Winston Creek Campground

Stayed here over Memorial weekend.  It was free to stay, you just have to have a reservation to stay.  

THis is a DNR campground, so it has nothing but outhouses.  There is a hand pump for water, but it has a sign that says the water is not potable.  

We were in site #5, it was a bit tight to get our Jayco 174BH backed in due to the angle of the site and the path around the campground is very narrow.  I would not want to come in here with anything much bigger than our little 20 footer.  There were other sites that would easily fit bigger rigs, but the trees were pretty close on each side and some were leaning over the path.  I call it a path because it was not paved, and was mud in several places.  We did walk around and got a look at all the other sites, Site #4 was the best we saw, it was right at a bend in the path so backing in would have been a breeze, and it has a huge area where the table and fire pit was that you could have easily had 4-5 tents if you wanted to put the kids out in those.  We had a nice path down to the creek which was a nice distraction in the evenings.  

There was pretty much no cell service there from Verizon.  I would occasionally get an alert of a new email, but was never able to refresh and get anything but the spinning wheel.  Even as we drove to/from the campground, Verizon just doesn't have much service out here.  Maybe other providers are better.

Our site was rather private, we could hear others in other sites, but there was trees and bushes between us so it really did feel like we were all alone!  Best nights sleep I have gotten in YEARS!  The trees do a great job of covering the site, so solar would be very limited here.  Maybe only a couple hours each day at best.

Something we found odd since this was so far away from people, there didn't seem to be any animals around.  We heard birds, but never saw any squirrels, chipmunks, nothing.  We even left some bread in our dogs bowl outside overnight and the next day while we drove to Mt St Helens(about 1.5 hours away) and it did not get eaten.  

If you are looking for a quiet place to camp, this is a great place!  Just know, now Verizon services and there is no services offered other than several sets of outhouses.  Not even a dump station.

While the camp sites are free, I did knock off 1 star for the poor condition of the road.  There was lots of mud and huge pot holes.  I really wished I had a rack with me to carry around the loop to fill them in!