Kelsey Creek Campground — Clear Lake State Park

Great camping, hiking, boating. Lots of nature trails. Super friendly staff

Pros: If you are a person who likes to either stay all day at your campsite or are a water sport/water toy type person this campground is for you. Cons: Bathroom near our campsite wasn’t working. Campsites were overgrown with foxtails, not good for my dogs. Trash in our fire pit. A few campsites away from ours had a huge poison oak plant at the back where you park your rig. A walkway near the campground popular for fishing had a tree fall on it, instead of clearing the tree, the park rangers closed it off. Not much hiking in the park, and if you decide to walk the couple short hikes, don’t bring your dogs, NO DOGS ALLOWED. For the number of workers this park employs you would think these things would be dealt with, but no. I guess this is typical of State Parks in California, so much potential but sadly California parks slowly deteriorate.

Having visited Lake County many times, I wasn't expecting much from this camp ground. I had intended to camp at Boggs Forest - my usual hangout for mountain biking when in the area. Turns out it's closed to camping now, so I took a flyer and looked at this park. I managed to grab what appeared to be the last spot available for the Friday and Saturday night stay I had planned. And it was a spot next to the water! 

The spots are a bit close, but there are many options available - from waters edge on the creek or lake, to hilltops with views of the lake. 

The bathrooms were clean, but I showered at the back of my van and didn't need to obtain any tokens to use theirs. 

There are hiking trails, a boat launch, bbq pits, food storage lockers and a pretty good amount of trees to shade the camp sites. 

I think next time I'd opt for a spot along the creek instead of the lake. They look to be better shaded, but may get more drive by traffic. 

I did happen to be here during a heat spell - 104 was the high yesterday. The shade definitely helped! 

I will be back since it's a convenient location for me - 20 mins from my father in Lakeport, 30 mins from Highland Springs and 40 from Boggs Forest. Oh… and the bugs are not at Al what you might expect. At least for me. They weren’t bad at all. I didn’t even need the screens on my van, but the zapper was busy at dusk. Update as I’m still here: for some reason the toilets no longer flush. After all those beers I figured it’d be polite to use a toilet to return them to their maker, but the first bathroom had a large deposit waiting for me. I tried to flush it, but nothing. Went next door. Only per in this one, and it wouldn’t flush either. Oh well. I added to the color of the bowl. Oddly, the faucet worked. At least I was able to wash my hands.

Wasn't very private, but is good for tent camping in a safe family environment.

okay, let me start this off by saying: DO not take CA-175 here. by the time i got to camp i was so nauseous i thought i was going to die!

campground is beautiful, we rolled up in off season and there is probably 20ish cars here.

it's cold, but so pretty! nice bathrooms, token operated showers. short drive to lakeport with some cute downtown areas to get breakfast if you are like me and woke up too cold to set up the camp stove!

all in all, pretty good campground, but i could see it being super packed during season. we paid 30$ for one night camp.

Decent facilities. Bring cash and insect repellent. Shower tokens can be purchased at the boat launch facilities. Bathrooms stocked with toilet paper and seat covers. Rangers clean the bathrooms around 8 am.

The camp manager was very helpful and very friendly and the people staying here are polite and quiet. It does seem like many of them are full-time residents. The creek that is adjacent to the campground looks polluted and ugly but the campsites were adequate with lots of tree cover. Not great if you’re trying to do a satellite TV but we only stayed one night. Wi-Fi is very slow as in 1 Meg speed.

General: There are four campgrounds in Clear Lake State Park: Upper Bayview, Lower Bayview(both of which were closed when we were there in April), Cole Creek, and Kelsey Creek. This review focuses on Kelsey Creek. 

Site Quality: The sites all appeared to be level with paved pads. No hookups throughout the park. Not a lot of privacy between the sites but decent separation. 

Bathhouse: Clean but as we have found in other California state parks, no soap! Showers take tokens which must be purchased on-site 

Activities: Limited hiking on a short nature path. In season, there is boating, swimming, and fishing. It was very quiet when we were there in April but I imagine there would be quite a different vibe come summer when the campground would be full (which is why we like camping in the off-season!)

Was a very nice experience with a lot of easy spots for us to back our camper in. We choice a site away from everyone and it was so nice and quiet. I literally felt like we were the only ones there plus turkeys and quail.

[Internet. Verizon via iPhone 12: 26 mbps down and 0.40 mbps up with 34 ms ping. T-Mobile via Nighthawk MR-1100 - 4.24 mbps down and 16.9 up with 159 ping.]

This is a great campground for the camping experience. The vibe is chill in that I don’t have anywhere important to be. I can sit here and drink my coffee. I can take a stroll to the water. I can do nothing and it’d be well worth my time. In places like this, bring all the camping gadgets you have. You’ll have time for them!

There isn’t much privacy between the sites but there is a fair about of space at the end of your site facing away.

Be prepared for bugs in Spring! We had to pull out our bug screen! Dawn and dusk is their most active time. There weren’t many mosquitos at this point. The other bugs don’t bite but there were a lot. So many that at dusk I thought someone was flying a drone but it turned out the symphony of buzzing was coming from the sky. Look up and the sky is blanketed in bugs. Just after sunset they go away.

The showers are token operated. Outside the bathrooms is a machine for token exchange. It takes $1 and $5 bills. They are these cute, unique coins specific to the park. Apparently lots of California state parks use tokens and you can “collect them all.” It’s 50¢ per token and one token gets you 2 minutes. Which is nice because you can do your shower things in between the token time so you need less tokens.

My only gripe is the hot water was inconsistent. My shower was hot as hell and my partner’s shower was cold. I can tolerate cooler water temps but she just can’t. Unfortunately the only way to find out water temperature is by putting in a token. From now on I shower first to make sure the water is warm enough and then text her when I’m done so she can use the same stall.

This park was perfect except for the shower water. 4.5-stars

[Rig. Mercedes Sprinter. 22 feet]

Dump station? - Yes Water fill? - Yes Clean site? - Yes Clean bathroom? - Yes Flush toilet? - Yes Showers? - Yes, token operated Laundry? - No Dish washing sink? - No

Very nice ranger. Clean, chill campground right on the lake.

As someone else said, it was great for a mid-week stay. Beautiful campground, good space between sites. Staff was great. We're in the Kelsey Creek Campground (it's the only one open this time of year) and there's hardly anyone here. Very peaceful, good birdwatching, and abundant deer life. We would come back.

Nice place to camp. Very pretty. Not sure why we( and only us) weren't allowed to us the plug in for our RV. Very rude staff who work there.

We were in a group site, which was nice and spacious. Had some tree coverage too which we were very grateful for because it was quite warm. Trees also were great for our hammocks! Downside was that due to extreme fire danger and fires in the area, we were allowed to have fires of any kind. Only propane stoves and grills were allowed. Also due to the extremely low water level the water seemed to have more algae and so we didn’t feel like getting in. Other people were in the water though, and they told us the water was fine to swim in. Bathrooms were decently clean but I think because they were individual bathrooms and had no windows, even though it had extremely high ceilings, there didn’t seem to be enough circulation and so they didn’t smell the best. We visited the visitor center, which was very informational and the ranger was very helpful and friendly. We even went to an evening event by the same ranger about raptors (birds of prey). Overall, was a really beautiful area and would definitely go back!

Excellent park for a mid week stay. There were lots of vacant spaces and weather was fabulous. We stayed in site 59 and will definitely return. View of the lake was great and watching the bass tournament was fun. Dry camping only but lots of fresh water hydrants, clean bathrooms and coin operated showers.

Why do people in state parks think everyone in the campground wants to hear their music. This is the second day of this! And they are old farts! I am done with best of the 80’s. I don’t know if I can wait til 10pm for rangers to enforce quiet time.

Great time to come here except for the mosquitoes. We’re listening to the bullfrogs singing and wondering why they don’t eat all of the mosquitoes. We’re here for 2 nights (drycamping) and then continue our journey to Alaska 100 miles at a time. (or less)

Nice clean campgrounds large lake is nice boating is good fishing is good beach is great

Large campground with many great options for activities. This park has lake access from a large sandy beach. Extensive nature trail system throughout the park. There is also a visitors center with many displays of the animals that are found within the park as well the cultural history.