Carbolyn Park

Great stay!

A best kept secret ever! Quiet, shady and restful. Shaded sites, Very nice stay for overnight or several days. 30 mins from Topeka's shopping centers. Only 2 pull throughs, but the back-ins are adequate for big rigs!

great as always

A true hidden gem and a birder's paradise. Quiet and peaceful. A tiny bit of road noise, but the birds are louder. Shell and Addie are the best camp hosts ever!! So friendly and helpful. We stayed here a few times this year before we knew how nice it was. Carbolyn has become our favorite of all the COE parks around Topeka. We will plan to spend more time here next year.
Terry and Bea

Mostly wonderful. Park is kept clean and good working order. The hosts are pleasant and very helpful. I really liked the shower house. I haven't ever seen one quite like it. The wall and roof are not connected and I was told that this style is typical of Kansas state parks. Maybe I wouldn't like it in cold weather, but it was August and the breeze blowing through was very pleasant.

Overall, I would have given the park 5 stars except for these two problems... -1 star for the sewer dump. There is no way to connect the water to your flush to clean out the black tank. The water tower has some weird mini bent angle piece to flush out your tank but no hose connection. Impossible. So I saw people hooking up their hoses to the potable drinking water faucet to flush their tanks. Not knowing how careful and clean everyone is, I wouldn't trust the drinking water faucet there for drinking water.

Then -1 star for this... checkout time is 6 pm. Check in time is 6 pm. People push that check out time to the limit. We had a site reserved and when we arrived the previous occupants were still there. The camp hosts were very nice and helped us find another site that worked well for us. We were set up and enjoying the park by one pm. The people in our reserved site pulled out at 5:45 pm. If not for the camp hosts helping us switch to another site, we would have been waiting six hours for our site. Check out times should be no later than two pm anywhere, in my opinion. This extremely late check out time seems to be taken advantage of by locals that don't have far to go to get home. Eleven a.m. or noon are reasonable check out times but you won't find that here.

Lovely campground and would like to go back but be aware that your site my not be available when you get there and you won't be able to flush your tank when you go dump.

What a great place! We loved staying here, camp host were wonderful!

This park is lovely! Very quiet and peaceful. The camp hosts were very friendly and welcoming.
The only issues are:
1. The dump is set up backwards which is great if you dump on your way in, but who does that? So if you dump on your way out you have to drive back through the park when you are done (unless you have a smaller rig and can do a U-turn).
2. The bathroom/shower is open air. Sooo...if it's raining, dark, or windy, you can't shower. And bugs- spiders, bees, ants, grasshoppers- in the essentially outdoor shower. Kind of creepy!
3. The 6pm check in and out time is the strangest thing ever! Only experienced this in Kansas but it makes absolutely no sense. The check in/out time needs to be changed to something more camper friendly. Waiting for someone to clear out by 6PM so you can occupy your reserved site is unacceptable. RV'ers typically like to get situated before dinner time. Not to mention while the sun is still up.

This is a smaller but absolutely beautiful park. There are tons of trees and the grounds are extremely well maintained. There’s really not a bad spot in the place. The camp hosts are meticulous and friendly. Probably the best kept camping secret in Kansas.

We always enjoy camping at Carbonlyn. Lots of shade. It’s always well keep. Quiet! One of our favorite places to go.

Despite the lack of any lake view, Carbolyn Park is my favorite among Pomona Lake's campgrounds. The trees provide lots of shade from summer heat and I love hearing the sound of the owls in the evening. I think the most interesting thing at Carbolyn Park is the restroom building for its architecture. Although it is not new, it is open for the most part to the sky, allowing for a lovely view of the trees above and delightful breezes. The restrooms were the one part of Carbolyn Park that I wanted to take photos of to share on Facebook, such was their uniqueness to any of my prior campground experiences. A review of this park would not be complete without a kind word about the campground hosts of this past summer, that of 2021. They were helpful, friendly, and kept the campground perfectly free of litter. If I could offer any criticism, it is the inconvenience of the particularly late check-out time of 6 p.m. to those who arrive before that hour. We prefer to arrive and set up in time to avoid rush hour traffic around cities, prepare dinner for the evening, and before we are too tired. Having to wait in your vehicle until 6 p.m. for a camper occupying the site you have reserved for that evening to vacate from their stay the night before is no fun. Thankfully, the campground hosts are there to assist you if they have a different camp spot available, but if not, you may end up having to wait.