Best Campgrounds near Cottonwood, CA

Douglas City Campground, a BLM area, is one of the nicest public campgrounds I’ve seen. The paved road and pads throughout the park couldn’t be more than 2-years old. The restrooms are new and nice. The shower is nice. It’s like the park had a complete makeover last year or the year before. Impressive. The pads are (mostly) level side-to-side, and easily adjustable front to back. They fit all sizes of trailers and RVs; a 40’+ pulled in this afternoon. My site, and a few others, back right up to the Trinity River. Seriously, not more than 50’ from the back of my trailer. All the sites have sun/partial to complete shade. The closest town is Weaverville, about 10-miles north. There’s water, but no hookups and no dump station. (Dump stations are scarce in this area, it seems.) No internet, spotty cell service, oddly, cell service only during daylight hous. The river is accessible from any site, some small rapids in spots, slow water in others, with occasionally deeper pools here and there. Beautiful site to see, beautiful sound to hear camping, especially when dozing off to sleep. This campground is tucked down from the road and into a fairly narrow canyon. The trees are mostly oak, madrona, fir and pine, with the occasional mountain ash. Lots of bushes (don’t know name of bushes too well), and poison oak, Himalayan blackberry, grasses, etc., relegated to the mostly sunny spots. They have bear safes (metal boxes with doors having bear-proof levers/latches) to store food. Haven’t seen any nor have I seen signs of bear. Lots of critters though: deer, lizards, flies, MOSQITOS, butterflies. I tried fishing over a couple of days, and gold panning over a couple of days, didn't have luck with either, no worries though, the site and campground made up for it. The camp host, Russ, was absolute pleasure to meet and speak with (he's a public drinking water guy like me!

We enjoyed staying at Manzanita Campground when we made a last minute change of plans to have cooler weather. The elevation makes a big difference! We were in two different sites as we made same day and next day reservations. Yes, some of the spots are tight, but we were able to get two nice sites that felt more open. I loved being able to hike right by from the campground on multiple hikes. Sadly, due to staff shortages, the wonderfulv Loomis museum which chronicles the eruption is closed during the week days. Bathrooms in B loop nicer than in A loop. But A loop closer to lake. Be ready to level your camper.

Drove over to Deerlick Springs from Red Bluff and the gravel/dirt road from the pavement is pretty nice but I wouldn’t take a trailer in there.  The campground is overgrown with weeds/grass and I think the store is a house now. There was one camper in the northeastern part but it looks like he lives there. The toilets need some work, appears they haven’t been pumped since last year. Very disappointing!  My grandparents used to go there and get the “water” and take baths in the water. As a kid I used to walk to the store for candy and there was always Bingo to play. I also remember feeding the large tame bucks in the “courtyard”.