Best Tent Camping near Richland, OR

We scheduled three nights here but after two nights of amazing lightning storms, we skipped the third night. Still, this is a beautiful place, very private, secluded, and shady. The fast-moving creek creates a soothing white noise that we found calming. The campsites are spaced quite far apart, some only large enough for a tent. No hookups, but there is a clean vault toilet. We planned to hit the nearby hiking trail, but when we got to the trailhead, the parking lot was completely packed. When we go there again, we will stay and relax at the campground.

Lovely location in the mountains of Oregon. We drove a few thousand feet up a gravel road to get to this campsite. Easy access for my little sedan. I typed the latitude and longitude (found on the website) into my gps but lost service maybe 15 or 20 minutes before we arrived. Luckily it still was able to track our location and tell us “you have arrived” but as the campsite description said, these sites are spread out along the road, so it took us an extra 10 or 15 minutes to find the site we were going to stay at. The easiest campsites to find are at the trailhead of the North Fork Catharine Creek trail, which has a large parking lot with a minimal parking fee. The vault toilets are at this parking lot. For us, we crossed the bridge right before the parking lot and found a pull-off loop that had a few trailers with what seemed to be seasonal campers. They were cheerful and friendly. We went to the very back of the loop and found a nice secluded spot that was literally yards from the river. It was a primitive spot; it had no picnic table and only a fire ring made of rocks but since we had chairs we didn’t mind.

The forest floor was extremely easy to drive stakes into, and the river made a lovely background noise to fall asleep to.

The only thing I didn’t like was a couple bags of trash sitting on the side of the loop. We figured they were from the seasonal campers who put them at a distance so they didn’t have to deal with the smell. Not a great idea since an animal could get into it though. That’s something to keep in mind; THERE IS NO DUMPSTER so you have to pack all trash back out.

We stayed in the middle of July and it was delightfully cool, in the mid 70s during the day and dropped down to the upper 40s over night.

All in all a lovely overnight trip. I would go back.

Farewell bend is a day use state park and campground located near Huntington Oregon and nestled on the Snake River.

The park is a dry desert setting with yellowing grasses, tall spiny trees and sand dunes. The snake river is a deep emerald green flowing with foam from the upriver reservoir.

The campground has three large loops that can accommodate the largest of personal busses down to the classic sleeping bag. There are electric and water connections, a sewer dump and a boat launch. There are a couple of rentable waterfront cabins available on C-loop.

Many fisherman come here to enjoy the well stocked waters, keep an eye out for the other river wildlife commonly seen, rattle snakes. Other water sports are welcome here, boating and waterskiing happens all day long. The dunes across the river are a popular off-road and motorized fun location.

The river is pretty much inaccessible from the campgrounds, the day use area allows for access to the rocky beach, but the waters edge is not clean sadly, polluted with litter and river foam.

The park is a very warm and sunny Oregon escape with little to no cellular service.