Recently I covered my experience hiking at Richard Bong State Recreation Area. While I only hiked at the park, there are many other outdoor recreation opportunities available. When I say many, I mean way, way more activities than most parks offer. Like a space to train your falcon. No longer can you use not having a training space as your excuse for not having a falcon! (Check out my previous post if you want to know more.) After hiking or completing whatever recreation activity you’re into, it’s nice to have a place to crash nearby, aka camping.
This park has two campgrounds, the Sunrise Campground and the Sunset Campground. Predictably and aptly named, the Sunrise Campground is on the east side of the park and the Sunset Campground is on the west. Between them, the park contains 217 campsites, 54 with electricity. The park also has 6 group campsites and a cabin designed specifically for people with disabilities. Both campgrounds have a shower building with flush toilets, along with some more rustic bathroom options. Both campgrounds offer a variety of sites, both in terms of tree cover and whether they have electricity or not.
Reservations for all sites in the park (except the cabin) can be made at GoingToCamp
We stayed at site 346 in the Sunset Campground during this trip, highlighted in yellow on the map.
As you can see, site 346 isn’t in the shaded area on the map that correlates to, well, a shaded area in real life, or one with tree cover. Normally I look for trees when I camp but I booked this site late and most of the other sites were already taken. Despite being forced upon me, this site did not disappoint.
First of all, it was close to a nice bathroom with showers. Second, it was huge.
It was so big! It was also fully covered in nicely mowed, plush grass. Nature’s sleeping pad!
The site had a standard picnic table and firepit with cooking grate (dog not included.) In addition to being large, it also felt very secluded. This time of year, the bushes and trees surrounding the site were full and blocked out all views of neighbors. We could hear people around us but we couldn’t see them at all.
The parking area was narrow and surrounded by the aforementioned trees and bushes, making the campsite feel even more private. It was like a flask or a lollipop shape, you know, with a narrow section that opens up into a larger circle.
So big! Moxxi was into all this space.
The picnic table was in good shape and the firepit was in…standard campsite shape. Useable!
Day 2 of the camping trip was wet and windy with a pretty constant rain for most of the day. The site easily fit our popup gazebo, which allowed us to somewhat hide from the rain.
Princess dog hates the wet ground and does not abide by her humans calling “seat back.”
Forced into cuddling by her hatred of the wet ground.
Finally there was a break in the rain and we could do some cooking. (I took this picture early in the process. No, we didn’t just eat cutup peppers and onions.)
Finding a new place to sit that isn’t the ground.
We actually packed up the site and headed home shortly after this picture. The forecast was growing more and more certain of severe storms that night and we didn’t want to risk it.
Overall, I was very surprised by this campsite. For being the last one left, it was close to a nice bathroom and was spacious to boot. Since I did so little of the hiking in this park, I know I’ll be back and I will absolutely camp in the park again.