Best Tent Camping near Rockport, WA

Living just north of Seattle, Deception Pass State Park was a great stay for us in WA! We enjoyed a quick one night tent stay at one of the parks tent sites. The campground was equipped with nice restroom and shower facilities, as well as a trail and nearby store/restaurant walkable from the tent site! We look forward to returning again soon for a longer stay and to explore more of the area!

Half way along the mountain loop highway you encounter numerous spacious tent sites with fire rings and gorgeous river & Mountain View camp grounds.

The campsites are nice, large and separated. A tent pad, table, and grill is provided at the tent sites. Our house near sites. Plenty to do at jim creek while you are there!

The tent sites are all walk in on a big lawn by the river. Sites are nicely spaced between one another. Each site has a fire pit and picnic table. There are some nice trees spaced in the lawn so you get shade.

It's one of my favorite spots because of the fishing access. The tent sites are right on the waterfront behind a row of foliage. The Skagit is a fishable river and spectacular when the salmon pinks run every other year. You can hear them jumping and splashing from your camp site. It's amazing.

And on your way home you have to stop by the 4B's Cafe in Concrete. Is a from scratch bakery and amazing!!!

Jake from the Dyrt here!  Cedar Groves has some great tent sites surrounded by tall dense trees, with tons of wildlife all around you!  Check them out and share some pics from your stay on the Dyrt!

We have tent camped and most recently taken our travel trailer to this park. It my fav! Wake up early in am take your warm beverage and sit on the logs & listen to the wave come in. Also you can occasionally spot whales from the shore.

We were surprisingly pleased with this campground. Our site was was a tent site only. The sites are spread out and do offer a little privacy. The sites have a picnic table, fire pit and a bear box. The restrooms a bit dated and you could defiantly tell they need to be updated. Diablo lake is beautiful and plenty of hiking trails to keep you busy. We will be back.

What can I say that others haven't!? Some of the best car camping in the Cascades. The lake is shockingly blue and COLD, but after a sweaty day of hiking is the ultimate in refreshment! Camp sites are close but feel secluded enough. If you walk into the tent sites on the north side of the campground you have some better options if you want to lug all of your gear with you.

There are multiple campground areas within the recreation area ranging from RV camping to hike in areas within the National Forest. The tent camping areas offer a great amount of seclusion while making it easy to move around the recreation area. There are multiple rivers and large lakes for activities or to lull you to sleep as the snow melts fill the river beds. We got incredibly lucky finding this place and will be back. Would recommend waiting until June for camping as it can be quite cold.

Neve Camp is another far off adventure that is totally worth taking; located in the North Cascades not too deep off the thickly forested Thunder Creek Trail.

When planning our trip, we read reviews on other sites where folks thought the trail was boring, but we disagree. It is thickly forested but we were still able to glimpse the icy blue creek through the trees here and there and there was so much more to see! We found snails, mushrooms, wild flowers, all kinds of edible wild berries, trees large enough to stand inside, a rock cave in the hillside, and, of course, the sweet wooden foot bridge leading across Thunder Creek right into the first camp of the trail, Thunder Creek Camp . We bypassed this camp for two main reasons; 1) it’s located uncomfortably close to the trail, and 2) it’s only 1.5 miles into the trail (though not a bad spot if you got a late start and wanted to skip spending the night at Colonial Creek campground at the trail-head) and we wanted to see what lay ahead. We trekked another easy 1 mile before finding signs to Neve Camp. We wandered the nicely spread out campsites until settling on the dope site with the awesome river views from the fire pit/cook area. The tent sites for this camp are located on a small side trail up the hill a bit. They even have a nice pit toilet which isn’t enclosed so you can enjoy the surrounding forest while there. We had originally planned to head out the next morning, heading further up the trail but at breakfast our group of four decided we weren’t going anywhere as we were all in love with Neve Camp! We had an amazing view and sounds of the river to help lull us to sleep at night. During the day we watched all kinds of birds use the river as a freeway to head up or downstream. We saw many osprey, herons, a few formations of Canadian geese, a family of woodpeckers and more small birds we didn’t have names for. Did I mention the berries? The boys wandered the forest collecting all kinds of berries; blackberry, blueberry, raspberry, salal berry, salmon berry, and strawberry. We assume all those berries is why we found fresh bear scat on the trail, and spotted a black bear across the creek from us on our last morning in camp.

This location could be used as a mini base camp to hike up or down the trail a bit more. Neve Camp is also located very near the trail fork leading to Fourth of July Pass.

Really the only remotely negative thing I can say about this spot was that the tent sites were a bit small. We rock a Marmot Limelight 2P and we hardly had enough room to set up our tent! Once we jammed it in the tent site, however, we were good to go and the tent site size no longer mattered.

This campground is beautiful! We had a site on the Mountain Loop Hwy side, so the road noise was kind of bothersome. If you’re lucky enough to get a site along the river, I don’t think the road noise would be a problem. The campground has beach access, fishing access, running water, and indoor plumbing (no showers, but sinks and toilets). It was a little stressful watching people trying to get their RV’s through the tight loop of the roadway lined with trees. We were tent camping though, so we didn’t have that issue personally. Would definitely return to this campground.

We ABSOLUTELY ENJOYED CAMPING here !! We live about 15 mins away and will be returning!!! We lived in a travel trailer for 2 years myself my wife and 3 children and from time to time we miss it ! The kids have been missing a lot them selves and we went tent camping here for first time after living in our trailer and we had an amazing time there! Big out space with plenty of availability! Clean out house for the kiddos! Fire pits ,wild life , and really peaceful! Thank u guys for letting us camp with u will be back soon

Great spot for living by the water for a few days. Plenty to do as long as you're into beach-combing, hiking, crabbing, fishing, kayaking, or just watching the water. There's a sweet spot late summer when you can add berry-picking to the activities list. It gets quite busy, but not as overrun as other parks in the islands. This place is ideal for tent camping and hiking around the green trails with pretty awesome views of the sound. If you'd rather go RV/cabin experience, you might be better off down the road at Cama (?) I think.

Howard Miller Steelhead is luxury camping. Lots of spots for RV's, but not a lot of trees. Paved roads everywhere. There are only a few tent sites, but they are right along a beautiful river. Again, no trees between sites though. When looking for a site in the dark, I definitely stumbled across a few other people's spots. I'm more of a rustic person, so this campsite wasn't for me. But it's location is great - it's right along the North Cascades Highway. The backdrop of the mountains is beautiful. Sorry no pictures. I was on my way to a rustic backpacking trip before sunrise.

Located directly in front of the North Cascades Visitor Center. The campground is as described. We tent camped in loop A near the hike-in sites. Of course it was rainy but we were still very happy with this campground. The bathrooms were clean and had one electric outlet. The water spigot was in front of the restrooms. The bear box was excellent and there were plenty of trees for privacy. There is one general store nearby but no restaurants so I’d recommend coming prepared. The NP Rangers are lovely and pointed us in the right direction for hikes. We drove into Newhalem to hike the Ladder Creek Falls Trail behind the Gorge Powerhouse. It is beautiful! Then we drove up Lake Diablo - Gorgeous!

We stayed here on June 6, 2022. The trailer campsites are in a poor state of repair. Many have standing water and the ground is damp due to lack of gravel. Our picnic table had a partly melted top and was so unstable on the eroded slope it was not usable. The tent sites were very wet and sloping. It looks as if Washington State Parks and Recreation has totally neglected this park for several years. The campsites need ditching and a load of gravel each and levelling. The fees are expensive($40.00/night) plus a Discovery Pass, so it is definitely not worth it to stay at this park. 

It was disappointing to read so many great reviews which did not match the reality.

On the other hand, the campground host was very friendly and the restrooms were spotless, which was under her control. The poorly maintained infrastructure is not.

I will be writing to the State to voice my concerns.