Walnut Creek Resort & Marina

The map totally misrepresented how much space was between RVs.
Wifi is an extra 9 dollars a day if you want it.
Showers were coin operated and the bathrooms full of bugs.

I am just tickled to death with this place and am definitely a fan. My only wish is that they would sell beer in the store (okay, beer coolers). If they sold Smirnoff coolers, I’d give it the 5^th star and I might never come home.
We weren’t familiar with this side of the lake when we bought a boat from the owner of Walnut Creek. We’d only really been to Highport and Soldier’s Creek and usually frequented Highport. We arranged a month to stay at Walnut Creek to get to know the area and see how we like it.
We really, really like it and have decided to stay. This is not a big marina and it doesn’t have a lot of amenities but the things you need they do really well. In order of importance to us:
1. The owner and the owner’s family are great, straight forward folks. There is just something about Dale (the owner) and his son-​in-​law that inspires trust and Dale is a pleasant, hands on owner that comes by and says hello and checks on his slip renters to make sure everything is okay and that they are happy. He is not out just to make a buck, which is really refreshing. He has stuff he can sell you if you are in the market for it but he is not going to sell you something you didn’t need or want.
2. There is a mechanic close by, Murry? Murray? who was also part owner of our boat when we bought it. He’s been great. We developed a problem when we got down to old gas still in the boat and we thought that we would have to have the whole system drained and he said, no, we just needed a fuel separater. He came down and installed it for us at no cost. He doesn’t work on jet skis, which is a bummer, but he’s great to have around for the boat. People tell me that he regularly helps out folks with things like the separator because he wants people to remember him when it comes time to get a bottom job on their boat. Works for me.
3. The crowd is mostly grown ups. There are some kids that play loud music but you get that everywhere, and a lot more in some places. Dale is good about shutting it down if it goes on to too late into the night. We love the people in our boathouse. They are around our age (40 ‘s) and have grown or almost grown families. Several live close by and most of us are down at the boathouse pretty much every weekend.
4. Location on the lake — This marina is not too far from the islands and doesn’t have that chop that you get in the channel in front of Highport. There is one other marina that we looked at very seriously that is closer to the islands and has very deep water. Walnut Creek is not far though and its practically in its own little bay so the water is much calmer than the rest of the lake. From the open water, you can’t really see Walnut Creek … the shoreline has an illusory effect of being continuous when, in reality, there is a bay there … so, even with the gas docks, there is not a lot of raucous lake traffic coming in.
5. Bathrooms — the bathroom located at the marina store is the cleanest public bathroom I’ve ever seen. You have to get a key from the store to use it so it is only available from around 6 AM to about 5 PM. The bathroom is a big deal to me when staying on the boat over the weekend. That may be a girl thing, but it is really, really big in my book.
6. Showers — I think the showers are an on-​demand system. They are always warm immediately (that’s a good thing). It costs 4 quarters for 4 minutes and that is plenty for a man. It would be perfect for me to if I didn’t shave my legs. Still, I am happy with the showers. I don’t like the toilets in the camp restrooms though — no lids and the sink is difficult to use and runs non-​potable water. I avoid the sink in there for brushing my teeth. The light is on a timer so it can seem dark in there in the daytime because the light isn’t on.
7. Wi-​fi — They have good wi-​fi. It’s $ 6 something for 24 hours but the speed puts our home connection to shame. Lightning fast.
8. Distance from metroplex — It takes us an hour and twenty minutes to get the Walnut Creek from McKinney (75 to 82 to 901). This is pretty much the same time it took us to get Pottsboro and the drive is very pretty.
This is a good, basic marina. They have cute cabins and a nice campground area where campers can pull their boat up to the shore (and because of the calm water, no waves to rock the boat up against it). They have a decent boat ramp that can handle two launches at a time but there’s rarely any kind of a back up ($ 4 to launch). There is no restaurant but then we have a grill and a boat. Plenty of other marinas have restaurants and courtesy docks so we can either grill out or boat out to one of the restaurants on the lake.
I wish that they had a courtesy dock for visiting boat friends but then we’ll probably be meeting out on the islands anyway.