With parks, forests and more — Utah is a camper's dream

There are, in the United States, 57 national parks, 73 national monuments, 40 national historic sites and 18 national recreation areas.

Here in Utah there are five national parks, along with seven national monuments, two national recreation areas and one historic site.

Utah also has more than 40 state parks.

Add all this along with the protected forests and Bureau of Land Management lands together and nearly 80 percent of the state is publicly owned and falls under federal or state control.

All of these offer camping opportunities. All have a variety of camping features, ranging from primitive camps with little more than an open piece of ground to sites with running water, picnic tables, shade canopies and hot showers.

It's no wonder that camping is so popular. The latest report from the Outdoor Industries Association shows nearly 650,000 Utahns went car camping last year, which means they camped in places like state and national parks where parking was close by. Another 110,000 will take extended hikes to go camping.

Thus far this year, the number of people taking weekend camping trips has been up. According to Deena Loyola, with Utah State Parks and Recreation, this past Memorial Day holiday was one of the busiest on record.

"Nearly every reservable campsite was reserved for that weekend, and it appears that this early-season trend is continuing," she said.

Of course, it helped that most of the lakes and reservoirs with state parks on their shores filled this year.

Good camping options for August, she added, are Wasatch Mountain State Park, with miles of hiking and biking trails and a fishing pond for kids; Rock Cliff Nature Center at Jordanelle State Park, which offers shady campsites with boardwalks spanning the Provo River and is close to the Wasatch Front; Palisade State Park, which has several new campsites, now allows small electric motors on the reservoir and has an 18-hole golf course nearby; and Green River State Park, which is a little more of a drive from the Wasatch area but has great camping opportunities.

The two most popular sites are Zion National Park and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area. Each is expected to receive more than 2 million visitors this year.