Jessie M. Honeyman Memorial State Park

This was our third stay at Honeyman in three years. Previously stayed in C and F loops.

Due to limited availability, we stayed in H loop at the back of the park near the off-road access to the dunes. The loop was full on Friday and Saturday nights and almost everyone had several gas powered toys. Fortunately the noise only lasted from 7am to 10pm. I would avoid this loop unless this sounds like fun to you.

The rest of the park was relatively quiet. Especially since several of the loops are currently closed for renovation.

If you stay here, I would definitely get out explore the surrounding areas. There are lots of trails, lakes, and beaches within a few miles. Old town Florence is also nice.

We loved it here even though most of trip the campground was covered in smoke from wildfires burning in Oregon this year. Check in was super easy. There was no ranger station check-in since all sites were available only through reservation, so we just pulled up to our site and it was already tagged for us. Our campsite on loop F was gorgeous with tons of privacy and shade. The campground in general is what I always hope campgrounds will be like -- lots of privacy between sites, level easy to access sites, friendly camp hosts, and helpful rangers. Because of the hazardous air quality during most of our stay, we weren't able to take advantage of some of the hikes and activities we had hoped we could do, but I'm confident we'll be back soon and get to do those things.

Because of fires, we ended up extending our stay by one day. The ranger was really helpful and was able to get us into a site on loop H with full hook-ups. The H loop has less underbrush between the sites, but it was really nice to be able to dump on site, instead of lining up at the dump station on the way out. The H loop was a bit noisier and less private feeling, but most of the sites on the outer perimeter have full hookups. The east side of the H loop was prettiest and most private, in my humble opinion.

We had between 1-3 bars of LTE T-Mobile service, which I think fluctuated because of wind storms that came through and knocked out power for about 12 hours at the campground. People with Verizon lost cell service in the campground for several days, but we never did lose our T-Mobile signal.

Even though there are a lot of sites here, it feels really private.

Lots to do here and we had our children come in a neighboring site with out grandkids.

However, do your homework. Navigating this spot was tough. I could bare get my Flagstaff MicroLite DS21 into my site.

There are bigger sites, but I didn’t do my homework well.

Stayed here in Sept. 2017. Large state park with plenty of sites up to 55 feet long available for big-rigs. Ours had 50 amp & water, dump station at entrance. Picked wild huckleberries right at our site. Only downside was that our site backed up to the dunes, daily noise from ATV's, next time would probably get a site on other side of loop.

Beautiful setting, attended an awesome ranger-led nature talk one morning. Rented ATV's another day, had a blast on the dunes!

Enjoyed our stay here, will return when in the area.

We stayed here a little last minute due to a wild fire thwarting our plans for a trip to Crater Lake. We called around and checked online for more than two hours for anywhere along the coast from Coos Bay to Florence, and I happened upon one site available here for the three nights we needed, which happened to be a weekend. Check in time isn’t until 4pm, which was a little tough for us because we came from somewhere 35 minutes away where the check out time was 11am. We pulled over in a turnout on the way to kill time, but we still got to the campground around noon. Since I pre-registered, they basically checked us in at that time and said we could drive past our site to see if the previous people had left yet (check out is 1). We drove through, scraping our sway bars on every single gigantic speed bump along the way and saw that the people had not left yet. Per the check-in person’s advice, we drove back out and pulled into the day use area to wait. There is a lot of parking in day use, including some RV spots. We ate lunch and explored the area a bit until 1, and then headed back into the campground – after we removed our sway bars. This time the people were gone and we didn’t scrape any speed bumps.

We stayed in site 381H, which is one of the shortest sites throughout the huge campground. When we pulled up to it, we weren’t sure we’d be able to back into it, as it was at the opposite angle in regards to the direction of traffic and it was small. Even the camp hosts right across from us were certain we wouldn’t fit. We inched our way back and forth until we got in and once we did, we noticed the site was much longer than the labeled 31 feet, just difficult to access. We had an electric and water hookup, but as this was a short stay, we only hooked up electric and used our full freshwater tank (which we filled at our last place) for the duration. This is a huge campground and its main draw is the access to the dunes right next door. Because we were in H Loop, the loop directly next to the dunes, all we heard all day long was the engines of the various OHV vehicles.

There are at least three camp hosts in each loop, probably because there are just so many people here. There’s a restroom with showers in each loop, but we didn’t even peak inside. The only place to get rid of garbage is in the very front of the campground where you check in, which was 1.2 miles round trip from our site. The good news is they have a crazy amount of recycle cans, which you don’t find very often, with cardboard separated from glass separated from everything else. It’s a quick drive into Florence, which is one of the nicest little coastal towns we’ve come across on the Oregon Coast. Cleawox Lake, within the park, is a nice little lake with a swim beach and boat rentals (kayak, paddle boat, etc.) for $10 an hour.

They had a 'campground full' sign up all weekend, but I'd say that about 10% of the sites were open. Maybe they were reserved, but it seems unlikely that so many people wouldn't show up for their reservations.

Even with our booster, our AT&T phones didn't work very well -- barely enough to make a phone call. Verizon seemed to work decent, though.

We would not stay here again, as it was just too loud and busy for our liking.

Very clean campground with walking trails to the Oregon Sand Dunes a few sites down. Our site was very roomy with a nice space a foliage between sites. Our site was party shaded and partly sunny. We had 50amp electrical and water hookups. The site was paved and level. We left our rig hitched as we had an early travel morning the next day. Even with an absolutely full campground for the 4th of July the campground was quiet at night.

This was a stop over site on our way home, so we only saw a little of what the area had to offer. We hiked to the top of one of the sand dunes that is accessed from the trail on the F loop. From the top of the dune you can see the forest and the ocean. It’s windy up on the dunes so bring a wind breaker.

There are lots of dune buggy and ATV rentals available near by. The Visitor Center in the campground had lots of information and some activities for kids.

Your camping tag works is valid for any of the day-use fee parks through the day of departure.

The campground is situated among large trees near the Sand Dunes and is located about three miles south of Florence. It offers year round camping with a mix of full hookup sites, electrical sites with water, tent sites, and yurts.

The parking is paved and we had no trouble finding a flat site. We were there off season and saw very few other people. Part of the campground was closed for the season while maintenance work was done.

OHVs can ride on the sand dunes. Since we go to bed early we did hear that noise for a while when we climbed into bed.

The bathrooms were clean.

We arrived in early October with very few campers at the park and no campers next to our site. Should have opted to get a site with electricity as our cell service was very good (Sprint). The bathroom was a little hike and they could use an update. No warm water, mirrors broken, but I didn't expect a lot in the first place due to other's reviews. Only campground where we didn't have raccoon visitors on this trip. As with most campgrounds near a major road, it was a bit on the noisy side which was average to our other locations. Barely any sunlight, but the temperature was still good. We have already booked this campground for our next trip and will stay 4 days this time. Our site had a tree that had it's roots pushing up the pavement, but the tent site was large. The picnic bench and fire pit are all on a downward slant and had to spend some time leveling our kitchen tables. The site backs up to another site, so this would be perfect for two families.

Jessie M. Honeyman was the second Oregon coast campground we stayed in and very different than the first (Nehalem) in terms of the feel with its heavily wooded sites instead of sunny ones and walking access to the dunes instead of the beach. Both were clean and provided a good value for the rate. And while from within the park you can't reach the ocean, we found a terrific access point to the Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area and Pacific Ocean close by, only about a two mile drive north on Rt. 101.

Dog-Friendliness: many campers walk their dogs around the large ring of roads through the site. Denali also enjoyed the walking access to the dunes within the park.

Runner's Rave: the most scenic options for RV running are to run the loops of the park roads either to the dunes for some good hill proxy running or around the lakes in the park. If you want to get more miles, Rt. 101 South is the more scenic direction to take.

Downsides: the park is so heavily forested, that even on bright, sunny days, most sites are shaded and very damp. Make sure to bring a de-humidifier for your RV. Also, be prepared with what you need to accommodate not having a sewer hook-up. Most sites in the park are back-in and the interior ones especially are smaller and closer together, so pick your site thoughtfully. And, not surprisingly, cell coverage is very weak- hopefully something that's not too much of a concern when you're enjoying what the area has to offer.

Overall, this is a really nice campground for a good price in a convenient location along the Oregon Coast.