It took a few years for my wife and I to get used to the near-90-inches of annual rainfall that we experience on the Oregon Coast, but we are officially over it. Many people I have met online over the years can’t imagine living in a poncho and goulashes; ) but we manage. And hey, most people I know would be ok with a bit of rain if they had this taking place on a daily basis in their yard…
Once we head out on an adventure, we have some favorite destinations we frequent on an annual basis, I’ve listed our top-pics below. As noted elsewhere, our preferred “Adventures” include the idea of beginning a trip late Sunday afternoon and arriving back home late Friday. We try our best to avoid being in a campground setting Friday or Saturday nights.
Individual “Adventure” posts will be listed under “Adventures” in the upper main menu.
…In no particular order:
Oregon:
Near Sweet Home. Quartzcreek Dispersed Camping east of Sweet Home. First come-first served…along an 11 mile stretch of the Santiam River. If you want to stay at a rustic, well maintained no-reservation-park, keep going up the road to about mile 12 to Yellow Bottom Campground. Bring your own water. Pit toilets. Gold Panning in river at camp.
Near Salem. Silver Falls State Park near Salem. Make reservations. Full hook ups. Nice park for walks and such. Falls are spectacular.
Nehalem Bay. Nehalem Bay State Park an hour south of Astoria. Nice full hook up park. Nice for walks and beach access. Flying kits, general chill out.
Nehalem Bay. Nehalem Falls campground near Hwy 53 is an Oregon State rustic camp with no amenities except for a garbage drop. The dozen or so sites are well laid out and overall the camp is inviting. Just before the turn off to the campground is a sign on Cooks Creek Road mapping out several (17?) state forestry maintained dispersed camp sites. These are nice sites that have plenty of room to set up large multi-vehicle camps.
Near Medfort/Grants Pass. Indian Marry County Park. A well run full hook up park with access to the Rogue River and nice gold panning area a short walk from camp.
Washington:
Battle Ground Area. Sunset Falls in Gifford Pincholt USFS.
This is a rustic campground and you must bring water. Pit toilets.
Favorite shady sites on River side are camp #6 (our Favorite) and #9.
If you don’t mind some road noise (and an occasional whiff of the outhouse)
…then site #3 (lots of great trees for hangs and some good sun in drive for solar-suitcase charger
or site #4 also with good tree hangs and sun at road/drive nearly all day.
Gold panning in camp.
Near Cougar. Lower Falls in Gifford Pincholt USFS.
This is a rustic campground and you must bring water. Pit toilets.
The falls at this park are amazing!! Easily as pretty as any falls at Silver Falls near Salem Oregon.
Near Randal. North Fork Camp in Gifford Pincholt USFS.
This is a rustic campground and you must bring water. Pit toilets
This is a picturesque area and about an hour’s drive from the entrance to Mt Rainier.
We just learned about two parks from the SSF host we will check out:
Taklak Lake in northern Gifford. Go to the town of Trout Lake then to HWY 23.
Park of the reservation.gov Whoodo parks
Iron Creek… ~10 miles south of Randal WA
This list is fairly complete as of fall 2015 (will update as sites are added). As you can see, we enjoy our native Pacific Northwest. For our preferred 5-day adventures we can get to any of these camps within an afternoon’s drive.