Best Tent Camping near Burbank, WA

Tent camping

Easy to pull into tent camping spots. Recommend if traveling and need an easy sleep spot.

This is NOT a secluded wilderness campround where you will have a epic back to nature experience.   Having said that, if you want a place to park your rv (they do have tent sites also), with full hook ups while you explore the local wineries,  with a pool and a shuttle van, then this place is amazing.

We visited this KOA for several years on 4th of July to visit a concert in Walla Walla. In the early days this KOA was nothing more than dirt tent sites. Since then, it has developed into a nice campground with mature trees for shade and grass at each site. The river is easy access for launching motor boats and it is across the bridge from Palouse Falls and Lyons Ferry park for kayaking, swimming and a good picnic spot.

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.

Good experience camping here. Really loved watching the sunset over the water while taking a stroll by the shore. Metal fire pit made perfect for dinner, and the ground was mostly even for our tent.

I have been going here for 20 years it's very nice clean and friendly people that run it. Great for tents or RVs. Full facilities with showers. You can watch the river traffic has a small marina by it that you can get gas at for your boat if you have those. Very busy Campground hard to get into at times.

We do an annual trip here every Father’s Day weekend. Close to the river, plenty of fishing and swimming. The trees are nice. This is an Army Corp of Engineers campground so some federal rules apply: no firearms, no alcohol(at least not openly)

The only issue we have is the sprinklers come on Friday nights and wash the tents for us. it’s good and bad.

Love this campground and will come back. My husband and I usually pull our ‘68 Aristocrat Lo-Liner but on this trip we were “roughing it” with a tent and a small SUV. I was happy that not only did we get a spot on the river, but there were free, clean hot showers centrally located. The back in spots were not too close together. Some spots offer shade, others are full on sun. And the catfish were biting!

Not a large campground, spaces are fairly close, enough to hear neighbors conversations….but generally everyone was quiet and considerate. The spot we lucked up on didn’t have much tent room, so it’s perfect for our camper van, but understandable why it was the only one left. Bathrooms are fairly clean with 1 pay shower with privacy door.

Our tire shredded on our CRV and my husband was nervous to carry our heavy load on a dummy tire so we stopped here which was the closest town. We were the only tent as this is an RV park but had an okay grass patch. One tiny tree. You can tell that there are several long-term residents due to the skirting around so many of the rv's. We were able to get a used tire from the nearby tire shop in the morning and be on our way. Thankful for this place in a time of need. 🙂

Lots of options in this campground from drive through big trailer spots to back in spots to tent only areas. 

Tons of wide green lawns with lots of space, camp sites end up pretty well spaced apart so you might only have 2 or 3 neighbors then a ton of lawn before another neighbor.

It's right on the snake river, so you can practically fish from your camp site if you want. There is a connected wildlife preserve that you can walk around in and also fish in that is a sperate area. Lots of birds to watch. 

There is also a connected park that is only open during the day with a beach. 

Fully facilities including water and power hookups, a central dumping station. Flush toilets and showers included. A playground for the kids. 

River barges keep things along the river interesting. Maybe road noise from the nearby highway was a bit louder than we'd like.

This campground was a really fun trip! We had sites 13 and 14 for 9 total people. If I were to do it again, I’d reserve one additional for that size of group. The campsites were on the smaller size. Site 13 had significantly more shade than site 14. It was very hot when we were there, so we pulled the table from site 14 into 13 and made that our hangout area and put all our tents into site 14. We had cell service here too, although we all kept it in airplane mode.

Best feature: River is so close to hop in. There is no super easy walk in route to the river that we found. You may need to scramble over some stuff, so bring your floaties/chairs, but leave your rolling cooler or wagon at your site. The river is not very deep but that helps keep the temperature at an ideal. I highly recommend making sure you are wearing secure water shoes to help you get in and out. Some rocks were highly slippery.

Con: The bugs. Seriously. We were all eaten alive. We wore bug spray the whole time but it couldn’t keep them at bay. We had mosquitoes for sure but there were other bugs stinging us that left stingers in that we had to pick out... maybe yellow jackets? If you have severe bug allergies, I would not camp here. Bring your bug spray and your cortisol cream for sure.

We stayed in this County Park campground primarily to spend time with some friends who headed down from Washington. It was great for that purpose- they reserved two adjacent campsites on the South Fork Walla Walla River. We spent most of our time hanging out at the campsites, with some leisurely strolls to check out the rest of the park. The sites along the river, and the river itself, are beautiful. They are angled nicely to allow views of the river(and less of neighboring sites), with vegetation between sites to add a little extra privacy. Our friends and most other campers were in larger RVs with bathrooms, which I think is the target customer. Since we have a small teardrop(no bathroom), we used the flush restroom at the park. The bathroom was clean, but not really comfortable to use, as the fixtures are "institutional"-style and solid stainless steel- made for durability no doubt, or to survive the next flood, but definitely uncomfortable on cold mornings! If we stay here again we will likely set up a portable bathroom. The gentleman who runs/maintains the park is pleasant and on the grounds regularly. Electrical and water hookups available, but no hot water or showers, and no cell reception or wifi.