some sort of food at a gator. Many mud buggy vehicles were parked beyond the camper's sites. We were glad to be here only one night.

Hot showers in the bath house!

Tent sites are to closer together, but the hot showers and everything else were great.

Beautiful campground, friendly hosts, well kept…someone needs to take a jackhammer to the shower floors so they will drain properly

The sites in this campground is not deep and were on top of each other. Barely any room between sites and no vegetation to provide any privacy. This was made worse by allowing tents to be set right next to rvs. We had to move site because they allowed a large group to set up 6 tents in the site next to us. Their tents were 3 feet away from our fire pit, could be a serious safety issue if any ambers pop on to the tents. We informed the camp hosts and they told us they couldn’t do anything about it. We had to move our rig and set up somewhere else…luckily another spot up the loop got open because someone decided just to leave. The views of the stars at night are superb but not worth the hassles of the people on top of each other and the “lunar” dust kicked up by every truck driving 4 feet from your camp site. It wasn’t a good experience at all.