Angels Camp RV & Camping Resort

We arrived to Angels Camp RV Friday afternoon, we were pleasantly surprised upon our arrival. Google Earth images showed that the camp ground looked pretty sparse and pretty flat. While we prefer to camp in the woods we knew our short weekend trip for a family reunion would be well served with full hook-ups and the lack trees would not be a monumental issue. It was nice to arrive and see it wasn't a parking lot. The spots we were in were tiered down the hillside and actually very level. Although they were close together we were sperated by shrubs,trees and a fence on one side from the neighboring spots.

The campground has a pool (which was closed for the season) and a playground, so our kids were thrilled to have somewhere to go and burn some energy. Overall the play structure seemed to be in sound condition, although the slide had some damage to the side which had been previously duct-taped, probably needs to be revisted as kids hold on to the sides as they go down.

They also have a basketall hoop, tetherball, volleyball and horseshoe pits perfect if you come as a group.

Another added plus for group campers is this outdoor kitchen area, it's all covered with picnic tables, sinks and stovetops. The play structure and kitchen area are on the backside of the campground. Overall, it is much more quiet back here and much greener as well. The RV sites back here are power and water only, no sewer. There are also tent camping sites and cabins available on the back side as well.

A few items worth mentioning: the bathrooms were very clean and the staff very friendly. We even received a personal escort to our spot. Dogs are allowed althought, no pittbulls or pittbull mixes... boo on that. Apparently cats are allowed as we saw a cat on a leash tied to an airstream trailer durng our stay. Each site is equipped with a picnic table and a firepit, and the tent sites appeared to have a covered structure as well, they looked very nice if you are up to camping in an RV campground. One of the things I really like about this campground is they have almost an acre of solar panels! Points for going green and installing these.

They also adopted an Emu, but remember, don't feed the Emu.

Overall, we enjoyed our stay and would probably come back. Our site was fairly close to Highway 49, however, we hear no road noise at night. Here are some other photos from the campground.

Lots to do in Angels Camp and Murphy's. There are a ton of wineries to check out and lots of caverns. We visited Mercer Caverns with our 5 year old. While we didn't take our 2 year old on this tour, our 5 year old had a great time on the 45 minute tour, lots of stairs, but she had a great time and is already asking to go again! You must also stop by World Mercantile and Gallery of Arts while they have excellent ice cream they are also a non-profit, volunteer run organization. We happen to stop by on open mic night, wich was fun for the entire family and especially my 5 year old after she got a turn at the open mic. We also had an amazing dinner at Crusco's. While I was initially concerned because they didn't have a kids menu and it was a fine dining establishment, they we re wonderful with our kids and made small dishes of pasta fo them. The best part... the food was amazing,. I had a Florentine pasta that was delicous. I would highly recommend dining here if you are in the area.

That's it for now, we hope to get out again soon as the girls are sad to be home. My oldest is aking for some beach camping, so we'll see what we can come up with. Happy Trails!

Going camping!

We are headed to Angels Camp RV & Camping in 2 weeks, stay tuned for photos and a review of this campground.

We're still here

Sigh, we have not been camping in forever. The poor trailer has been in storage for months. We might bring it home for a day or two to charge it and tell it we still love it.

If you have any suggestions for our next trip, let us know. I'm thinking maybe the coast.

Happy trails!

Fallen Leaf Lake Campground - August 09

Our site, #10



We had no other campsite to the right of us



Narrow spot, not enough room to fully extend our awning



Narrow road through the campsite



Fallen Leaf Lake boat ramp, 4.25 miles from campground





Baldwin Beach - Lake Tahoe






Fallen Leaf Lake Beach - trail from inside the campground

Fallen Leaf Lake

We were all very excited about our trip to Fallen Leaf Lake. It had been a very long time since either of us had been up Highway 50, and I Must admit it was a little scary, especially towing our trailer. We survived the adventure and arrived at Fallen Leaf Lake Campground, which is managed by California Land Management. The campgrounds is located off of Highway 89, but sits back far enough that you hear no traffic at all. The campground is very well run and has at least 5 hosts in this much larger than you would expect campground. The campground has several bathrooms and also has showers that cost $1 for 3 minutes. There is also a camp store that sells mostly souvenirs but they also had beer, ice cream and toiletries available for purchase. All sites come with a picnic table, fire pit, BBQ and bear lockers. There are water spigots in various parts of the campsite and a few sites actually have them. Dogs are allowed. $28 a day.

My first thought about this campground is that it's really narrow and very difficult to get into spots if you have a travel trailer or a motor home. We pulled up to our site and wondered "how the hell are we going to get in here?". While the pad was long enough for our 35 foot trailer, the site was not angled and the pad and the road were both narrow. There was no way we could get in traveling the one way direction of the road. We found a camp host and asked if we could travel in the opposite direction to get into our site. The gentleman was very nice and went and closed down traffic for us so that we could get in. Another friendly camper came by and helped us in backing in. When t was all over it had taken us one very frustrating hour to get into our site. We didn't even want to begin to think about getting out of the site.

I was surprised to find that they were allowing camp fires given the High Fire Danger season and the poor air quality at the Lake due to other fires burning in Northern California. I am pretty sensitive to smoke and between the already poor air quality and the evening campfires my eyes were burning and I had headache every night.

Lots to do in this area. We biked 4.25 miles from the campground to the far end of Fallen Leaf Lake. Fallen Leaf Lake Road narrows to a one lane road, so bicyclists and pedestrians need to be very cautious of vehicle traffic, we had to pull over several times to allow vehicle traffic to pass us safely. Once you arrive at the lake there is a store and coffee shop overlooking the lake. There is also a boat rental where you can rant kayaks, paddle boats and pontoons. There is also a boat ramp here if you brought your own. They have a small swimming beach here at this spot as well. The lake is gorgeous and really worth a trip to this end of the lake, the beach here has sand, which is nice if you have children.

Later that afternoon we biked to Baldwin Beach on Lake Tahoe. Baldwin and Pope Beach's are a special treat as they are two of the very few sandy beach's around the lake. The bike ride from the campground to Baldwin is 2.5 miles and all bike trail once you cross Highway 89 out of the campground. If you have bikes, I suggest it since it is $7 to park at the beach. The Park does have parking outside of the gates if you want to park for free and walk in to the beach, I guess it depends on how much you have to carry. Baldwin is a designated swimming beach is great for families. The wind does pick up in the afternoons but we still enjoyed ourselves. There are picnic tables on the beach and there was a company renting kayaks on the beach as well.

If you are looking for a shorter route to the water at Fallen Leaf Lake, there is a path from the campground down to the water. We hoped on our bikes, it was about a mile from our campsite, but could be closer depending on your specific campsite. This is a rocky beach, and although not a designated swimming beach, you can swim here. This is a great place if you brought your own kayak or inflatable boats to launch from. You will have to hike in to the beach with your watercraft, but it's not that far from the campground road.

Once our trip came to an end it was another hour to get out of our spot. The site across from us was a pull through and when our neighbors vacated we made the mistake of thinking we could "pull-through" to get out. Not exactly. There are many "pull-through" sites here, but what we discovered is you can't really pull through them. The pads are so narrow and so closely surrounded by tree's that it makes it impossible to actually pull through them. I watched 2 different RV's have to back out of their pull through sites. We were so stuck at one point we had to unhook and re-hook the trailer back up to get out of this mess. Thankfully, the same friendly camper who helped us get in came along and also helped us get out. These spots are so narrow that you really need 2 people spotting. We survived and ad a great time, but the hassle of getting in and out was clearly very frustrating. We do plan on coming back and camping here. Being so close to Lake Tahoe but also out of the crowds and surrounded by the beauty of Fallen Leaf Lake was really a treat. However, now that we have been here we know which sites to camp in and which not to camp in. Just because the site says it can accommodate a 40 foot vehicle does not mean it will be easy to actually get into it.

There is no dumpsite here, so we ended up dumping at the South Shore KOA which is off of Highway 50. $15 to dump, kind of pricey, but better than carrying all of that extra weight down the hill.

As a side not, we drove past Camp Richardson, which was a place I had looked at camping, so glad we didn't camp there! Crowded!

Edit: We went back and looked at the website and realized that the site we stayed in said "pull in", guess I missed that when I booked it. So, a motorhome that could pull into the site would be okay, but obviously with a travel trailer pulling into a site was not an option for us.

Boca Rest

View of the reservoir and morning fog from our site

View of the campground from the trails above

Mountain biking trails

June 2009

Boca Rest is located north of Truckee off of Highway 80. There are no hook-ups and no dump station here but tents and rv's are welcome. We had a nice spot on the reservoirs but there was enough shrubbery between us and the water that I didn't have to worry about the kids. There are pretty much no trees at this campground but it wasn't hot while we were there and the lack of trees was not a problem. It is dry and windy, so if you are looking for mountainous and shady camping, this is not the spot for you. On the bright side, you can boat and fish here. Lots of folks in their inner tubes fishing in the morning. There are also lots of dirt trails for mountain biking and ATVs or dirt bikes. I do not recommend biking on the main road, as there is no shoulder and doesn't feel safe for biking, but the mountain biking was lots of fun and challenging! There are vault bathrooms and a water spigot outside of the bathrooms but that's about it as far as amenities. We group camped here and had a great time. The park is managed by California Land Management and they do come around and count vehicles etc. Dogs are allowed as well, in fact almost everyone had a dog. You can reserve online through Reserve America. We had a good time as we were with a large group of people, but if you're looking for amenities and trees this probably is not the place for you. If you do come be sure to watch for the Hot Air Balloons on the weekends, pretty cool to watch them coming up over the reservoir.

Deerwood RV Park, Eugene OR

April 2009

We stayed two nights at Deerwood on our way to Washington. We had plans to visit family and visit the college campus and Deerwood was in a great location for us to do both. This park is an all RV campground, no tent camping. The first thing you notice about the campground is it is exceptionally clean and was pretty quiet. There appeared to be several folks who were set up for the summer here and then some, like us passing through. We lucked out and got a nice end space which had a nice patch of grass that was enclosed with shrubbery which made a nice spot for the girls to play. Full hook-ups including television and free wi-fi are among the amenities. Probably not the type of campground for "real" camping but who is "really" camping in a 35 foot trailer anyway. The point is, this place was perfect for our needs and in fact we stayed again on our back home from Washington.

Timberlake Campground and RV Park, WA

April 2009

Timberlake was a real treat for us, especially being so far away from home. The campground is located 50 miles east of Portland. This a fantastic campground for either tent or RV camping. I checked out several of the tent sites and thought how awesome it would be if I could convince some of my tent camping friends to drive all of this way to camp with us. The RV sites offer some with full hook-ups and others with electricity and water and there is also a central dump station in the campground. The campground allows dogs and even has a specific dog area in the campground. There is also a hall that can be rented for group activities and a great playground for the kids. And being the diligent critic that I am, I even checked out the bathrooms. Showers and bathrooms were exceptionally clean, I don't even think my own bathroom is as clean as these were. In fact, the entire campground was super clean and just really enjoyable. We enjoyed Timberlake a great deal because we had the luxury of hook-ups but also had the trees and mountains and fresh air. If you enjoy walking, the lay out of the campground is nice for walking or running if you are brave. But it is very steep. Our spot was at the top of the hill the walking and running through the campsite was an added challenge for anyone trying to keep up on their exercise. But don't misunderstand, it was also no problem for the kids or elderly to walk around. I just got an extra workout on my morning runs.

We enjoyed the Columbia Gorge and the Bonneville Dam while here. Just a note that some of the photos may look like the sites are close together, but I felt the sites were spacious and we had plenty of privacy. We also happened to be here for rally so we knew all of our neighbors.

Again, worth mentioning, Leroy the owner is very hospitable. He has put together a great campground here and I only wished we lived closer so we could camp here more often. But we will be back for sure.