Dash Point State Park

We were going to stay last minute to test out our new trailer for a one-night stay; however, both full hook-up sites that were showing available on-line and also posted at the ranger's station as being available, had very old, dilapidated rigs parked in the spots, without any park permits and no-one around.... We drove through the entire camping area that was open this time of year and sadly, it is filled with many old trailers, RV's, blue tarps and a lot of junk around the campsites... this is the first campground we have felt that was really unsafe. Many of the RV's did not seem road worthy and looked like they had not moved in years :-(... Hopefully the campground is better in the summertime, versus nonpeak season.

We will come back for a picnic at the day-use area in the future to enjoy the spectacular waterfront areas, but will skip the campground areas.

First, it was a very narrow road with large trees on both sides of the road, and you have to go through the entire park on these winding narrow roads to get to your site. For a 30 foot travel trailer, it was difficult.
Second, a lot of homeless people, not that I’m judging homeless people, but lots of furniture and trash everywhere, and one of the homeless men came up to us and asked if he could know our password to our wifi, because we had a strong signal. There was not one ranger to be found the entire time we were there. There was a very grumpy camp host, who was more worried about all the fall leaves on the ground than anything else. He would run his leaf blower everyday for what seemed a lifetime! It was FALL season in a wooded area! I have loved every Washington state park we’ve ever gone to until this one. We were scheduled for 20 days there, we left after 4 days, and will never go back.

The campground is easy to find. I came in at night which was not a good idea; trying to back into a site in darkness with trees lining the road was nearly impossible. I chose a pull thru til the next day when I found and booked a better site more easily accessible. Not much privacy between sites. Mixed use area with tenters, car campers, big rigs, etc. Area was wet and lush with lots of bunnies. Restrooms were ok; showers take tokens only??? havent seen that before. Generally a nice park. Internet was barely usable even with WeBoost.

Lots of wide variation in views on this SP. Here's my take after staying here for the whole 10 day limit while visiting Tacoma out of necessity. I had many days of observation to see every aspect of Dash Point SP, both good & bad.

Starting with the all important campsite, itself, it was well graveled and mostly level so no complaints. Electrical box was in fine shape. I only have a small 24' Class-C motorhome so booked a smaller back-in site. Didn't ever use the restrooms so I'll leave that for others. However, I did find it somewhat strange that this park makes it so hard to find the trashcans. Most parks have them everywhere so people use them. Only one I found in the main camping loop was hidden behind the restrooms, a single can! A bit strange, I thought.

As far as safety and fellow campers, yes, you will find some sketchy types at times in this campground. Some campers came in late at night in beat up looking vehicles and left early in the morning to avoid paying. One night on the weekend I saw two police cars and two ranger cars and a blocked off main camping loop road at a nearby campsite. Not sure what was going on but some trouble with one camper was clearly evident. A few days later I saw one camping family with an old beat up trailer that didn't even look road worthy come in and literal dump all their stuff around their site like it was a trash dump! Totally trashed out the site and their young kids where screaming monkeys that were totally out of control with no parental oversight (as was the case with their small, unleashed dog). One nearby camper eventually complained to the ranger about them. Glad I was farther away! There were definitely more old and worn out motorhomes and trailers and beat up vans camping here than normal, for sure! I didn't feel unsafe camping here but you have to realize this place is only 20 miles from Seattle so you are going to expect this type of atmosphere, I guess. Just keep your eyes open, your camper locked when away and use common sense. You should be fine. I also saw the campground aides (host) come around regularly with their golf cart in the morning and clean up the campsites so the campground is "monitored".

Now the good stuff... there are some really nice trails that meander through all the rain forest here. Never felt unsafe on the trails but you'll need to be careful of the occasional mountain bikers who also use the trails. The rain forest here is incredibly lush and beautiful. I was blown away at the beauty of this place outside of the campsites. Also, the trails are very well maintained and built to handle the dips and muddy terrain. Kudos to the trail maintainers here! The Dash Point Beach is only about a 20 minute walk from the campgrounds on a beautiful trail along Thames Creek. Note that the beach has a slow, mild slope near the water so the tidal flats are *huge* when the low tide appears. At high tide, there is almost no beach at all. Lots of sand dollars, clams and crabs but note that there are no rock pools here for the sea life. It is just a very wide sandy flat at low tide. Fun to explore!

Cell service being so close to Seattle was a disappointment. Moderate 2-bar strength and my cell booster brought that up to almost 5-bars for both Verizon and T-Mobile. However, the Verizon cell service was awful for data and very unreliable. I suspect the nearby Verizon tower just can't handle all the data traffic it is exposed to here. T-Mobile data was much, much better! If you use Verizon you will not be happy using the internet from this campground even with a cell booster. Also, no WiFi available (inc. no Xfinity hotspots nearby, etc). Again, I was very surprised by how poor the data service was out here so close to the big cities and residential areas that surround it. However, if you use T-Mobile and have a cell booster you'll have no complaints. You'll be able to surf the web and stream video without problems. Hopefully Verizon will fix or upgrade their cell towers out here in the future.

I would definitely stay here again, sketchy campers and all. The lush rain forest and the wonderful trails make it worthwhile. Really unexpected to find such a large, forested campground so close to a large metro area. It is the thing that makes Dash Point SP something special. However, you'll want to visit this park when then weather is cooler and the crowds are gone. On a weekday in the spring or fall when the temperature tops out at around 55 (maybe even with some light drizzle) the beach is a fine place. Many times you'll have the beach all to yourself. Once summer comes, the temperature rises over 75 degrees and the rowdy crowds appear on the beach you'll want to stay far away. Note that as the temperature rises in summer and the sun is more present, the beach begins to smell like a sewer because of the massive amounts of algae/seaweed and other sea life in the somewhat muddy beach that gives up its odor with warmer weather. Yuck! The large and somewhat rowdy crowds from the surrounding cities also make it an unattractive place to visit during the warmer months. Come when others don't during cooler/wetter weather and its charms are there for you.

UPDATE: Yet another police event late last night (sigh!). Saw police car rush in around 1am with lights flashing. Shortly thereafter had 3 police cars driving around the main campground. Heard that Tacoma has cleared out large homeless "village" under the 509 overpass near the Tacoma Port a few days ago and suspect some no paying "campers" now coming into this nearby park looking to relocate. Dash Point SP is only about 5 miles down the road from the cleared homeless site so that might explain some of the beefed up police activity of late.

Dash Point is located in the city of Federal Way, but feels miles away from everything, once you get there. The area is very large and the whole park is bisected by state highway 509. Highway 509 is a 2 lane twisty windy road that comes out of northern Tacoma and winds up the industrial sidings of the Port of Tacoma and Commencement bay through Federal way and onwards north. Your GPS will probably guide you down or up I-5 and then put you on some cross streets that connect with the 509 to get you to the Park. If you are driving northbound on the 905 you will find that campsites are to the right (east) side of the road. The remainder of the day use portion of Dash Point State Park is on the left (west) side of hwy 509.

Looks like camping this year will be just as busy or more so than last year. We had to book this site in December for May usage. All campsites in our vicinity were occupied when we were there. Our neighbors were very nice and polite. We had no issues with excessive noise, and certainly not at night. The most noise we heard was probably from an adjacent street, probably not hwy 509, but there were road racers on most nights with those annoying noisy exhaust pipes. But the noise certainly wasn't from inside the camp or from fellow campers.

The location is beautiful, probably one of the prettiest campgrounds I've been in; lush and if it weren't for maintenance, would have been overgrown with vegetation. Otherwise, the campsites are generally very green, many are fully covered in tree overhang, some are open to the air, depending on which side of the loop you are on or which loop you are in. Our site was well covered, so much so that when the rain came in, our RV and picnic table were barely touched by the weather. This is the not the case for all sites, but is the case for many.

Our site was ready to go when we arrived. Check in at the guardhouse was easy. We showed our reservation paperwork and we were provided a receipt to put on our windshield showing our site number and when our check out time was. Site access was pretty good, but pull-thru driveways entries and exits are shared with your next door neighbor which means that if they have vehicle overhang they might have to move to let you in, or you'll have to enter the site at an odd angle. If you have a long rig, site access angles from the loop road may require a drive around to approach the entry at a different angle. I don't generally need a spotter when I'm parking in a pull-thru spot, but this time I did to get past two large trees located at the corners of the driveway.

Leveling out on site 44 was impossible. Putting down my jacks also required me to use a stack of leveling blocks which put some of the wheels on my rig off the ground. I hate doing that, so I wasn't able to get level. I estimate that the driveway on this site is at least 5 or 6 degrees downhill, so when you pull in you will be leaning downhill on the drivers side by that much. If you don't want to have to do extream leveling, don't have jacks that can compensate that much, avoid site 44. While it is a beautiful site, with nearly full coverage by foliage, and great fire pit and a beautiful tree in the middle upper portion of the site, this is not a great RV site if you want to be level and don't have the equipment or the desire to mess with leveling for 30-45 minutes after you get there. Adjacent sites to 44 were much more level. The state could fix this if they wanted to pull up the driveway shape the land a bit and put the driveway back.

Park ranges drove through the loops a number of times a day. I would say a couple of times in the morning, probably doing parking pass inspection, then another time about midday and then again in the evening about when people were putting up campfires. I walked through the park a couple of times and never felt unsafe and never felt that anyone camping there was doing so "long term". You can't actually "long term" camp in a Washington State Park as it is not allowed.

While we are self contained and had a sewer port at our campsite, I did meander down to the bathhouse to drop off some recycling and took a quick look at the facilities. They are reasonably modern, if not "state design" sterile. Luxurious no, but clean and presentable, yes. Showers are token operated and you can buy tokens from a cash accepting vending machine on the back side of the entry guardhouse up at the main road in.

Many sites are more aligned for tent campers as they have no services. Some sites have power and water and nothing else. There is a dump station near the park entry. Dump fee is $5. There is separate water at the dump station, water for flushing out your tube and any other sewer needs is at the dump station, and when you pull your rig forward away from the dump station there is a fresh water spigot. I like seeing water sources separated like this.

We would stay here again, however we would choose a different site. While 44 is beautiful feels secluded, has a great fire pit and picnic area and plenty of room for a large tent, too, the angle of the driveway is way too steep to be easily leveled out, at least for a long rig. We'll select a different site for sure in the future.

We enjoyed the heavily wooded campsite and the beautiful trail that leads to Puget Sound. The circular layout of the site allows each camper to enjoy a level of privacy. The amenities are obviously well cared for and we saw the ranger several times during our first day.

Our friends appreciated that each site has black water dump tanks.