Kitsap Memorial State Park

Site 37 was fine, even though it was small. This small campground was constantly noisy and partners came from midnight to 3:00 PM so there was no enforcement’ of quiet time. Bathrooms had codes which we were not given. I suspect this means there is a homeless problem here. We left in the morning for a better campground. Would not recommend unless you love being noisy.

I camped here due to my house flooding out and it was better than a hotel room. There are now 11 sites and site 7 was available so we checked out of the hotel, grabbed the 5th wheel and pulled in there (I live 10 miles away). Pulling in was a little tricky as we have a 35' 5th wheel and a long tow vehicle (F350 DRW Crew Cab) and the road is a little narrow. The site has full hookups with 50 amp service. Cell phone coverage was very good but TV antenna reception was blocked due to the hills to the east.

The bathrooms were clean but they were coded as I suspect that they have had a homeless problem there. The showers were clean but are open only during the day. The park ranger is a real nice guy and pointed out the bag wasp nest on our last day when we were leaving, you do not want to disturb those things. I did notice some activity from people trying to use the bathrooms who were not campers, by the way there car was, I suspect they were homeless but caused no trouble.

A couple of days before we checked out it rained and as other reports have stated, it gets muddy around the RV spots so drainage is poor. One good thing is that it is far enough from Highway 3 that noise is none existent..

They are renovating the RV sites. The notice states they are going from 18 cramped sites to 11 roomier sites. The RV sites are very cramped and with rainy season, very muddy. Sites 1 - 3 do not have sewer hook ups and there is no dump station. But when you leave, you can just back into one of the unused sites and dump there.

There is very little privacy in the RV area as there is no vegetation between the sites. The tent loop looked very nice and lots of privacy with roomy sites.

It was a nice base to use to visit the nearby towns and museums. There are lots of hiking opportunities nearby. Good spot for winter camping when you are mostly doing museums and indoor touring. If it were summer, I think I would prefer something with a little more privacy.

We actually ended up coming back here after a horrible weekend of two other state parks with not enough cell service to get any work done. The coverage here is good. It’s a nice park and a nice beach but the RV sites are tiny, muddy, and right on top of each other. It’s really too bad they don’t make any improvements. Poulsbo is a very charming town with good acces to nice stores and laundry facilities. If you’re a foodie you will definitely want to visit the Central Market!

We live 6 miles from this campground, and spent a couple nights in our brand spankin’ new Airstream!

I’m afraid it wasn’t all that great.

We reserved online. There really wasn’t any contact with the ranger or host. Just parked at our spot.

The RV spots are lined up on the edge of a field, in the open. No privacy. Maybe only 10 feet between parking pads.

Gravel pads, which are a bit muddy, need to have some new gravel.

The site was somewhat dirty with trash when we arrived.

We had a spot with 50 amp service and water, but no sewer. No problem; we’ll use the dump station on the way out. THE DUMP STATION IS NOW CLOSED. There are other sites with full hookups.

The neighbors were a mix of nice RV’s, and others that you might not want parked in front of your house. The tent two sites from us packed up at dark, left for an hour, and then returned to set up the tent again some time after 10pm, with hammering in tent spikes and a radio or TV after that.

The bathrooms are nice, modern, fairly clean.

This is a nice little park with access to hood canal. There’s a row of sites with some hookups and then a loop with dry camping sites. Sites in the loop are not super level and pretty close together with some flora between for screening. Big rigs may fit where the hookup sites are, not in the dry camping loop. Showers are available for a small fee. They were clean as were the restrooms. Good Verizon coverage.

I’m guessing an economist designed the Washington State Park site fee structure, as it’s based on site amenities and site popularity. This means there are different prices depending on how popular a particular site is even when it is right next to a site with the same amenities. If you want a cheaper site, get there early!

Stayed here on the way from Seatac airport to Squim. Using my handicapped parking and senior discount the rate was $22.50. There were 18 flat spaces with electric, water, sewer and a loop for dry camping but best suited for shorter rigs. The beach was rocky and more suited for dogs than 3 year olds. The wedding set up was well appointed and over looked Hood Canal in a very scenic setting. The showers used tokens from the pay station and were clean and well maintained. Large grass area and a well equipped playground for youngsters. No hiking or much biking in this small park. Several good points are the proximity to Seattle and the zero traffic noise.

The best things about this park are its proximity--it took us two hours to get here from South King County, even with Friday evening traffic through Tacoma--and the fact that it takes reservations all year, guaranteeing us a spot even arriving at 8pm on Friday.

Overall, I'd say it was a worthwhile option for an escape from the routine of the 'usual' weekends. Getting here and back was easy. We even found an easy geocache (http://coord.info/GC24N72) in the park. That said, there was not a ton to do here compared to other parks we've been in.

The primary attraction to this park is the wedding facility. So if you want to get married on your RV trip, this is the place to do it for sure. The outdoor ceremony area faces directly out onto Hood Canal, in a beautiful forest area. Nearby is a large covered dining hall, so your guests can come inside and dry off for dinner. Finally, there is a single secluded cabin for the newly-married couple to have their privacy far from the rest of the campers.

We did appreciate the nice playground, and wide-open green spaces for playing. The nearby beach was rocky, so not really a great place to play. The kids did enjoy running up and down the beach for a short while, and playing on the ruins of nearby buildings.

The sites themselves left a bit to be desired. For a public park, I expect a bit more to the spaces than this park delivered. Each spot had a gravel space for the rig, and a small strip of grass in between. Electricity and water were offered in this spots. There are also tent camping spots which have much better separation, but were certainly too small for a 30-foot RV. Most RV spaces here were rated at "18-32ft", and indeed we just barely fit at 33 feet. Had we a car along, we'd have parked it elsewhere in the park. We were lucky to get spot #1, which is an end spot, so we only have one neighbor.

A big disappointment in this park is the lack of dump station. There is a friendly list of "nearby" dump stations, but none are really convenient options. As a result, two days is the most we could really spend in this park. Next time, we'll look for other options out this way.

Bottom line, I debated giving this park 2 or 3 stars. Certainly it loses a star each for lack of dump and site quality. Whether it should lose another star for not enough stuff to do was the question, but I decided the playground made up for it and kept it with 3 stars.