Best Tent Camping near Lake Wallula

We stayed here in a tent site (no hookups) on our way back to Portland from Nevada. As an overnight cut-off campground, it’s lovely: Nice-sized sites set in beautiful Oregon forest (we’d been out of state for a couple weeks and REALLY appreciated the trees); clean bathrooms and showers; long “tent” sites that allowed us to back in our 18ft trailer without uncoupling for the night.

However, it’s right on the interstate. While you kind of tune it out after a while, the road noise is constant and definitely interferes with any sense of “wilderness”.

My husband and I love this campground. It's close to the mountains without being too far away - about an hour and a half from us living in Tri-cities. There are showers and water spickets, room for horses, and great hiking trails. There is room for both tent and RV camping. We have only ever gone tent camping, and the size of the campgrounds for us has been great. There is room to set up hammocks and chairs.

The only unfortunate aspect about this campground is that it is somewhat close to the highway. After the first weekend we spent there, we got somewhat used to the sound - it can sometimes be soothing. It's also a good idea to bring something to provide added shade to either the tenting area or sitting area as it gets quite sunny in the morning.

So… many… spiders! I paid 20 bucks for 1 night tent camping for me and 2 dogs. The campground is absolutely gorgeous with lots of trees and water views. A little confusing to get to since there isn’t much signage to guide you and I ended up going to wrong way the first time. They have bathrooms with showers available for use. I was very very satisfied here but once it got a little darker, all the creepy crawlers started coming out and I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many spiders in one place. In the morning, I had spiders in each of my door handles, my mirrors, when I turned on my car they started crawling out of the hood of my car, and I had spiders coming out of my trunk for a week. I am not a “beginning camper” so I’m used to bugs and spiders on my trips but I’ve never had this many in one place. There are really cute baby frogs hopping all around in the mornings though which was very cute. Just watch your step. Probably won’t be going back because of the spiders though…

General: 41 RV sites with water and electric plus 11 tent sites in a grassy common area.

Site Quality: Reasonable separation between the sites. The back-in sites are wide enough to comfortably fit a TT, 5th wheel or RV and your toad or other vehicle side-by-side. The pull-through sites are very large. All sites have gravel camper pads and most appeared very level or had a level area. Our site, along with several others, had a nice view of Lake Sacajawea. 

Bath/Shower house: Clean even if a little dated. Didn’t use the shower so cannot comment on that except that the hooks are located outside of the shower stalls so even though there is a swinging door to the shower area, privacy is compromised a bit by this design. 

Activities: Unless you have a boat (there is a boat launch and dock), not too much to do here except relax. There is a small swimming area but no beach to speak of (grassy and pebbly area). There is a playground and horseshoe pits but no hiking trails that I could see. 

To get to this campground, you drive past many miles of apple orchards and then suddenly, you see the lake and campground. There are quite a few trees for shade. Surprisingly good cell (Verizon) given the remoteness of the campground. Be aware there are train tracks nearby and you will hear an occasional loud train. It was very quiet on the Wednesday before Labor Day, but we were told it would be completely full on the weekend.