September 14-19, 2022
I camped at the Yakima Sportsman State Park in 2019, and I loved it. So I came back to this same campground for another visit in 2022. I’ve been camping for 6 or 7 years now and have found lots of favorite campgrounds and campsites. I may start returning to campgrounds quite a bit. But have no fear, I will also be exploring new places to camp … whether state parks or private campgrounds or “Boondockers Welcome” sites or people’s driveways (with permission of course), etc. For this trip, I went back to one of my favorite state parks.
I found lots of new things, different things, on this trip … things I hadn’t seen when I was here in 2019. The 2019 camping trip was in May, in the spring. This year, 2022, I was here in September, autumn.
So let’s get going! 🙂
Washington State is divided by the Cascade Mountains (the pink squiggly line in the image below). Western Washington is west of the Cascades, and eastern Washington is east of the Cascades. My home is in western Washington. Yakima is in eastern Washington. So, over the mountains I went with my big white truck and with Towhee the Trailer (and Little Towhee along too, of course). It was an easy four-hour drive with one lunch stop and then one rest/walk stop.
The Google Earth image below shows a RED circle around the campsite I was in when I was here in 2019. And it shows a YELLOW circle around the campsite I was in on this trip. Both campsites were great. The RED one had full hookups (water/elec) and an almost level, paved campsite, but it had neighbors, not too close and all of them were quiet, but neighbors none-the-less, and it was more expensive. The YELLOW campsite had no hookups (I carry plenty of water and have solar for elec, tho I used my propane for heat and for the fridge), the campsite was almost level (no problem), but it was gravel (not paved) so I had to pay a bit more attention so I didn’t track gravel and dirt into the trailer, and yet this campsite had only one neighbor and they weren’t very close at all and there was shrubbery in between us that blocked most of the view and they were quiet too. And the YELLOW site was less expensive than the RED site. I could hear a TINY bit of freeway noise in the YELLOW campsite (hardly anything at all); I heard nothing in the RED campsite. Both campsites were great.
On this trip, I backed into the YELLOW site, leveled up, chocked the wheels, unhitched … and there I was. 🙂 Home.
The neighbors I could see were off to the left, in the photos here, maybe 70 feet away. In the photo below, you can just see an RV that’s about 100 feet away on another road entirely. I never heard them at all.
Pretty nice, huh. 🙂
After I got settled, I took my usual walk around the campground just to check things out, and to settle my freeway-driving nerves. On that walkabout, I found three MORE campsites here that I really liked … #51 below … no neighbors except for one about 60 feet to the right of that campsite.
#37 below … no neighbors. This spot was closer to the entrance of the campground so there might be more traffic passing by … and it had less greenery between it and the little road … but still it was delightful.
And then there was #74. When I really like a particular campsite, and there’s already a rig in that campsite, I just take a photo of the number. If I really, really like the campsite, I’ll take two photos, sometimes three photos. I took three photos of #74! Guess I better check it out online and head back to #74.
But … I also found this area below, with campsites along just one side of that long green area, so you would have someone a bit in front of you, and/or behind you, but no one at all next to you. That looked nice to me too.
Unless you head out onto wide open BLM land (federal Bureau of Land Management) or such like that, there will almost always be neighbors camping near you. So you pick the best spot and be courteous. 99% of the people out here are very courteous.
And look at the sunshine here today. The weather was like this all week. Will share lots more, stay tuned. 🙂