Best Tent Camping near Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest

This is a great state park to set up camp. It is always very busy. The sites are relatively spread out. There are two different sections for camping: an upper and lower. To me, the lower section doesn’t seem as nice. It has more trees, but the camp spots seem to be closer together. Likewise, the lower section just feels a little more rough than the upper section. The views are spectacular. There is a boat launch, and a swimming area. Furthermore, there is also a small store, and a mini-mart across the street. What makes this place great is the actual camp sites. They are huge. What makes it difficult for tent camping is there are a ton of sprinklers that turn on frequently. It is important to watch where you stake down your tent. For this trip, we brought our RV and a tent. During the summer, the temperatures during the daytime are hot! Luckily each site is equipped with water and electricity. There is no WiFi, but the cell service is outstanding.

Cooper Lake is absolutely stunning and admittedly the campsites are situated pretty well for views and privacy but there are definitely Pros and Cons to this campground.

Pros:

Right on the lake and if not you get a very private site walking distance to water
Great hiking trail

Lake access 24/7

Lot's of big shade trees

No internal combustion motors 

Vault toilets in good shape

Dumpsters

Cons: 

Extremely busy (and LOUD) day use area

Steep hill and trails to all the sites - pack light and even then it is A LOT of work getting into your site

$18 for a walk in site...? eh a little steep for me

Did I mention the loud day use area with lots of screaming kids?

No bear boxes by the lake so you also have to trek your cooler/dry goods up the hill every night to not attract wildlife.

All in All this was a solid 3.5 stars.  There were pros to out weight the cons but in the end if I am going to walk that far to haul my stuff into a site I want it to be pretty remote/serene OR be a little cheaper.

Within the almost 4 million acres of the Okanogan Wenatchee National Forest, lie countless locations for dispersed camping. This area of the southeast corner of the NF has very little traffic compared to others, we saw only one ATV for the whole time we were there. This area lies along the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route between the Cashmere and Chelan sections along NF-7400. Obviously, this is a 4X4 road and I wouldn't suggest it in anything less. Incredible sunset views of the valley in front of Chumstick Mountain, it gets pretty windy at night but there are treelines you can position against. This particular spot photographed is just up the hill off the roadside in a nice grassy clearing. More spots were just up the hill around the bend as well.

This campground is better suited for tents, not RVs or camper vans. Many of the sites are small and lack privacy, especially those in the west end. We reserved on line and there was no notice that sites 30 and 31 share the vehicle space! Since we were camping in a van, we felt like we were in an ordinary parking lot and not camping. Two strange vehicles parked immediately next two us the whole time. There were some other shared parking sites too. Ok for tent camping because you can tent away from the parking area, but not ok for vehicles. 

In addition, people kept walking through our site (and we watched them walk through other occupied sites). One day, my hubby wasn't feeling well, so we took a nap only to be woken by our dog growling because a man and women were peering into the side window of our van! WTH! Numerous people walked through through our site even though the end was a restoration area clearly marked to stay off of, but people walked through it anyway. And, then there were the young men playing football in our site. Oh, and the dogs not on leashes. One knocked me over when it jumped on me from the bushes as I was heading to the restroom at night. 

The only good thing was that the vault toilet was the cleanest ever vault toilet. No odors!! Kudos to the guy who cleans it!

Every dispersed campground we checked along this road (maybe five or so) was littered with human feces and toilet paper everywhere. We found a literal bucket of human waste beside the river with a soiled pool noodle nearby I can only assume was being used as a toilet seat. Please, if you care about keeping nature wild, carry out your toilet paper and dig a cathole or use the outhouse in the campground. If you don’t know what a cathole is, you should probably should not being using dispersed camping and try the campground down the road. We ended up staying at the campground because we couldn’t find dispersed camping where there wasn’t poop and had a positive experience there. Leave no trace!! 

https://www.nps.gov/articles/leave-no-trace-seven-principles.htm

It was an amazing campground a lovely host and spacious okay privacy sites,ours was right on the river it was huge could fit lots of tents and hammocks a picnic table big enough for 4-6 people and there was also a connecting site making it pretty big,huge fire ring,and so close to the river(by the way this was a walk in)there is not a lot of space for a trailer here but right down the road less then 3 minutes is lake Wenatchee and they have a huge state park but this place was way better so much wind down there and NO privacy NONE but Nason creek VERY GOOD