Best Tent Camping: Oregon. Becky Ohlsen
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18 East Lake Campground
19 Frissell Crossing Campground
26 Three Creek Lake and Driftwood Campgrounds
27 Tumalo State Park Campground
30 Crater Lake National Park: Lost Creek Campground
32 Head of the River Campground
40 Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge: Hot Springs Campground
43 Minam State Recreation Area Campground
44 North Fork Malheur Campground
49 Wallowa Lake State Park Campground
APPENDIX A: Camping Equipment Checklist
APPENDIX B: Sources of Information
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to all the friends, family, and random strangers who, to my surprise, were happy to share a secret or two when I asked them about their favorite campgrounds in Oregon. (Of course, there’s no rule against keeping a few places to yourself; discovering your own favorites is half the fun!) Also, thanks to Paul Gerald for putting together a solid second edition for me to revise, and to the folks at AdventureKEEN for asking me to do it. Thanks to my grandparents Dorothy and Bob Ohlsen for lending me the van that became my mobile office, and to my expert copilot, a great traveler, stargazer, snack maker, map reader, and card shark. Finally, huge thanks to everyone at the U.S. Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and all the park staff and volunteers who keep these campgrounds in tip-top shape and who provided helpful updates, advice, campground layouts, and other vital information to make these entries as accurate as possible.
—Becky Ohlsen
Welcome to Paradise: Camping in Oregon means everything from alpine lakes and high deserts to lush riverside hideaways, such as Paradise Campground in the Central Cascades.
PREFACE
Looking back, most of us can probably summon up a formative tent-camping experience—something that defined for us early on what it means to go camping. Mine involved rain. A lot of rain. I was about 10 years old, and my dad had decided to take my brother and me away for a weekend camping trip in the woods. Mom stayed behind for some much-anticipated peace and quiet. The trip did not go quite as planned. Turns out, when you come back to camp at the end of a long cold day of fishing and hiking to find that the miserable downpour has left you, your camping gear, and both of your children thoroughly, irreparably drenched, the only sound decision is to pack everybody back into the van and drive home. (Needless to say, this was not quite the way my mom had hoped the trip would go either. She had just settled in with a cup of tea and a good book when our soggy crew trudged in two days ahead of schedule, dripping, whining, and offering up our wet sleeping bags for her to deal with.)
In retrospect, it was lucky I went on that trip, however abbreviated it was. The early association between camping and rain prepared me well for years of pitching tents in Oregon, where, even in mid-July, it’s seldom a good idea to leave off the rainfly.
Like it or not, rain is a defining characteristic of camping across Oregon for much of the year. Mind you, it’s not as bad as people say: August is pretty reliably warm and dry. Of course, that brings the threat of wildfires, which seem to tear through different parts of the state every year. It’s all part of the cycle, and camping here means resigning yourself to whatever diabolical—or, if you’re lucky, delightful—plans nature has in mind.
But in exchange for a bit of dramatic weather, Oregon gets velvety glacial valleys, thick old-growth forests, glimmering lakes, thunderous waterfalls, roaring rivers, snowcapped peaks, stunning hillsides full of spring wildflowers, lush rainforests where moss-draped trees shake hands across creekbeds, magical deserts, a vivid green coastline, and just about everything in between—not to mention all