Bastendorff Beach Park

We stayed at Bastendorff on a last minute reservation over Labor Day weekend. We weren’t expecting much, but we were pleasantly surprised.

The park has two main camping levels. The lower level is heavily treed and closest to the beach, but no views from any campsite. The upper level requires a tight and short, but steep climb to access. It’s further from the beach, but sunnier and has a large group camping area. All sites seem fairly private with good vegetation and low berms to give a sense of privacy. The sites are still a bit crowded and close to the access loop.

Oddly, this campground allowed campfires when all others we’ve visited this summer did not due to the wildfire season.

As others have mentioned, the beach is a short distance away, but there are no access paths from the campground so you have to walk the road on the shoulder or drive. It’s a ridiculously short drive, but the shoulder doesn’t feel super safe to walk either. There seems to be plenty of street parking and a lot, so even on this busy weekend, no one struggled to secure a spot. Watch for the blind corners on this stretch of road, especially when exiting the park - we nearly witnessed a T-bone accident while walking to the beach.

You can hear the waves, even from the upper camp loop, and as another review mentioned, the fog horn was also prevalent all day and night. Frankly the dogs barking were more annoying than the foghorn. There was a virtual chorus of barking dogs throughout the daylight hours.

The playground is derelict but strangely not closed; it looks like a horror flick with broken and rusted swings. I probably wouldn’t let a child play there unless they’ve recently had a tetanus shot.

Dump station is operational at the time of this review with a $10 fee, not included in camp fees.

AT&T varies from 1-2 bars of LTE, Verizon usually holds at 2 bars.
All in all, we were here for the beach and it was wonderful. This was a slightly above average campground for us.

Clean, quiet County Park very close to the beach. Try to get spots 26-55. They are closer to the beach view

The bathrooms, playgrounds, and common areas are a little run down The sites are well spaced and shady. There is not direct beach access, so you have to drive down the hill a few hundred yards to get to the beach. This park is very close to the 3-4 State Parks which have great views and hikes. No sewer here, but they have a few dump stations.

The playground had some broken boards and a few nails protruding here and there so watch your kids. This playground could be fixed up in a few hours with some help. Its confusing that they haven't completed such simple repairs.

Many sites are not wide enough to open slides so we had to try three spots before we could shoehorn into one. I wouldn't use the showers unless desperate. Overall the camp is just adequately maintained and the on site host don't seem actively involved. I cleaned the trash and fire pit at our site to make it comfortable. Hope u enough park and not very busy mid week in early May. Not as many transients as I recall from prior visits to this area.I'd probably stay here again. The reservation system was okay...just check the park map and drive to your site.

Check-in wasn't intuitive -- apparently you just have to find the spot that you booked online but there's no signage to tell you that.

Speaking of online, reception is spotty in parts so be sure to check what campsite you're in BEFORE you get there (AT&T was 1 bar at 4G, Verizon was 3 bars LTE, T-Mobile is non-existent but uses AT&T). Our Verizon hotspot downloaded at 29 Mbps -- good enough for anything we needed, but there are some parts of the park that had no Verizon service. Probably because of a dead zone or the hills.

The roads are pretty tight (one lane, one way) around each loop so if you have a big rig like us (36' Class A with toad) then you have to drive pretty slowly. We reserved a back-in spot online but when we got there, we had to back in going up hill with very little clearance on both sides. We had to switch to a different spot that had more room for us to maneuver.

Speaking of switching spots, doing that is an ordeal. They told us to just drive around and find a spot "where there's no stuff in it and take that one" then come back to the office and let them know which spot we took. Computers and databases should be something standard and those things will let you know which spots are available.

Worth mentioning: this is right on the coast so the beach is right across the street. It's beautiful. However, there was a lot of fog rolling in and the foghorn was blowing the entire time we were here. It wasn't a big deal to us, we kind of liked it because it made for cool ambience, but if you're very sensitive to noises, it's something you should consider. I don't know if it stops when it's sunny, but it's the Oregon coast and we heard fog rolls in a lot.

Our site was spacious and shaded with picnic table and fire pit.

Park is easy to find and roads are doable with 35' fifth wheel.

Showers in bathhouse near site 30 had hot water, but were not clean. Showers in tent area are push button. Bathhouses in the group camp area were much newer, although locked most of the time we were there.

Our site was un-level. The slope was enough to make hitching back up challenging.

There was no required checkin and no host stopped by to confirm our reservation.

While tight and crowded we would have preferred Sunset Bay State Park.

After taking a pass on the nearby BLM land (see my review), we decided to check out the other options in the area, starting with the county park. Frankly, we didn't get any further! The county park is an older facility that is well maintained. Roads and pads are asphalt. All sites have a heavy picnic table and fire pit. Most sites have water & electric (20/30). The sites in the D loop are less shaded with quite a few of them in the open. We stayed in C56 which is a pull-through with a partial view of the sunset. Most of the sites are back-in, but angled appropriate to the traffic direction unlike some parks! The off season rate (through the end of April) was $20.

The park was perhaps 10% full the days we were there. They say all sites are via reservation but list 5 or 6 sites that are non-reservation. We pulled in without a reservation, intending to stay one night, and the camp host picked out this primo site for us. Went back the next morning and extended for a second day.

There is a day use section of the park that has a couple large gazebos and a children's play area as well as a reasonably large lot for viewing the sunset. The one potential drawback of the park is that it is on a 140' tall bluff with no direct access to the beach. The views are spectacular from the campground entrance.

The restrooms are clean and there are free showers, but you get what you pay for - at least in the shower I tested, the water never got better than a lukewarm low pressure dribble. [Edit: After my wife instructed me to run hot water in the sink first, I did have nice hot water in the shower, but still had the 'timer' button to contend with. I'll admit, I'm not too smart!]

The park is apparently well known by the locals and bypassed by the out-of-towners who head to the commercial park next door or the state park further down the beach. We really liked it and will return.