Best Dog-Friendly Camping near Lake Isabella, CA

A great place to relax in the heat right down the road from Lake Isabella. They have a wonderful pool and splash pad for the kids. The staff was amazing! They have pizza and a small bar to relax in. Most of the sites have shaded trees. They do movie nights and pancakes on certain days. A wonderful little place.

Clean, friendly, and easy full hookup...clean facilities Dog Park Swimming pool Wendy&Mario

Negative - One unisex bathroom/shower for the entire park. No code provided. Positive - Nice landscape. Fenced dog park.

Stayed at Rivernook for 5 nights in site 430. Had hookups. The site was riverfront and the water was flowing. Watched rafters and kayakers go by. Dog friendly. My lab went swimming everyday. There is also a creek that runs through the campground. Lots of nearby hiking. Lake Isabella is close as well. The town of Kernville is 2 minutes away with anything you might need. It was my first trip to the area but I plan to return!

We love lake Isabella and just discovered this free camp spot right on the beach…

Even at 3,000 feet it can get very very hot here. Good thing it is at Lake Isabella so you can cool off! Feels great to take a dip!

I love pitching a tent and waking up to a beautiful lake especially when your right on the water! First come first serve and Launching access anywhere pretty much! Kernville lake Isabella is the place!

Overall nice site with full hookups & wi-fi/cell. Had a nice shade tree but it can be real sunny without one. Laundry right on site! Close to lake Isabella and all of the Kern. Great for last minute reservations too, online booking works

Booked a site at lake Isabella but it was ugly and windy. Went to look for a better campground and found this gem on the Kern River just a short bit away. Beautiful sites next the the refreshing Kern River. Couldn’t have worked out any better!

My first complaint is there is absolutely no signage into this campground. If not for GPS’s insistence we would have definitely missed. The sites are average for our 43’ motorhome. It’s all sand, no grass. Small grassy dog park which was nice. Soon as we got parked and went outside the smell of sewer greeted us. While it was a beautiful day to have the door open it was just way too unpleasant. There are no picnic tables and it’s pretty basic. The girl in the office was very pleasant. I guess it was ok for a 1 night stay even tho it is a ways off of the 5 fwy.

The Campsite is near Lake Isabella, along the Kern River. We visited on a non Holyday April week day and it was pretty empty so it was quiet and peaceful. The campsite is in a canyon surrounded by mountains and trees. There are fire rings, tables and grills and fore most spots you park next/near to your tent. There are also toilets. We really enjoyed climbing rocks along the river.

We needed somewhere to stay for one night as we were finishing up a cross-country drive. We loved how quiet the area was. The grounds are clean and well-kept. Starlink and Verizon service both work great here. Pet-friendly and lots of dogs around while we were here. No complaints!

Been here once because other campgrounds were full. Before it used to be closed to the public but now it is opened. This camp offers fish cleaning station, it has a playground for kids, portable restrooms, picnic sites with a fire pit. It has many areas with trees which offers plenty of shade. It gets crowded in the summer. If you don’t like being around people I don’t recommend any of these camps or that are reservable because you will come across a lot of campers. Try heading up North to disperse campgrounds, they are more secluded away from people but close to wildlife lol. Be aware. Other than that 25 a night and holidays it is $27. Not bad for a night or two. It is close to lake Isabella and also close to town which has plenty of stores Vons, Taco Bell, liquor stores, Gas station and more.

I do a lot of camping, this one is a great campground if you want to go swimming, waterskiing, windsurfing, fishing, or just enjoy the beautiful scenic views of Lake Isabella. If this campground is full check out my other review on Boulder Gulch. These camps do get full on holidays and in the summer so always reserve in time. Also what I do like about this site is that they have flushed toilets lol the host is always nice and welcoming. Also your phone will have some service but just make sure to turn it off and enjoy being out in nature. That’s the whole point right 😁. But other than that awesome camp, very clean and only some camps offer shade not all.

CONS: when it does get full, obviously there will be so many people and it does get loud and noisy. People will be playing loud music.

Review

Made reservation on Recreation.gov. Arrived at 4pm. Sites are said to be assigned upon arrival. Camp host was the only tent found pitched in the entire campground. It’s during the pandemic and some places are closed. Campground sign said full. Yelled to see if anyone was there in the campsite and no answer from the camp host. Left a voicemail with campground to let them know my name and reservation info and I have was going to look for a spot. Picked a spot with shade - very few available. Some trees, but not large Sequoias like you may expect since it’s near the Sequoia National Forest. This place is desert hot and might be a bit miserable for folks to just hangout here. There’s no hookups. It’s near Lake Isabella. Went to bed and didn’t see a camp host that evening. ANTS!! So many ants in my camper in the morning. Ack!! Talked to a waitress in town and she says the campground I was at is known for an ant problem. Had to get diatomaceous earth at the hardware store in town along with ant traps galore now that my camper was overrun. Find out from the locals this campground has a reputation for being bad. I had to reconsider my plan to stay there and went elsewhere... so frustrating.

Stayed here a single night on my way through the Bakersfield area. This RV park has everything you’re going to need and nothing more. An overwhelming majority of the spaces are for monthly residents, and you can tell most of the campers there are seasoned veterans. Right now the office is closed, I believe due to Covid, so you just fill out a form and drop it in a mail slot then pick out one of the sites. The area is quiet enough, but you can definitely hear the soft whir of cars on the highway close by. Camp seems dog friendly with a couple of very small fenced in grassy patches for pets to relieve themselves. There really isn’t much in the area in the way of markets or grocery stores.

This place is right off of Hwy 178 and you can camp right next to the water's edge but there is 24/7 dam construction with bright lights and loud machinery at all hours so be aware that it is not very peaceful at this time. Not really sure how long construction will be going on or what exactly they are doing but it looked like a fairly large project.

This recreation site accepts multiple passes including Southern Sierra Daily or Annual passes available for purchase there at the kiosk or any of the Interagency Passes (annual, senior, access, volunteer or military). A daily pass is $10 otherwise no extra fee if you have any of the other passes.

There are multiple criss crossing roads to choose from (see Google Earth view). The roads are sand and dirt in varying degrees of depth with some of the roads having deep ruts from runoff. We discovered nails in the morning near where we parked which we did not see when we arrived near dark, otherwise no other trash laying around.

The area is wide open with zero privacy or shade, but you can be so close to the water and the surrounding views of the mountains are awesome. There are dumpsters scattered about but no recycling. The bathrooms were closed due to Covid but there were porta potties. Potable water spigots can be found near the bathrooms. There is also a new RV dump station on Old Isabella Road Recreation site just up the road to the east that has a self pay that gives you a code to unlock the dump cover. $10 to dump. The water spigot there had a sign "non potable water".

Fires and stove fires are allowed with a fire permit only which can be obtained online at preventwildfireca.org or at the local ranger station. The town of Lake Isabella nearby has gas stations and stores for supplies. We saw only one boat and a bunch of kayak fishermen, as well as people fishing from the shoreline. Not sure if this is a stocked lake or how busy it gets in the summer with boaters.

Good cell service with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile

Overall a good place to stay, and we would have stayed longer than the one night we stayed if it were not for the construction noise.  Would stay again if going through this area.

Our experience here was really frustrating for multiple reasons, but for the sake of this review I will try to highlight what is important for other campers to know. We had a bad experience from the beginning when we arrived at Hungry Gulch and were blown off by the camp host for asking who we could ask some questions of since we had made a reservation online at Recreation.gov and it was unclear what to do since there are not assigned camp spots. Since we had a kayak lesson to get to we called the Sequoia Recreation line and were told that we could pick any empty campsite, put our tent there and then it was OK to leave and the camp host would come along later to check our reservation (again which was done online so we had no other proof besides our email). We pitched our tent, went off for our kayak lessons, and when we got back to the campsite around 9 pm there was another family in our site and our tent was gone! The camp host took down our tent and gave our spot to someone else because we "didn't have the proper tag and hadn't checked in with him,"which of course we tried to do.  So, I had to go find him and explain to him how I had done exactly what I was told by Sequoia Recreation and then he had to drive around for 15 minutes to find us a new spot and didn't even offer to help us put our tent back up that he had taken down (at what was now almost 10 pm). We were surrounded by people playing really loud music on a speaker on one side, another group that was drunkenly yelling on another and loud road noise. Someone came around the sites at like 10 pm and of course everyone was quiet for all of 5 minutes and then we didn't see anyone else after that checking on things. At 12:30 am we had enough, asked both groups to be quiet and while it helped some, both were still making lots of noise. After a long day of kayaking I was exhausted and gave up. We packed up our site at almost 1 am and left out of sheer frustration and ended up having to get a hotel in Bakersfield just to get some sleep. Beware of this campground and know that they're tricky with their sites. There are not a ton of bathrooms and the sites on the periphery of the campground are really close to the road with lots of noise. There are some sites with shade but not many. I am giving it 2 stars for location and proximity to Kern River activities and Lake Isabella.

Did not disappoint!! Everything was kept clean-restroom and showers included. LGBT friendly Dogs were also welcome at no additional charge! Campsites were by the river and easily accessible!

Remote, lots of site options and beautiful scenery! My dog and I had a good weekend away (even though we live close by.)

Super nice well kept campground with large level sites. Clean restrooms and showers. Mature orange trees on each site and dog areas for off leash play.