Kelly’s Beach

BEST PLACE IN THE WORLD! Like a little hole in the wall heaven. Best bloody Mary’s you’ll get ever in your whole life. Irish deep dip sandwich keeps me up at night thinking about it. I love Mike Kelly!!!

Three words… get Bill back! It a least a new cook. We used to be regular dinner customers but not anymore. Half the time there’s hardly any meat left which limits your ability to order. The cook is too busy checking his phone to cook and to top it off there is no more beer on tap!
Last night my husband ordered the Kelly Combo and I had French Dip. His bread was one small tick from burned, there was barely any of the other meats besides tri tip. My Dip was pretty good but the au jus was SO SALTY I barely use it. Bill’s jus was beef stock not packaged salt with beef powder.
So here’s my question… since Kelly’s is for sale does Mike not want to spend the money to keep the quality as it was? I hope that’s not true because we really liked to eat there.
Lastly, get a different Chardonnay, 2 Buck is better than the swill being served now.

Wow! What a shame. Have been coming here for quite a long time and it is obvious that the owners, although nice people, just don’t care anymore.
It is important to note here that I camp a lot and often. From long distance minimalist backpacking in the backcountry wilderness to front country and established campground camping.
Came here with our usual group of people and assorted animals.
The road construction continued much of the night and started again at 5am. The super bright lights from the construction zone were blinding at night. Traffic was loud and continuous throughout the nights.
There are basically no rules at this site so do not expect a calm, relaxing camping experience. The owners pretty much bail at night to leave the place to it’s own demise. This is a place where locals and non-​locals alike come to completely lose all control and drink as much as they possibly can during the «Purging Period».
Note: Nothing wrong with slamming a few or many… but complete loss of all control seems a tad excessive.
Parties start at sundown, get out of hand by midnight, pass the «Epic» and «Off The Hook» zones by about 3am and continue until daylight, so do not expect to sleep at this place.
As for the amenities, one word describes them… disgusting. The owners boasted about the «new» restrooms and remodeled facilities. In reality, they cut off the old, rotted out bottom portions of the toilet stalls and extended them up 6 inches with some trash lumber and steel screw plates. As a result you will have to hold up the bathroom stalls while you use the facilities. Toilets are usually broken and not flushing properly, shower stalls are almost tidy, but every shower head is broken and non-​working. The floors in the restrooms are gross and normally covered in a mixture of human waste, dirt, various bugs and spiders.
Water pipes broke at least twice in one weekend which shut off all water supplies to the campsites.
I feel for the owners as the state has pretty much turned off the water supply to the river so I am sure it has impacted their business as well as their moral. Water levels this year were the lowest I have ever seen. Less than knee deep in places… ankle deep in others.
On the upside, there was no theft, no crime and everyone handled themselves in a fairly respectable manner. The bar served good drinks and several of the menu items are actually pretty good. Was impressed with the Kelly’s Special.
It is a shame because Kelly’s could once again be a great place to enjoy. Unfortunately, it would appear that after so many years, the owners are just tired of their business and don’t care anymore.

Restaurant and bar. Terrible experience with bartender/​server and cook. Owners were nice. Potatoe skins were nasty sour and gross. Jalapeño poppers undercooked we only had one. Nachos my daughter sucks at cooking and could have made them better. Server didn’t pay much attention to us we had to ask several times to be helped. Getting check was even worst. We did have fun during band last time we were there. Was not worth the price or service. They need a new cook and server to create more business. Only 5 other people there. I can understand why.

kellys beach wow o wow best bar in reedley hands down or hand u if your partying. there is always cold beer and the service is good day or night. if there is not a Dj there is always people playing great music on the jukebox. weather its a quick stop for lunch I recommend the Irish deep dip or if you need a beer after work or to dwell down after a long week of work I say go here. st patty’s day and summer time are def crazy and the owner is always around greeting people with a hearty smile and laughter.

Oh where shall I begin? I guess check in is a good start. It consisted of a stack of papers bound together by some staples & paper clips. The lady at the check in desk/​cashier in the general store was nice but then the owner, Mike, comes in like a bull in a China shop. Questioning us repeatedly if there were only two of us in the party and also harassing the cashier about how she works at Kmart now & she’s «lost her skills» at the mind boggling reservation process at Kellys. Yeah ok buddy. This took 30min or more & it wad super awkward. By now its almost sunset & we obviously still need to set up our tent. He tells us to follow him in his truck down to our sites, which was a 2min drive, by the way. Instead of guiding us to our spots so that we can get setup before its completely dark, he stops to yell at some campers about having too many cars at their site or something lame. He literally sat there for almost 5min going back & forth with them, while we are waiting behind him just to get to our site!
We finally get to the site, which is at the very end next to a big hedge of bushes (this is important for later). The first creepy thing we notice is the CREEPER motorhome that’s directly behind us. Its obviously not moved in a LONG time, the windows are all boarded up & there’s enough satellites on top to communicate with NASA. We removed all the trash from what we assumed was a trash can, but then realize that the big metal bin is the «fire pit». Its a trash can. I’ve never had to stand around a fire pit. If you sit down your basically stating at a metal bin & the heat is all coming from the top. No «sitting around the campfire» happening here.
The next morning we get on the bus for the 9am trip up the river for the «4 hour» river float that brings you back down to the campground. We got on the water @930am…and.no joke… got back to camp at 530pm! Wtf?! EIGHT hours?! And it was straight up CREEPY on most of the areas. Absolutely nobody around with a bunch of tall bushes & weeds lining the river. By the time we got back we were PISSED, hungry, thirsty and exhausted. There was a group that left at 1pm too, I don’t need to tell you how that went. You get the picture.
That night, we are talking to other campers & they inform us that there have been «tent slashers» cutting into tents @night while people are sleeping & stealing stuff from the pockets on the inside of the tents! If they get car keys, they were either stealing the entire car or just everything that was inside of it! Wtf?! This is on a Saturday night & the incidents had all taken place the last FOUR Saturdays in a row. Nice of them to give us a tiny heads up when we checked in, huh?! The guy in the site next to us was on SWAT & his wife made him tell us about how the first night we were there, he noticed people in the bushes next to OUR site. So he «made his presence known» & made sure they left before going to sleep. Needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep that night.
The next morning, I saw the owners wife & mentioned the 8 hour river float and the «tent slashers». She just said «yeah that was too bad. Well at least ya made it back before dark! Those guys on the 1pm float were really up shit creak! We cancelled the floats for today, guess the water is too low»
Then in regards to the tent slashers, she goes on to tell me how they «put the law in their own hands, because the police department said there was nothing they can do. So we told them, ok, then we will call you when we need a body bag.»
I am so NOT kidding. I was almost laughing because it was the most white trash hick/​ridiculous/​hilarious thing I had ever seen or heard.
There’s SO much more that I can write about. like the nasty bathrooms, the embarrassment of what they call a «convenience store», the rude unwelcoming staff, etc etc.
In short, it was unsafe, dirty, creepy and just plain WRONG!

THESE PEOPLE ARE EXTORTIONISTS!
My friends and I paid to park here to get out after floating down the King’s River. After being on the water for 3 – 4 hours we were immediately greeted by men yelling at us. The man told us that if we wanted to get out of the water we needed to have a wristband of pay $ 5 per person. We tried to tell him how we had paid for parking in the front office and never received wristbands, but he argued with us to try and get us to pay more money.
Eventually he told us that if we wanted to get out of the water, we needed to swim UPSTREAM and get out on the other side of the bridge. Are you kidding me? So we go upstream a little bit and get out on a storm drain and start walking to our car. Again, the man comes over and starts yelling about how we can’t get out there and it’s private property. We tell him that the storm drain belongs to the city and we can walk on it if we please. He GETS IN OUR FACES and continues to yell, at which point I tell him to call the cops if he had a problem. He left after that.

I seriously don’t know where to begin discussing my experience @ Kelly’s Beach. I have VERY mixed feelings about this place.
I guess I’ll start with the positives:
I love the fact the site is right on the water… it was beautiful! I also love that they offer a bus ride up to a drop off spot and you float right back to your campsite. The site we were placed in was at the very south side of the campground, and it couldn’t have been a better spot for us. We had a huge tree, grass, a fire-​pit, two picnic tables, and a water spigot right there. Plus we weren’t jammed in amongst the other campers, we got plenty of space. Lucky for us! And our camping neighbors happened to be the nicest, most down to earth people we met in the entire place!
The negatives, and oh my they are a plenty:
I would gladly pay more per night to tent camp here, if they would remodel the bathrooms. They are run down, and disgusting! First there are only three bathroom stalls and three shower stalls. The toilets were on the outs and had duck tape and towels wrapped around them to prevent leaking and/​or breaking, I’m not sure. None of the three stalls could be locked, and half the time they were out of toilet paper. You definitely need to bring your own TP, soap and a hand towel inside with you. As for the showers, Friday night only two of the stalls had curtains, and by Saturday night, there were none, which I’m sure had something to do with the drunk girls rinsing off the grime after the float down the river. The floor is constantly wet, and there is a real plumbing problem with the toilets and the showers. Don’t expect a hot shower either… there is not enough hot water to go around for the campsite, which sucked! The water in the shower was colder than the river water temp! Also, in the early evening Saturday they had no power to the restrooms, so you had to do your business my flashlight until they finally turned the switch. :(
Also, the website claims «No excessive noise after 11 p. m» and «Lights out in park by midnight, except when setting camp.» — Those two rules are NOT enforced in the least! Saturday night people were up playing music, singing, talking, and just plain being obnoxious until nearly 5am. It made for a really shitty slumber, and a rough ride home on Sunday. I don’t mind people having fun, but that was an insane amount of noise until the sun came up.
In addition they cut the water supply to the campsites sometime Saturday evening around dinner time, and they still weren’t up and running when it was time to clean up and head out.
I really wish they would make some changes, because I would really like to make this an annual trip, and Kelly’s is so convenient in many ways. But the excessive noise made it difficult to get any sleep, and I felt dirtier once I left the bathrooms than I did before I even went in. Kelly’s has such great potential, I just really believe they need to consider how they can make it a better experience for the campers/​floaters, even if that means hiking the price up a bit to do some repairs, as well as enforcing the quiet rules at the same time!!!

Oh Kelly, Kelly, Kelly, what happened? Have only gone to your place for drinks and dancing, and have always had a good time, but last week was in to try your «specials» for dinner. Oh man was i bummed. I was told your specials were from 7 – 10. Got there at 7:10, looked at your menu and ordered, or at least tried to. Was informed by your nice waitress that you were out of the New York Steak, ok, so i ordered the ribs, but again she said you were out. What gives Kelly? If you“re going to advertise specials you should at least have a couple on hand. Don’t tell me that you had a rush of people come in and eat them all before 7:10! Hate to say this, but the dinner I had was barely mediocre. Way too much cheese on the WHITE bread. Prime Rib was not medium but rare. Chile beans tasted like Dennison. Even the baked potato had an odd taste, really how can you go wrong with a potato? AND I KNOW that salad came out of a bag. Can you at least get the bag with the better lettuce? The iceberg and carrot mix doesn’t cut it in a restaurant. Will just stick to the drinking and dancing.

I actually love this place. Awesome little dive bar on the river… how great is that? The drinks are FAB and the workers are nice. The patio area and the whole place is a little run down but quirky, my kind of place. Love it.

Love Love this Place!!! Made a reservation to «float the river». The owner is an awesome dude! Really knows the area and has had the place almost 40 years! Bar gets crowded and they work hard to get you what you need… Had the best time floating the river then hanging at Kelly’s. Great time. worth the money :)

Guiness and smith wicks on tap… need I say more?

My family has been camping at Kelly’s Beach since before I was born, though we haven’t been for quite sometime now that my sister’s have babies (infants and rivers don’t really seem like a good idea). Some of my best vacation memories are from this place! It’s NOT a super swanky campground and from what I remember, the bathrooms are pretty freakin’ nasty but it’s family tradition and we love it.
When I was younger, we never camped there for the 4^th of July as my parent’s learned early on that the other campers are loud, drunk and rowdy into the small hours of the night. Our ideal time to go was the week after the 4^th and it was usually pretty quite.
The owner, Mike Kelly, is a good guy. He seems a bit rough and tough on the outside but he’s always been super nice and more than willing to help us out when we needed it.
I can see that most of these reviews are for the bar and restaurant; I can’t really confirm or deny. Since we were camping, we usually brought our own food and drinks. On a rare occasion my sisters would go up and get some nachos and they never complained about those (but really, how can you mess up nachos?!).
Now that I live in the UK, it’ll probably be an even rarer occasion to go camping there again in the near future. Until then, I hope some other people can enjoy it and make some awesome memories like I did!

I have been camping and floating at Kellys since 1998. I freaking love it here. It can get a bit loud and obnoxious and I love it! We tent camp every year around the 4^th of july. Yes the bathrooms get overwhelmed but they try. People can be slobs. The camp ground is all grass right on the river. Mike Kelly, the owner can seem grumpy, but he’s actually really helpful. His wife and partner in crime Cindy is super cool! This place dosent really have a «quiet hour» and the party can last into the early morning hours. On a holiday weekend I would not recommend bringing the kids. It can get a bit wild! That’s what I love. The bar is fun and the restaurant food is just ok. Overall experience is always awesome and our group grows every year! Keep it up Kellys beach! Just keep up on the bathroom and I have no complaints.

No one should ever go to Kelly’s Beach for the food. Or the Mixed Drinks. Or the Beer. As a former Reedley native (who got the heck out of town before I turned legal drinking age), I thought it would be fun to go out with my friends one night after I came home for a visit. That was a mistake. The drinks were BAD. REALLY BAD.
My second visit was for a party and it was worse than the first visit. I was served a nearly room temperature Guinness! And what’s worse is it cost me $ 5! FOR THE DRAFT! Now don’t get me wrong, if I go to an Irish pub in San Fran and order a Guinness from a real Irishman, I’ll pay $ 5 for a cup of beer. However, none of these exceptions apply to Kelly’s Beach.
I ordered «nachos» and they didn’t even use nacho cheese. It was grated cheese sprinkled over stale chips and stuck in the microwave… and then it sat at the «kitchen» for a while before the waitress finally got around to bringing it to my table. Eww Eww Eww. Really guys? You can’t spring for a $ 5 jumbo can of nacho cheese at Smart and Final?

My review is for the bar/​restaurant.
What can I say about this place without being too rude. Lets see… I have been here twice, and I only needed visiting once to know and feel that I didn’t fit in, and that the kind of people that hang out here will make you feel it if you cant get the hint on your own. Good thing my friends are why I was there, because I would never actually enjoy going there on my own or with a date. If you are a regular or a Reedley local, I’m sure its cool for you because you are more likely to fit in or know some of the people either working or drinking there. But if you’re anyone else, expect some strange looks, because they will certainly know you aren’t «one of them», especially if you look even slightly beyond the norm, especially the rural norm.
On both visits I had problems ordering drinks. I can tell mixed drinks aren’t really their thing. One– because they don’t make them well, and two– because they either cant or don’t want to make what I order. But if you order beer or wine then you should be A-​OK. As far as the food goes, its bar food. Not really a restaurant — at all. They cook with a microwave and a small oven slightly larger than a toaster oven. I’m sure at 2: AM when your drunk as a skunk, those microwaved nachos are pretty fucking bad-​ass, though!

I have been to this camp ground twice now and I love it.
I am actually going back in a couple weeks!
I have never been inside the bar/​restaurant simply because I am camping and do not want to deal with all that.
This is a super shady and depending on the time of year somewhat quiet camp ground. The best part is the campsites right on the river.
The bathrooms are not always in the greatest conditions, but again people its a camp ground not a five star hotel on the Vegas strip.
Its a great way to spend a weekend and met new people.
This is a family joint and is run by a super friendly husband/​wife team. They do their best to make everyone happy.
I love the bus that drives you up river so you can drink and float right to your camp spot. The bus ride is around fifteen dollars. Some complain that is expensive, however a DUI cost around ten thousand dollars so way your options if you are drinking.
I suggest checking it out, if not for the campsite for the river floating!

1. The only good thing about this trip was being around friends.
Kelly’s Beach campground was not what I expected. I should’ve known the first sign of trouble was trying to make reservations. Sometimes the phone would ring only to be greeted by an answering machine saying that it will not take any messages. Other times, if the timing was right, someone would answer. Only to be told that the person taking care of reservations is not available because they are in the bar, and to call back. When I called back, and if someone answered, I was greeted by the rude owner, or one of their rude employees. Sometimes only to be told again that anyone that can help me is in the bar. I called back again, and I finally got someone to help me. However, it was the bartender who made the reservations. Interesting. Since it’s so hard to get a reservation here, I figured that this may actually be a great place to stay. I was wrong. The restrooms were filthy (i.e. dirty floors, broken shower heads, disgusting shoddy toilets, no paper towels) it was scary. They charge for everything, including to inflate your rafts, no friendly courtesy to their customers. The employees, and the owner, were still rude to the customers, and were usually found in the bar. Customer service is non-​existent. Usually when I’m vacationing, I expect to be shelling out some money to have a good time, that’s not a problem. However, I do expect a certain level of customer service. Terrible service is ALL you’ll get from Kelly’s Beach. I have already talked my friends into finding another campground next year. I also plan on spreading the word. I do not recommend Kelly’s Beach, unless you want terrible customer service with filthy restrooms, and nasty drunks.
Find a better, cleaner, campground.