Kentucky Alleyne Provincial Park – Group Camping

Quick Facts:

• BC Provincial Parks website: https://bcparks.ca/kentucky-alleyne-park/
• Access to water: some sites are right on the water, but very exposed and close to roads.
• Rustic: pit toilets, boil water advisory, no shower
• Activities: water sports, hiking, fishing
• Beach type: silty clay
• Outdoor Fam rating: 6 out of 10

Kentucky Alleyne are the names of two beautiful turquoise lakes east of Merritt. Alleyne Lake lies north of Kentucky Lake, and they are similar in size. Alleyne Lake has a sizable public parking lot, good for day trippers. Kentucky Lake only has a small area for parking near the boat launch, and it’s only open to registered guests.

After the success of our first-ever group camping experience at Ruckle in 2024, we booked an even larger group site in Kentucky Alleyne for 2025. The group site here is a loop of 7 sites. Sites 1, 4, and 7 are single sites, and sites 2-3, and 5-6 are double sites. There is no picnic shelter, field, or a group fire ring for group gathering, so it feels basically like booking a gated loop of individual sites.

The center of the loop is a raised, undeveloped area of grass and trees. The kids had some fun climbing the slope to explore this area, but beware of fallen branches and uneven ground.

The group site is 600m away from the closest beach access in Alleyne Lake, down a pretty steep gravel road. This made it sufficiently cumbersome that no one wanted to walk their water crafts down to the lake. We all drove to the boat launch to play on the water instead.

A new milestone was achieved on this trip: Baby Bro paddled on his own paddleboard!

Leo and I also did a trail run around Kentucky Lake. A loop is about 4.5km. The trail is fairly maintained but with sections of narrow loose dirt and a steep slope down to the lake, so it’s not safe for mountain biking. We ran into some fallen trees, which the park operator onsite promised to clear out the next day.

My dad tried his luck at fishing in the small Trophy Lake east of Kentucky Lake based on recommendations from a camp host, but the lake shore was badly overgrown with grass and bush so he had no success even casting his line.

The park’s website describes a ‘Learn to Fish‘ program at this park. I found a poster at the Alleyne Lake bulletin board that states the dates for this program was July 5 and July 26, from 10am to 12noon. If joining this program is a big reason for your visit, I’d email the organizers to ask about their plans ahead of time.

Biking is allowed but there were only a few short trails at camp, otherwise it’s just the gravel roads.

For this group trip, we managed to gather a total of 13 family groups for a total of 50 people this outing. The looped shape made us pretty spread out, but we still tried to mingle between sites as much as possible. Many of the participants are old friends who have made appearances on our blog before, but some are new friends who came camping with us for the first time. It would be more cohesive if we had a central activity hub like a large picnic shelter or a shared field.

We kept things loose and flexible for the most part. Some of us arrived a day later and stayed to play on the lakes, while about half of us headed east to bike the Myra Canyon Trestles near Kelowna.

With the varied interests in the group, we also got to try a few different activities. Ching taught us rope flow.

Andy made some giant bubbles.

And Leo led some improv Dungeons and Dragons game with the kids.

All in all, everyone had a great time and did some activities right for their families. The camping fees work out to be much less than booking sites individually, as long as you can get enough people together to share the cost. The drive to and from Vancouver was pretty long though, so I wouldn’t call the park a worthy destination in itself but an excellent stopover to further explore the Okanagan.