Mazama Campground

We stayed here several years ago - were meeting up with friends so needed a central spot. Checking in was weird... we left our credit card info on file and they sent us out with a map and let us pick. Different colors on the signposts indicated amenities and price. We just grabbed a pull-thru with another pull-thru behind us and left a note for our friends so when they came in they could find us. Beautiful campground - decent sites, a bit tight getting out with rocks & trees and we have a 19' Rpod... No cell coverage except for when we got on the trail on the N side of the campground. We showered in our trailer, but our friends said very hot showers were available (again this was a few years ago). This is a great place to base from - watch the weather - we got snowed on in September!

We requested electrical hookup, but got a site without any hookup. The site is very spacious and not close to each other. Each site has its own fire ring and it's very nice to have campfire at night. Shower is closed due to Covid-19 but restroom is open. The site is super quiet at night. You won't be able to get any phone signal at campsite. We got a bit signal when we did the rimdrive in certain spot.

The rv sites are on the outside loop, on a one-way counterclockwise drive. That places the rv entrances on the road with picnic areas on the opposite side of the vehicle. We saw a few unsuccessful efforts to reverse an rv! The sites themselves are very nice, with fire pits and picnic tables, but painfully close to other campers. We could easily have participated in our neighbors’ conversations with the exception of the one running a generator.
Our $32 nightly rate was refunded by 50% due to a Senior National Park pass.

If you are a hiker or bicyclist and want to explore Crater Lake NP, the location is great! If you are in/on a motor vehicle, however, there are much better campgrounds within a 30 mile radius and the extra drive is well worth it to avoid the pitfalls of this campground.

The concessions vendor for this campground (Aramark) is horrible. They will only let you check in for 1 day at a time! You have to wait in line at noon every day to check in for you next night's stay. So that severely limits your sightseeing time. When we came back after our first night's stay about 11:30 am to pick up our trailer and go somewhere much, much better, we observed a line around the building waiting to check in.

We checked Thursday evening about 4:00 PM and there was no wait. I told the counter person we had a 20' travel trailer. He assigned us a pull through spot (and I believe all the spots there are pull through), but it was on the left side of the road! Now, I should have spotted this error by looking on the map, but if you are familiar with travel trailers at all you would know that this would put your door facing the road and your campsite on the backside of your trailer! The loop was tight, and we ended up with trees just inches from the right side of our trailer....the side where you awning extends and your door is.

This campground has a horrible black dirt/pine needle ground covering that sticks to EVERYTHING! And if it rains, like during our visit, the rain will kick this messy stuff up to cover EVERYTHING within a foot of the ground. We put down a welcome mat and within 3 or 4 trips in and out of the trailer, the mat was completely saturated with the black goo and it was invading the trailer. I have a 5 gallon collapsible water bag that I use to fill the trailer's fresh water tank and setting it down on the ground to connect the hose resulted in about 3/4 of the water bag getting covered in the black dirk/pine needle mixture.

I have no idea about the cleanliness of the bathrooms/showers. The black dirt made us not want to step foot outside our trailer. There was one item of trash left in our camping spot from the previous camper that I picked up and disposed of.

The pros:
*Close to the loop drive around Crater Lake rim. But so is Lost Creek campground on The Pinnacles Road, and if you were tent camping, I would suggest there. If you are sightseeing in a motor vehicle, stay about 30 miles away at Diamond Lake. You won't have to go back at noon to check in every day.
*Quiet. Very Quiet. Almost silent. Especially about 11 AM when everyone has to leave to go check in for the next night!

Cons:
Tiny campsites.
The dirt. The dirt. The dirt. EVERYWHERE and on EVERYTHING!
Horrible management.

One last thing. Quiet hours are from 10 PM to 7 AM (as usual). But don't run your nearly silent suitcase generator past 8 PM. You'll get a banging on your door about 8:20 PM and open it to find the National Park Service SWAT team there (2 SUVs, 2 park rangers each, with blaring lights on the lead SUV) to tell you that you are piratically a felon for running your generator past 8 PM! She even insisted on collecting my driver's license to run a check on me! Yes, I know (now) it is in the written regulations, no generators between 8 and 8. But I would think a simple knock and a friendly reminder of the regulations would have been more in order rather a full-blown felony type police action.

Let me start by saying this is a nice enough campground. The sites are close, but not stacked right on top of each other. It is convenient to the main attraction, only 7 miles from the lake and accompanying visitor center. The problem is, the new concessionaire is completely incompetent who has unnecessarily complicated which should normally be a simple procedure. First, don't bother even trying to book a site online, the link provided is ONLY for reserving a room at the inn. You have to call. When you do, you get a site, but you can't pick one. It will be assigned to you when you check in. And, you can't book a site with hookups. You can request one when you check in, and hope that one is still available.
As for "walk-ins" here is where it gets REALLY frustrating. What is normally a simple process at a park service location becomes a maddeningly frustrating experience! When you arrive, you get in a line at the side door, and wait. And wait. AND wait some more. They claim they start processing people at noon, but it was more like 12:45. Campers are processed two at a time, explained the regulations and procedures, and assigned a site based upon their particular needs. There are three choices; tent sites, 28 or 55 foot rv sites. No hookups are allowed to walk-ins. When they run out of tent sites, tent campers take rv sites. You can only get the site for ONE night. If you plan on staying more, you must repeat the ordeal again (and again, and again). One reason is, although the website SAYS 25% of sites are kept for walk-ins (LIKE EVERY OTHER NATIONAL PARK CAMPGROUND). this is false. So I got there on Thursday, got a site, but on Friday (labor day weekend) they only had 18 sites available. I was #19 in line. It took them TWO and a HALF HOURS to process 18 people !! They told me there were several alternative campgrounds just outside the park, but they were out of the printed handouts showing where they are. Even more frustrating, they invited me to come back on Saturday and try again, when they had...…...SIX sites available !!!! Didn't bother. As I had spent 26 hours in the campground (four of them standing in line in the 90 degree sunshine) I had had enough. I went up to Rim Village to see the crater and the museum, went down the East Rim Drive to an overlook and a waterfall, stopped at the lower visitor center to hike a short trail and see a video (nothing else to do there, it is basically a gift shop), and headed out. The Williamson River Forest Service Campground down on 97 was less than half full, was actually nicer than Mazama (without flush toilets, of course) for $5 a night ! Aramark should stick to selling $8 hot dogs to drunks at Fenway Park, they don't have a clue about campgrounds management.

Decent campground with clean restrooms. We stayed in a primitive site since we camp out of our SUV. The campsites are close to each other but most have trees between that offer some privacy. Each site has a picnic table, bear box and a fire pit. A primitive site was $22 a night. We stayed Sept 23, 2018 and they were changing over catering the next day and potentially closing for a while. ?? I’m not sure the full story but you may want to give them a call if planning to camp here soon. No AT&T service in or around the park. A sign coming in says that bears are in the campground so be sure to follow regulations and use the bear boxes. There’s a laundry mat by the store and a fill station for drinking water. This campground is inside the national park and there’s a $25 entrance fee. Rim Valley is 7 miles from the campground and has food options and more restrooms.

We staying in the middle section of the "C Loop" and the cell service was very spotty to say the least. The dirt is very dirty, fine dirt that seems to stick to everything!! The only showers that we could find were in the "F Loop". Besides all that, the sites are spread apart and not too close together. We loved the little hiking trail loop that is located just behind our campsite that goes down to the river.

There is no cell service in the entire park or even close by, its all forest, but we did find pockets of coverage in this campground (primarily in F and G = East side of the campground in the overlook of Annie Creek)

WiFi at the restaurants is $4/hour and all 3 of the restaurants weren’t very appealing.

Better yet, don’t plan on having cell when you go to Crater Lake and you won’t be searching for it.

National Park Campgrounds are the best, don’t miss the opportunity to stay at this one.

1/3 of the spots are walkins. We didn’t have a problem getting a walk-in spot

My experience is the sites are pretty jammed together, signal is terrible but the camp store is the bomb. We stayed right behind the store.

My advice is when going to Crater Lake be prepared for anything. During our stay all water was turned off except the water at the camp store, dump station was closed. Laundry was closed. Water was in short supply they told us. We filled gallon jugs over and over to fill our tank for 3 days.

It's Crater Lake. Nothing really matters except being at the rim experiencing the awesomeness anyhow. I love Crater Lake.