Best Campgrounds near Cottonwood, CA

We’ve been on the road for about a month now and this might take the cake for our favorite dispersed spot. There are a few others along this road, but this one takes the gold. It’s next to the creek and we fell asleep to the sounds of the flowing water. It’s quite level for our 23’ rig. Nice smooth road to access. If I had to say one negative it would be the dusty road, but it’s absolutely worth coming back here if you can secure this spot. It’s also very shaded in the morning which is always nice. 1 bar AT&T, no service for Verizon. Starlink worked great as always.

We needed a place to camp for the night, and Parkway was in the right location.  We booked through the Dyrt, but the campground's booking site was almost as easy.  We needed to move our reservation to one night earlier, and the camp staff graciously made it happen.  When we arrived, the sites were clean and orderly, and there was actually grass and level parking spots.  The full hookups worked great and it turned out to be just what we needed.  We also found a local panaderia for breakfast pastries that were delicious.  This was exactly what we needed.

I really liked this campground, and the convenience of being inside the park was great. The spots are decent sized, but are very close together and there isn't much for vegetation to separate the sites. You will see your neighbors and what they are doing, saying (and visa versa).

It's a tent only (or no hook ups) campground, which I prefer, but when I booked I didn't think about the parking pads. Many of the parking pads are at extreme angles, and would NOT be usable for folks with a roof-top tent, such as myself. I got lucky and the spot I booked just happened to be one of the flat ones. But driving through on my way to the site, I was getting very nervous, not many of them have the flat parking.

We thought we got a prime river spot, it was spacious and had a private path right to the river. However lots of kids from a neighboring campsite would frequently tromp thru our site loudly to visit the spot. Then came the bees. It was almost impossible to cook or eat without being swarmed by hundreds of them. We would have to cook fast and run to our tent and quickly zip the door to be able to eat. The vault bathroom were absolutely disgusting and dirty. Then to top it off we were hit with a huge windstorm storm that knocked trees down all over the campground— including one that blocked our car in. The camp host was absolutely no help to anyone. Had no way to contact anyone for help. We will never go back and I do not recommend this campground to anyone.

We stayed here a few years ago and the water was so low that we literally could not reach it, even after a long walk down, it just became too rocky. So we were incredibly happy this time around that the water levels were so high. It was beautiful. We scored ourselves a really cool spot right along the water on a Thursday afternoon, thinking that even if it gets busy for the weekend at least we have our nice spot secured. But. It was spring break. And just about an hour after we arrived, so did everyone else. We were practically surrounded by this huge group, with kids, loose dogs, ATVs, boats, dirt bikes, generators running, just…. Not where we want to be. We left the next morning. But I will say that the few peaceful hours we had before they all arrived were incredible. We’ll definitely go back, but only if it’s during the week and not on a school break. 

It’s free to stay here in the off-season but $15/night during the season. Not really sure how the payment works since it’s dispersed camping along the lake shore but maybe it makes sense when you see it or when it's open. Pretty good cell reception here. We managed to navigate to our spot just fine in a 26ft class c.