Best Cabin Camping near Pinole, CA

This campground is beautiful, set in the redwoods, with a creek and nature trails. It has all the amenities: flush toilets, showers, fire pits, running water, and grills. The only drawback is the sites are small and close together, affording very little privacy. The campground can be pretty loud at night too. If you're looking for peace, quiet, and seclusion, this might not be the campground for you. We really enjoyed it though because we have a three year old, and with all the other noise in the campground, I didn't have to feel bad when she was being loud. Also, watch out for the raccoons! They stole my bread that I stupidly left out, and then tried to get into our ice chest. There are lockers provided at each campsite. Use them!

We have previously tent camped and car camped here and we really enjoy it. It can get warm in the summer, but the cool moist ocean fog comes in and blankets the area in the evenings, which can really cool it down. On our first visit, there was no running water or showers, but they did have portapotties. On our second visit, water was available, but it was not potable, and the showers and toilets were still not working. Not sure if that is a Covid related issue or a temporary maintenance issue. It’s worth a drive through prior to staying, in order to find a site that fits your needs, they have many different sized sites available, and we like the sites in the high teens (18 & 19), as they seem a bit larger and are right along the creek. The sites appear to be your standard state park equipment with a fire pit, a picnic table and a lockable pantry. The parking area for our site was large enough to accommodate our SUV and another vehicle. There is firewood generally available with the camp host or at the gate. Good cell signal with Verizon. Because of the amazing redwood canopy, it might be hard to get good sun for solar in most of the sites. There are all kinds of trails available, as well as a paved path that runs for at least a mile or so along the creek, that used to be the old railroad line through that area. They have informational signs all over the place providing historical or ecological information. Access to the creek is seasonally restricted for spawning, and I believe that goes from spring to about mid June or July. Also, lots of poison oak in the unmaintained areas and off the trails, so be aware.

As the title says! Due to a cancellation at another state park, we booked a site at Sammy P. last minute, 2 days prior to our check-in date. It rained during our trip which we knew about beforehand. 

 We stayed at campsite #56, which was a surprisingly small lot. Keep in mind, not all campsites at Sammy P. are the same size, but I noticed the handful that we saw were smaller than what I’ve seen at other state parks. Not much space to pitch a larger size tent - we used our Big Agnes Big House 4 person tent and barely had enough space to set up the tent’s guy lines, however, a 2-3 person tent would fit just fine I think. Don’t plan on pitching more than one tent though, if you book site #56. I’d like to add that the area designed for you to deploy your tent was on a slope; you can tell there was an effort to make the area flatter but there was still a slope. This was a little problematic during the rain because the rain runoff would pool up in that area. We didn’t actually take on water inside our tent, but the footprint and lower outside area of the tent body were extremely muddy. 

The site’s accompanying picnic table was positioned oddly close to the fire ring and was sitting on top of wooden planks to keep it level. I guess you could move the table away from the fire ring if you wanted but you might end up with a wobbly picnic table (also remember: not much space). The food locker onsite is made of wood. Make sure you bring a pad lock as there is no locking mechanism on the door. Also, most of our goods got wet from the rain so the food locker is definitely not waterproof. Keep your eyes peeled for wild life and your food no matter what time of the day it is. We were harassed by cute little chipmunks and birds that didn’t seem too intimidated by humans. The bathrooms were about what you’d expect to see at a public facility, nothing fancy and clean enough to use. The sinks had hot water and good water pressure. We never ended up using the showers because we were deterred by the rain.

Enough of the “bad”, the local trails and creeks were breathtaking. We hiked Pioneer Tree Trail which was the perfect length for a novice hiker. Hiking through the forest felt like you were walking through a scene from Fern Gully. The various runoff creeks that you hike alongside were so neat to see. We would like to visit again, it was definitely a great last minute trip.