Nehalem Bay State Park

Well maintained clean park with very friendly campgrounds hosts. We arrived at our reserved spot to find our site had been overrun by some very greedy tent campers. They even took the picnic table. After speaking with the Ranger we were able to relocate to another loop. Had this been the busy season this would have been a big issue.
After settling into our new spot we had an awesome time. We loved the beach access and proximity to Seaside and Tillamook.
I would not recommend this park in the busy season. It would be like camping at an apartment parking lot.

We had a great site 2 over from the path to the beach. You walk up the sandy hill to the beach, beautiful view. When you leave the beach and go back up the hill it seems harder to walk back. We had Water & Electric, there is a dump station.
You can drive to the bay side in the park great for kayaking, and clamming. There is a boat ramp there too. This body of water has a river that runs from Crater Lake national Park to the Pacific ocean.

We kayaked and got out on a low tide, digging clams got our limit of purple varnish clams. Made excellent clam chowder. We rented a small boat from Wheeler Marina along with 3 crab traps, bait , a measuring device for Dungeness crab, and gas for $89.00 and got 8 big keeper Dungeness crabs which paid for the trip. You put a trap in put a little further, drop another then the 3rd. Within 15 minutes you have at leasts 30 crabs in your trap when you pull them up. Funny we crabbed right off the state park in the bay. They will cook them there for you, we had them cook 6, we picked the meat out & froze it in portions for later. Used some for my clam chowder. Jetty Fishery also rents boats & sells seafood.

Our site was nice & big, had great neighbors who have come every year from Washington for 15 years. This was a great campground and state park. They have camping for people with horses too. There's a little town close to the park with a nice little grocery store. The other direction is the Tillamook creamery. It was so packed we didn't stop in there. We ate at the Bunkhouse didn't care for it and the service was bad.

This is a really special place with a phenomenal, easily accessible ocean beach and bay access but be warned: the campground is huge and the sites are small without a buffer zone of privacy between them. During our three night stay, the place was crowded with tents, Class A and Class C rigs, enormous fifth wheel trailers, camper trucks and boats. Our stay happened to coincide with a crabbing derby and there was a ton of activity everywhere. We stayed in B Loop on a weekend in mid-September when the campground was at full occupancy but we decided that we were going to make the best of it.

We ended up loving it, despite the sheer volume of people and extremely close quarters. We observed deer roaming the campground and grazing on a couple of separate occasions and saw several formations of migrating geese flying in off the water.

There’s an easy 1.8 mile paved loop through the forest that gives foot access to Nehalem Bay. The ocean beach is easily accessible by a short 2 or 3 minute walk through barrier dunes covered with coastal grasses. Saying the beach is picturesque is an understatement. I was lucky enough to catch whales blowing and breaching 150 yards or so off shore. That alone was worth the price of admission and being here on a busy weekend.

Sunday morning, the place cleared out so we had one partial, blissful day here in quiet and relative solitude. By the end of the day on Sunday, ALL of the sites in our area were full again but the activity was far more subdued.

Cell service was good, 3 bars with Verizon. We were able to stream a movie one night with no buffering, a rare treat! Our site had electric and water but no sewer. There’s a dump station on site with two stations.

This is such a special place; I would absolutely stay here again, despite the small sites and lack of privacy, but only during the week and in the off season, if this park has an off season.

We've recently discovered this place and already stayed here a couple times this year. Pretty standard as state parks go. This is a nice shady park off the beaten path with plenty of phone service. (Surprisingly) There's ample room for bike riding around the whole park. There's a couple well kept playgrounds, great for entertaining the children. There's also beach access from the park.

Nehalem Bay offers a few other activities that a lot of state parks do not. There's a large horse camp and access to a boat ramp within the park.

Some of the campgrounds on the coast have mosquito problems, this park is not one of them. That's a huge plus for us.

We will return to this park.

Large 900 acre State Park on the coast just south of the sleepy little beach town of Manzanita. Big campground area with hundreds of spots. Very seasonal. Excluding camp hosts (7!), only about half dozen campers were there on a weekday in December. $31/night partial hookups. No cheaper tent/dry camping rate. Relatively small sites. Clean restroom and showerhouse. Dump station, trash and recycling collection. Strong Verizon signal.
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Nice sandy beach extends 3 miles down the spit and makes for a great loop hike when paired with the horse trail. Was awesome to have miles of undeveloped coastline free of people to beachcomb and explore. Woke up to the local Elk herd grazing in the neighboring campsite. Even if you don't camp here, it's a great beach to hang out for the day.

The location is great and there's not a ton of choices in the area. But these spots are as close together as they can possibly be with no vegetation to break it up. We pulled in after sunset and left the next morning and didn't really feel like we missed out on anything by not staying longer. I could see it being a good base of operations for exploring things nearby, but not really a place to just hang out at the campsite all day