Best RV Parks & Resorts near Gifford Pinchot National Forest

The campground at Ainsworth State park feels more like an RV parking lot than an exotic Columbia Gorge camping experience. The majority of the camground it rv hookups with just a few walk in tent sites. Yet, while the campground isn't impressive in itself, it is in an amazing location for exploring neighboring Eagle Creek and the rest of the gorge just steps away!

The parking for the tent sites is close to the walk in trail. There are only 6 tent sites and they can be reserved online so it is not easy to roll up to a free spot in hiking season.

The sites themselves are basic and offer much more privacy than your neighbors in the RV section of the park are getting. There is water near the tent site entrance. Toilets are a bit of a walk from the tent sites.

This site does take credit cards for campground registration.

This was a very nice Thousand Trails. We stay two nights from September 13th through September 16, 2019, in campsite 187, the stay was free due to our Thousand Trails membership. Our site had electricity and water hook up. 

The site was level and backed up to a creek that was down below the site. The stay site was quiet, no one camping on our driver side did have a neighbor on the passenger side. The campground is at an elevation of 125 ft. Access to the campground was right off hwy 12, our 28 ft travel trailer easily fit with room to spare in our site. Once we entering the campground, the pavement turns to hard-packed gravel as we circled around a couple of times to find our campsite. 

The weather was high overcast in the mid 60's, the nights low 50s. It did rain hard on Sunday morning from 2am to 10am. This is a very quiet campground, activities we found at the campground to keep busy was shuffleboard which we enjoyed for the first time. The Billards table was in really good shape too. A musician name Dr A played music Saturday night in the lodge. The campground has clean free showers, plenty of hot water and not more than a 5 minute walk from our campsite. Since we arrived on a Friday school day, the campgrounds were not full, there was no waiting for showers. 

My wife and I enjoyed the campground, we will be back the next time we want to hike at Mt. St. Helens.

This is a great base camp for exploring the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

The campground and facilities is very clean and well maintained. Most sites are in a wooded area with good shade. 

The day use area is along the river with boat ramp and dock. However, THERE ARE NO FALLS. The other reviewer's photos are not from here. There is a damn downstream which creates a slow moving river good for boating. The river is very cloudy murky green a result of ash and sediment runoff from the Mt St Helens eruption. 

Loops:

A-Loop: water & electric. A mix of shaded and open grassy sites. Outer are pull through, inner are back in. You will find the most private sites in this loop. 

B-Loop: no utilities, possibly tents only. These are the only sites which are not paved. Many are right next each other. It's like they had it laid out well but then jammed in a few more as an afterthought. 

C-Loop: Group RV water & electric. This loop is interesting. It’s a paved circle with a treed center with group tables and firepit. Circle your RVs like a wagon train.

D-Loop: water & electric. This is an RV neighborhood where everyone has a "Welcome to our campsite" sign and there's a common covered area with tables. Sites have the table to rear of site.

Nice quiet campground, some long term campers. Close to the Columbia River. Beautiful view nice established old timber. It is close to the train track. Enjoyed our stay here

Very private full hook ups. Long deep sites and very private. Great lake view.

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A visit to Beacon Rock State Park is one for the memory book. Not only is the campground itself a woodland wonderland with winding paths through tall old growth forest areas, but the surrounding area of the park itself is impressive with exciting things to do around every corner. 

Located along the Columbia River, the park has the asset of water activities while also the beauty of waterfall paths, public spaces ideal for family gatherings and of course the iconic Beacon Rock itself which towers above the surrounding area as one of the more unique look outs you will find. 

I visited this park on a warm and blustery day. I started out hiking the Beacon Rock itself where I was impressed by the views and challenged by the ongoing ascent of the switchbacks. Following my challenge of the morning, I moved over the campground itself. Mid afternoon on a busy day, I expected to be turned away as the park was pretty crowded but instead I was impressed to find that the campground still had a few sites available and was able to settle into one for a few hours of R&R. 

The sites were large enough to comfortably park my small car and have plenty of room to spread out. While I don’t see this camp being great for excessively large rigs, I did see a few smaller and mid sized units on the loop. 

Sites were basically fitted with tables and fire rings while common spigots were located in several locations around camp for those needing water. Both trash and recycling receptacles were placed near the kiosk of camp, something which you will not find unless you travel all the way around the loop. 

I enjoyed this site because of the access it had to the trail system beyond the Beacon Rock trail(which is located across the street from the camp). Several trails spur off the back side of the camp near an overflow parking area for those who need more than one car for their adventures. 

Even as the camp filled up there was enough spacing that it didn’t seem to be loud and short of a few dogs barking here and there it was pretty quiet into the evening. 

A centralized restroom and bath house was such a perk and justified the higher pricing of the site which I did feel was pretty high overall but somewhat fitting for the area. The showers were coin operated with every 3 minutes costing$0.50 a great investment after being on the road and staying at another campground previously which was having water issues which prevented me from being able to take a shower the night before. The showers were hot, the pressure was good and the overall impact of this was game changing!!! 

**Tips: **

• Bear Warning- This area is a bear zone however you will not find bear boxes like you will at other campsites in the area. For this reason you need to come prepared and make sure you are able to secure your items in a safe way. 
• Other Campsites- There are several campsites beyond the mainly advertised loop. You can find these a bit further down the road and they offer RV hook ups and also equestrian camping. No Supplies No Problem- At this campsite you are only a short distance from town so if you do happen to forget something and need it the drive to a store or station is very short. 
• Cell Service- This is one of the few locations in the area I did have cell signal with AT&T!!

We stayed here for two nights and snagged some nice waterfront spots, it was a nice area and relaxing. They have a toilet, no shower. The vault toilet is not super gross thankfully, but there are a couple potential long term campers here beware of that. If you stick close to the entrance side then you will have some good spots and not too many neighbors.

There's a couple of things going on at the Bridge of the Gods Motel & RV Park. First, there's the little office where you check in. Cute/quaint and crammed full of things like DVDs you can borrow for free while you're there. The first little strip is where the hotel is. Very basic rooms with almost an old west feel (porch and cabin siding) but also has flowers hanging from baskets, etc.

Then you drive out and around the corner and you get to where the RVs and cabins are. It's mostly a long driveway/road with cabins and spots for RVs on each side. The cabins are more like a trailer-park cabin (long and narrow) but brand new. Not much landscaping and some of the RVs look like they've been there a while.

The "Town"/area is cute with some fun drive-in type restaurants and a really nice park on the river.

Overall, seems like a place where the owners are trying really hard to fix it up but nothing super fun to bring me back yet.

Nice Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife campground with a dirt boat ramp, seems to serve mostly fishermen. Some sites are right next to the Klickitat River. Some have easy access for larger rigs and space for boat trailers. The campground is right next to SR 142, but it's not really a very busy highway. The Klickitat Trail for mountain biking and hiking is nearby.

We stayed for two nights mid-week in September. The river sites are in sight of each other but not too tightly packed. It did seem that some of those sites were occupied by some long-term residents, although you're not supposed to occupy spots for more than 14 days out of 30. One site ran their generator constantly, so we set up on the other side of the old Icehouse structure right next to the river, where the river noise covered up the generator noise. We had a quiet pleasant stay.

Stumbled upon this place a few summers ago and have returned many times since. This is a perfect spot to post up for a few days with a book. It’s very quiet and the hosts are great! Super friendly and never any issues getting fire wood. Family/four-legged friendly.

Pretty big campground with 80+ sites. I usually try and snag oak site b/c it’s big and really private. Neighboring sites are also wonderful.

It’s first come first serve so I would get there early, especially in the heat of the summer. Open May-November I believe. Bring cash for payment.

Picnic tables, big fire pits with a little spot to cook if you don’t have a stove. RV hookups, water, garbage dump. Should have everything you need.

It’s close to Lost Lake if you’re looking for a day trip. Less than 20 minutes to downtown Hood River. About an hour or so from Portland.

If you like beer, check out Pfriem on your way out.

Iron Creek is a great camp site in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. The river runs near the camp was a great spot for the kids and dogs to play. Camp sites were large spacious and private. I would highly recommend this campground!

As one of the closest state parks to Portland and in the beautiful Columbia River Gorge, Ainsworth can get busy during the summer months, but sometimes you can get a reservation during the week. I like to come in the off season. 

There 40 full hook-up sites, 6 walk-in tent sites and a hiker/biker campground with no reservations required. The campground itself unremarkable, with a bathroom/shower house, dump station and play ground, but it is a great jumping off point for exploring all things Columbia River Gorge.

Dump station and water available

Great campground in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Smallish campground with about half the spots right on the river. Nice day use area slightly separated from the camping. Picnic tables and fire rings. Mostly tents when we were there, but there's also pull-through driveway type spots that could fit a trailer. At just $12 per night, price can't be beat.

Plenty of trees and grass. Most spots are slightly exposed to the turn-around road, but still feels private since there's space and trees between the spots.

Not too far from Mouton Falls, which are amazing, plus other hiking and swimming areas nearby.

My wife and I arrived on a Friday and left the following Tuesday with our 22’ travel trailer. We stayed in RV4 (one out of the five available RV spots) and it had full hookups. The scenery was amazing and I highly suggest the Beacon Rock/River to Beacon Rock hikes.

We didn’t have any issues at the site, but noticed that spots RV4 and RV5 were relatively distanced from each other, while spots RV1-RV3 were pretty close to each other. The sites are right next to the highway and train tracks as well, with trains running every 30 minutes or so.

All in all, we had a great time and it was a thoroughly enjoyable place to be. Would definitely return!

Stayed here for a night before an alignment job in Portland. Beautiful state park right on the Columbia River. Beautiful 180 degree views from our camp site of the river, river gorge. Song birds galore. You get traffic noise anywhere in the park and the closer you are to the river the closer you are to the train tracks. Didn’t bother us at all but I could see people not loving it. Very clean bathrooms, full hook up sites for $30 with a view. Can’t beat that.

Ainsworth is a very nice, small state park. We had two different sites due to limited availability. Book early! Our sites were asphalt and pull through with full hook ups. The park is very clean and quiet until the trains start at night. We were okay in an RV with air on. However, tent campers might be effected by the train. Bathrooms are large and spotless. Internal roads are tight but I saw larger rigs in the campground.

Your campsite fee includes a permit for the beautiful waterfall corridor and historic Columbia River highway. Take left out of the campground and stop at all as you make your way to Crown Point.